A Critical New Pathway Towards Change in Abusive Relationships: The Theory of Transition Framework

This article explores the use of “Transition Framework” as a conceptual framework for individual and social change. William Bridges introduced Transition Framework in the 1970s as a three-pronged model explaining how people respond to change in their lives. This article argues that such an approach has the potential to help clients recognize and grieve the loss of their old identities, become comfortable with new ways of communicating, understand their cycles of relapse and make positive changes. The relevance of this model to transformative change in domestic violence treatment is explored.     

Domestic violence and South Korean women: the cultural context and alternative experiences

The present research contributes to the growing body of cross-cultural research on domestic violence. This is accomplished by answering the question of how severity of intimate partner abuse varies for (1) women incarcerated for the homicides of their male partners (2) abused women who sought domestic violence shelter, short of killing their intimate assailants, and (3) a group of South Korean females outside of domestic violence shelters or prison. The article concludes with a discussion of potential policy implications of the findings as well as promising directions for future research.     

采用开源软件优化多元校正中的基线校正

基线的选择往往根据目测其在指定谱图上的影响而决定。目前已提出一个更加客观的算法程序,用于统计分析中基线校正及其参数选择。这篇后续文章使用一个免费软件教程将该程序应用于新的数据。其目的是要表明,优化的潜在好处是免费、易得的,并提醒读者基线校正中一些可能的陷阱。     

A marginal regression model for multivariate failure time data with a surviving fraction

A marginal regression approach for correlated censored survival data has become a widely used statistical method. Examples of this approach in survival analysis include from the early work by Wei et al. (J Am Stat Assoc 84:1065–1073, 1989) to more recent work by Spiekerman and Lin (J Am Stat Assoc 93:1164–1175, 1998). This approach is particularly useful if a covariate’s population average effect is of primary interest and the correlation structure is not of interest or cannot be appropriately specified due to lack of sufficient information. In this paper, we consider a semiparametric marginal proportional hazard mixture cure model for clustered survival data with a surviving or “cure” fraction. Unlike the clustered data in previous work, the latent binary cure statuses of patients in one cluster tend to be correlated in addition to the possible correlated failure times among the patients in the cluster who are not cured. The complexity of specifying appropriate correlation structures for the data becomes even worse if the potential correlation between cure statuses and the failure times in the cluster has to be considered, and thus a marginal regression approach is particularly attractive. We formulate a semiparametric marginal proportional hazards mixture cure model. Estimates are obtained using an EM algorithm and expressions for the variance–covariance are derived using sandwich estimators. Simulation studies are conducted to assess finite sample properties of the proposed model. The marginal model is applied to a multi-institutional study of local recurrences of tonsil cancer patients who received radiation therapy. It reveals new findings that are not available from previous analyses of this study that ignored the potential correlation between patients within the same institution.     

Volunteering and depression in later life: social benefit or selection processes?

Does volunteer participation reduce depressive symptoms among older people? Does depression influence whether older people will volunteer? Might nonrandom attrition in a longitudinal study bias the relationship between volunteering and depression? This research addresses these questions with three-wave data from theAmericans' Changing Lives study. Multigroup structural equation models for complete and incomplete data are used to estimate the joint causal relationship between volunteer work and depression. The results reveal a beneficial effect of formal volunteering on depression, but not for informal helping. Depression was shown to be associated with a subsequent increase in formal volunteering, suggesting voluntarism as a means of compensation. Functional health problems, not depression, emerged as the important barrier to volunteering. In addition, a sample selection effect--depressed persons and nonvolunteers were less likely to complete the panel study--was detected and accounted for in the analysis. The results are discussed in light of the legitimacy of formal social integration.     

Employee occupational stress in banking

Occupational stress literature emphasizes the importance of assessment and management of work related stress. The recognition of the harmful physical and psychological effects of stress on both individuals and organizations is widely studied in many parts of the world. However, in other regions such research is only at the introductory stages. The present study examines occupational stress of employees in the banking sector. A sample of 60 bank employees at different organizational levels and educational backgrounds was used. Data collection utilized the Occupational Stress Indicator (OSI). Results of data analysis provided evidence that employees' educational levels affect the degree of stress they experience in various ways. Bank employees cannot afford the time to relax and "wind down" when they are faced with work variety, discrimination, favoritism, delegation and conflicting tasks. The study also shows the degree to which some employees tend to bring work-related problems home (and take family problems to work) depends on their educational background, the strength of the employees' family support, and the amount of time available for them to relax. Finally, the drinking habits (alcohol) of the employees were found to play a significant role in determining the levels of occupational stress.     

Reducing HIV/AIDS high-risk behavior among injection drug users: peers vs. education

This study examines the effects of peer groups and education on risk behavior for HIV among injection drug users (IDUs). The sample consisted of 682 participants in the Eastern Connecticut Health Outreach project, which compares traditional and peer-driven outreach interventions for IDUs. Participants are educated about safer injecting, subsequently administered a risk-reduction knowledge test, and given an extensive interview. Logistic regression shows that education alone is not a significant factor in reducing risky behavior in IDUs among the behaviors studied. A significant interaction was found between peer support for safer use and personal saliency of peer attitudes for both syringe and water sharing. Neither peer attitudes nor education affected cooker sharing. These results suggest that while education may be an important component in any intervention, it is not alone sufficient to reduce risky behavior. Our findings suggest that peer-directed interventions may be useful in reducing some forms of risk behavior among IDUs.     

Fitting models for the joint action of two drugs using SAS

Combinations of drugs are increasingly being used for a wide variety of diseases and conditions. A pre-clinical study may allow the investigation of the response at a large number of dose combinations. In determining the response to a drug combination, interest may lie in seeking evidence of 'synergism', in which the joint action is greater than the actions of the individual drugs, or of 'antagonism', in which it is less. Two well-known response surface models representing no interaction are Loewe additivity and Bliss independence, and Loewe or Bliss synergism or antagonism is defined relative to these. We illustrate an approach to fitting these models for the case in which the marginal single drug dose-response relationships are represented by four-parameter logistic curves with common upper and lower limits, and where the response variable is normally distributed with a common variance about the dose-response curve. When the dose-response curves are not parallel, the relative potency of the two drugs varies according to the magnitude of the desired effect and the models for Loewe additivity and synergism/antagonism cannot be explicitly expressed. We present an iterative approach to fitting these models without the assumption of parallel dose-response curves. A goodness-of-fit test based on residuals is also described. Implementation using the SAS NLIN procedure is illustrated using data from a pre-clinical study.     

Modeling low birth weights using threshold regression: results for U. S. birth data

Babies born live under 2,500 g or with a gestational age under 37 weeks are often inadequately developed and have elevated risks of infant mortality, congenital malformations, mental retardation, and other physical and neurological impairments. In this paper, we model birth weight as a first hitting time (FHT) of a birthing boundary in a Wiener process representing fetal development. We associate the parameters of the process and boundary with covariates describing maternal characteristics and the birthing environment using a relatively new regression methodology called threshold regression. Two FHT models for birth weight are developed. One is a mixture model and the other a competing risks model. These models are tested in a case demonstration using a 4%-systematic sample of the more than four million live births in the United States in 2002. An extensive data set for these births was provided by the National Center for Health Statistics. The focus of this paper is on the conceptual framework, models and methodology. A full empirical study is deferred to a later occasion.     

A multi-dimensional model for projecting family households--with an illustrative numerical application

"This paper develops a multi-dimensional model for projecting households and population. The model is constructed to ensure consistency between the demographic events occurring to males and females as well as to parents and children. The model permits projection of characteristics of households, their members, and population structure, using data that are usually available from conventional sources. Unlike the traditional headship-rate method, our model can closely link the projected households with demographic rates. The model includes both nuclear and three-generation households, so that it can be used for countries where nuclear households are dominant and for countries where nuclear and three-generation households are both important. The illustrative application to China, although brief, provides some policy-relevant information about future trends of Chinese household size, structure, and the age and sex distribution of the population, with a focus on the elderly."