Childhood physical and sexual abuse in China

In order to determine the prevalence and characteristics of childhood physical and sexual abuse in China, the authors conducted a survey in Shanghai. The Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule was administered to 423 inpatients and 304 outpatients at Shanghai Mental Health Center, and to a non-clinical sample of 618 workers at a clothing factory. The results were compared to a previous sample of 502 respondents in the general population in Winnipeg, Canada. The identities of the perpetrators of physical and sexual abuse, and the types of sexual abuse reported were similar in the two countries; however, the rates of reported abuse were lower in China. Childhood sexual abuse appears to be far less common in the general population in Canada than in China.     

Childhood sexual abuse and psychosomatic symptoms in irritable bowel syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome is characterized by chronic gastrointestinal symptoms without a demonstrable physical cause. In a subgroup of patients, irritable bowel syndrome may be part of a cluster of psychosomatic symptoms related to childhood sexual abuse. To investigate this possibility, the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule (DDIS), the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) and the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) were administered to 105 subjects with either irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis), or other gastrointestinal disorders. The subjects in the three groups did not differ on the DES, the SCL-90 or most sections of the DDIS. However, subjects with irritable bowel syndrome reported much higher rates of childhood sexual abuse and psychosomatic symptoms.     

Training perceptions,engagement, and performance: comparing work engagement and personal role engagement

The purpose of this study was to compare two engagement constructs (work engagement and personal role engagement) with regard to their relationship with training perceptions and work role performance behaviours. It was hypothesised that personal role engagement would show incremental validity above that of work engagement at predicting work role performance behaviours and be a stronger mediator of the relationships between training perceptions and such behaviours. Questionnaire data were gathered from 304 full-time working adults in the UK. As predicted, personal role engagement was found to explain additional variance above that of work engagement for task proficiency, task adaptability, and task proactivity behaviours. Moreover, personal role engagement was a stronger mediator of the relationship between training perceptions and task proficiency as well as between training perceptions and task adaptability. Both work engagement and personal role engagement mediated the relationship between training perceptions and task proactivity to a similar degree. The findings suggest that personal role engagement has better practical utility to the human resource development domain than work engagement and indicates that future research may benefit from adopting the personal role engagement construct.     

Approximation and sampling of multivariate probability distributions in the tensor train decomposition

Statistics and Computing - General multivariate distributions are notoriously expensive to sample from, particularly the high-dimensional posterior distributions in PDE-constrained inverse...     

The role of interactions with teachers and conflict with friends in shaping school adjustment

Fifth grade children (N = 346) identified school friends and reported on levels of conflict in relationships with these friends as well as perceived stress in relationships with teachers. Teachers and children provided ratings of problem behaviors at school, and children reported on their own perceptions of stress at school. Both less conflictual school friendships and less stressful relationships with teachers were linked with fewer feelings of stress and lower levels of problem problems at school. For the problem behaviors outcome, having more positive relationships with one set of others (teachers or friends) buffered children from experiencing negative consequences of poor relationships with the other set of individuals. The interaction effect involving friendship conflicts and stressful teacher interactions in relation to school stress was more complicated, differing for boys versus girls.