Measuring the Effectiveness of the Emotionally Focused Therapy Externship Training in Hungary done through Translation

Our study adds to the rising field of dissemination and implementation research on Emotionally Focused Therapy. We evaluated the psychometric characteristics of the Hungarian EFT‐KACS, examined the impact of the EFT Externship training done through translation on Hungarian therapists, and we investigated how therapist background characteristics related to outcomes. A total of 340 Hungarian professionals completed the questionnaires (N = 152 in 2016; and N = 188 in 2018) at three data collecting points—prior to (N = 329), after the training (N = 254), and 6 months later (N = 101). Results suggest the Hungarian EFT‐KACS has similar psychometric properties as the original English version and shows high internal consistency. The 4‐day EFT Externship trainings done through translation provided significant, lasting increases in perceived EFT‐specific knowledge and competency, and in alliance, similar to findings in English‐ and Spanish‐speaking countries. Externship outcomes were also found to be related to specific therapist experience and background characteristics.     

Eliciting Stance and Mitigating Therapist Authority in Open Dialogue Meetings

Open Dialogue is a collaborative systemic approach to working with families in crisis. A core feature is the creation of dialogue through the elicitation of a multiplicity of voices. Using conversation analysis, we studied 14 hr of Open Dialogue sessions. We found that therapists recurrently produced utterances containing “I’m wondering.” These utterances topicalized particular issues and invited stance positions from other participants while also allowing the therapist to mitigate their deontic authority and present potentially disaligning stances. Therapists thus exercised authority in eliciting stances, but provided recipients with multiple avenues for responding. These findings illustrate that therapist authority is not necessarily antithetical to dialogue and, in well‐crafted forms, may even be necessary for the creation of polyphony through the elicitation of multiple stances.     

Tests for Regression Models Fitted to Survey Data

Data from complex surveys are being used increasingly to build the same sort of explanatory and predictive models as those used in the rest of statistics. Unfortunately the assumptions underlying standard statistical methods are not even approximately valid for most survey data. The problem of parameter estimation has been largely solved, at least for routine data analysis, through the use of weighted estimating equations, and software for most standard analytical procedures is now available in the major statistical packages. One notable omission from standard software is an analogue of the likelihood ratio test. An exception is the Rao–Scott test for loglinear models in contingency tables. In this paper we show how the Rao–Scott test can be extended to handle arbitrary regression models. We illustrate the process of fitting a model to survey data with an example from NHANES.     

Managing Integrity: The Regulation of Post Public Employment in Britain and Hong Kong

In this article, we examine the regulatory mechanisms governing post public employment in Britain and Hong Kong in the context of changing views on how integrity should be managed in their civil services. In both places, new public management practices have increased the possibility of ‘soft’ conflicts of interest which in turn has resulted in debates over the necessary degree of regulation, the organizational form that this should take, and the extent to which ethical concerns should be more focused on the communication and inculcation of core values in civil servants. We argue that the difficulty of regulating ‘soft’ conflicts of interests is driving moves toward the greater centralisation of ethical regulation in both Britain and Hong Kong and that there appears to be a return to more traditional ways of managing integrity.

India’s ‘Missing Women’ and Men’s Sexual Risk Behavior

Although scholars and policymakers have long been concerned with the ??missing women?? of India, little rigorous research has examined the consequences of India??s sex ratio imbalance for young men??s sexual risk behavior and reproductive health. We use data from the third wave of India??s 2005?C2006 National Family and Health Survey to examine the influence of the community female-to-male sex ratio at ages 10?C39 on men??s likelihood of marrying early in life, of engaging in premarital, multi-partnered, and commercial sex, and of contracting a sexually-transmitted disease. We estimate logistic regression models that control for respondents?? demographic and socioeconomic status and that adjust for the clustering of observations within communities. Net of the effects of other characteristics, the female-to-male sex ratio is positively and significantly associated with the likelihood that men marry prior to age 18 and inversely and significantly associated with the odds that men have had intercourse with a commercial sex worker. However, no significant net associations are observed between the sex ratio and the other outcomes. Education, wealth, religious affiliation, caste, and geographic region emerge as significant predictors of Indian men??s sexual risk behaviors.     

A computer program for the design of group testing experiments

This paper describes a computer program GTEST for designing group testing experiments for classifying each member of a population of items as “good” or “defective”. The outcome of a test on a group of items is either “negative” (if all items in the group are good) or “positive” (if at least one of the items is defective, but it is not known which). GTEST is based on a Bayesian approach. At each stage, it attempts to maximize (nearly) the expected reduction in the “entropy”, which is a quantitative measure of the amount of uncertainty about the state of the items. The user controls the procedure through specification of the prior probabilities of being defective, restrictions on the construction of the test group, and priorities that are assigned to the items. The nominal prior probabilities can be modified adaptively, to reduce the sensitivity of the procedure to the proportion of defectives in the population.     

Likelihood estimation of missing cell means in the fixed model analysis of variance

This paper examines the formation of maximum likelihood estimates of cell means in analysis of variance problems for cells with missing observations. Methods of estimating the means for missing cells has a long history which includes iterative maximum likelihood techniques, approximation techniques and ad hoc techniques. The use of the EM algorithm to form maximum likelihood estimates has resolved most of the issues associated with this problem. Implementation of the EM algorithm entails specification of a reduced model. As demonstrated in this paper, when there are several missing cells, it is possible to specify a reduced model that results in an unidentifiable likelihood. The EM algorithm in this case does not converge, although the slow divergence may often be mistaken by the unwary as convergence. This paper presents a simple matrix method of determining whether or not the reduced model results in an identifiable likelihood, and consequently in an EM algorithm that converges. We also show the EM algorithm in this case to be equivalent to a method which yields a closed form solution.     

Revisiting Beal's Confidence Intervals for the Difference of Two Binomial Proportions

Confidence interval construction for the difference of two independent binomial proportions is a well-known problem with a full panoply of proposed solutions. In this paper, we focus largely on the family of intervals proposed by Beal (1987 Beal , S. ( 1987 ). Asymptotic confidence intervals for the difference between two binomial parameters for use with small samples . Biometrics 43 : 941 – 950 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). This family, which includes the Haldane and Jeffreys–Perks intervals as special cases, assumes a symmetric prior distribution for the population proportions p ₁ and p ₂. We propose new methods that allow the currently observed data to set the prior distribution by taking a parametric empirical-Bayes approach; in addition, we also provide an investigation of the new interval' behaviors in small-sample situations. Unlike other solutions, our intervals can be used adaptively for experiments conducted in multiple stages over time. We illustrate this notion using data from an Argentinean study involving the Mal Rio Cuarto virus and its transmission to susceptible maize crops.     

Tables for the Lilliefors and Modified Cramer–von Mises Tests of Normality

We present new tabulations of the Lilliefors distribution and the modified Cramer–von Mises distribution, which are used to test for normality when the population mean and variance are unknown. Some practical remarks and an example are given.     

原始荒野的双重神秘性：非情境性语言对荒野法案的误读

近年来,＂荒野＂这个词在传统意义上的定义逐渐开始被许多著名的环境哲学家和历史学家所批判。他们强烈批判已有的＂荒野观＂,指出这种观念在实际上是有二元论倾向,是带有种族中心主义,是处于静止不变状态的错误观念。而面对这样的指责,传统的荒野观却从1964年的荒野法案中找到了能够为自己明确解释和辩护的证据。但是,尽管如此,被荒野法案强力支撑的荒野观仍在这些批判者们精明地解构之下,与荒野法案中对荒野的理解大相径庭了。这些批判家们认为,与荒野法案中动态历史性的、用情境性语言进行的相对性解释的荒野观相对比,已有荒野观对荒野的定义是静态不变,以纯粹逻辑和语言进行的绝对性解释,尽管他们也承认,荒野法案中对荒野的定义和理解对于随后荒野的立法、管理和巡查和提供了经验资料和理论指导。实际上,在荒野法案中,荒野这个词更多意义上是指人与自然之间建立的一种契约关系,而并非原始自然所保留下来的＂残余物＂。从这个角度看,荒野实际上是人类一个潜在的休憩地,或者,我们也可以从与我们的生活工作休戚相关、相互作用这个关系上去理解荒野的终极意义。其实,并不需要改变我们在地球上较为创造性、持续性的生活方式来还原一个原始的荒野,因为荒野本身就属于人类与自然这个生生相息、关系复杂多样的综合体,它是这个体系中重要而不可忽视的角色。