Relationships with Non-Parental Adults and Child Behavior

Significant non-parental adults likely play an important role in the lives of children and adolescents. This study explores the frequency and quality of contact youth have with non-parental adults and the relationship of this contact with child behavior. An instrument designed to measure contact with non-parental adults in a sensitive and inclusive manner is also presented. Seventy-five mothers were surveyed regarding their childs contact with non-parental adults and their childs behavior. Results indicate that children with more frequent and high quality contact with non-parental adults have fewer behavior problems. Relationships with specific categories of adults are examined and implications for social work practice are discussed.     

Legal standards for evaluation research: A reply to Smith

Smith (1981), asserting that not all evaluative studies require the same degree of evidence for decision-making, suggests a legal paradigm for determining how much certainty is necessary for informed decision-making. Specifically, he argues for the use of three levels of certainty, i.e., suggestive, preponderant, or conclusive evidence, modeled after the legal standards of proof. Unfortunately, such an approach is untenable for several reasons. Smith's suggestion that decision-makers adopt legal terminology, for example, is really a recommendation of form rather than substance and, furthermore, his analogy from the law to the evaluation context is based upon a misunderstanding of the trial process. These and other problems with Smith's suggestions are discussed.     

Adaptive importance sampling in general mixture classes

In this paper, we propose an adaptive algorithm that iteratively updates both the weights and component parameters of a mixture importance sampling density so as to optimise the performance of importance sampling, as measured by an entropy criterion. The method, called M-PMC, is shown to be applicable to a wide class of importance sampling densities, which includes in particular mixtures of multivariate Student t distributions. The performance of the proposed scheme is studied on both artificial and real examples, highlighting in particular the benefit of a novel Rao-Blackwellisation device which can be easily incorporated in the updating scheme. This work has been supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) through the 2006–2008 project ’ . Both last authors are grateful to the participants to the BIRS meeting on “Bioinformatics, Genetics and Stochastic Computation: Bridging the Gap”, Banff, for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. The last author also acknowledges an helpful discussion with Geoff McLachlan. The authors wish to thank both referees for their encouraging comments.     

Deaf or hard of hearing inmates in prison

Despite laws in the United States enacted to protect individuals with disabilities in prison, there is ample case law to demonstrate that the intent of these laws has not been achieved. Using the existing US legal and social science literatures and experiences, this article considers: the problems hearing-impaired offenders face in prison that are not encountered by non-deaf or hard of hearing inmates; the services and accommodations prisons provide for deaf or hard of hearing inmates so that they can function at least as well as non-deaf or hard of hearing inmates; and the types of scientific research that should be conducted to understand the possible types of deaf or hard of hearing experiences in prisons, the consequences of these experiences, and the best way to address pathological sequela of being deaf or hard of hearing in prison. We argue that the creation of rules to protect this population is of no value unless these laws are implemented as intended. Without monitoring the law in action and studying why the intent of the law may be thwarted, an atmosphere in which deaf or hard of hearing offenders are neglected and even abused will likely occur.     

Self-regulation and the etiology of sexual deviance: evaluating causal theory

Recently introduced theories of sex offending, including the self-regulation model and the multimodal self-regulation theory, have implicated self-regulatory deficits as a key variable in the development of sexually inappropriate interests and behaviors. While dysregulation has been considered an important component of a variety of behavioral, emotional, and interpersonal disorders, sexual behaviors have rarely been conceptualized within this context. In this study, we have examined a number of variables linked to self-regulation and dysfunctional outcomes in a sample of 95 sex-offending men. Results of a path analysis demonstrated that self-regulatory deficits were significantly predictive of paraphilic and antisocial behaviors in this group. Implications for our understanding of the etiology of sexual deviance and future research in this area are discussed.     

Adaptive estimating function inference for nonstationary determinantal point processes

Estimating function inference is indispensable for many common point process models where the joint intensities are tractable while the likelihood function is not. In this article, we establish asymptotic normality of estimating function estimators in a very general setting of nonstationary point processes. We then adapt this result to the case of nonstationary determinantal point processes, which are an important class of models for repulsive point patterns. In practice, often first‐ and second‐order estimating functions are used. For the latter, it is a common practice to omit contributions for pairs of points separated by a distance larger than some truncation distance, which is usually specified in an ad hoc manner. We suggest instead a data‐driven approach where the truncation distance is adapted automatically to the point process being fitted and where the approach integrates seamlessly with our asymptotic framework. The good performance of the adaptive approach is illustrated via simulation studies for non‐stationary determinantal point processes and by an application to a real dataset.     

Stability of risk preference measures: results from a field experiment on French farmers

We compare two different elicitation methods for measuring risk attitudes on a sample of French farmers. We consider the lottery tasks initially proposed by Holt and Laury (Econ Rev 92:1644?C1655, 2002) and by Eckel and Grossman (Evol Hum Behav 23:281?C295, 2002; J Econ Behav Org 68:1?C7, 2008). The main empirical result from this within-subject study is that risk preference measures are affected by the type of mechanism used. We first show that this risk preference instability can be related to non-expected utility preferences of farmers. Using a risk-taking psychometric questionnaire, we then demonstrate that risk preferences of farmers are context-dependent. This may be another explanation of the observed risk preference instability.     

An Elementary Theory of Comparative Advantage

Comparative advantage, whether driven by technology or factor endowment, is at the core of neoclassical trade theory. Using tools from the mathematics of complementarity, this paper offers a simple yet unifying perspective on the fundamental forces that shape comparative advantage. The main results characterize sufficient conditions on factor productivity and factor supply to predict patterns of international specialization in a multifactor generalization of the Ricardian model which we refer to as an “elementary neoclassical economy.” These conditions, which hold for an arbitrarily large number of countries, goods, and factors, generalize and extend many results from the previous trade literature. They also offer new insights about the joint effects of technology and factor endowments on international specialization.     

Teacher Training with a View Towards Developing Favourable Attitudes Regarding Intercultural Education and Cultural Diversity

An analysis of Spanish multiculturalism, together with the lack of systematic teacher training in the area of intercultural education, a fact which was revealed by a review of the educational programmes and strategies developed in our country, has led us to propose a training course which improves the attitudes of teachers and educators towards intercultural education and the ever‐growing cultural diversity in our country. The study, carried out using a quasi‐experimental methodology and based on the Theory of Reasoned Action, revealed that this type of training programme favours a positive predisposition in teachers towards the development of intercultural programmes in schools, a fundamental element in promoting a further dissemination of this particular focus throughout the whole of the educational system.     

Materializing Strategy in Mundane Tools: the Key to Coupling Global Strategy and Local Strategy Practice?

While much of the literature on strategy and strategy as practice (SaP) focuses on traditional strategic tools, technologies and discursive practices of managers, this paper extends the understanding of strategic change implementation by proposing that mundane material tools, understood as text, translate global strategic discourse in ways that make sense to workers and orchestrate successful global strategy implementation at the local level. Based on a rich case study within one branch of a national bank, this paper demonstrates how a middle manager's materializing practices developed local strategy practice while simultaneously transforming work and producing strategic figures or indicators that satisfied senior management's global strategic change objectives. The contributions of this paper are threefold: (i) it advances the understanding of the multimodality of materiality by identifying the influence of three types of mundane tools produced locally by a middle manager as he performed his sense of the senior managers’ strategic discourse; (ii) it reveals how these three types of physical texts materialized the manager's sense of this discourse, facilitating frontline workers’ engagement and coupling materiality and orality in a coherent way that allowed workers to embody the company's global strategy in their ‘sayings and doings’; and (iii) it highlights the importance of managers’ ability to materialize a strategic discourse.