Measuring Attitudes Toward Empirically Supported Treatment in Real-World Addiction Services

Mental health workers with favorable attitudes toward empirically supported treatments (ESTs) are more likely to break through implementation barriers. The Evidence-Based Practice Attitude Scale has been shown to be reliable for mental health workers, but it has not been validated with addiction workers. This study investigates the use of the scale with a convenience sample of addiction workers from 4 agencies in 1 city. Results show that compared to mental health providers, addiction workers were more likely to view ESTs favorably if they were mandated and intuitively appealing. They also tended to rely more heavily on practical experience in forming attitudes toward treatment options. These results might help addiction agencies understand which types of workers are more likely to implement ESTs and inform effective engagement approaches specific to addiction workers.     

Collective Intuition: Implications for Improved Decision Making and Organizational Learning

This article establishes the foundation for research on collective intuition through a study of decision making and organizational learning processes in police senior management teams. We conceptualize collective intuition as independently formed judgement based on domain‐specific knowledge, experience and cognitive ability, shared and interpreted collectively. We contribute to intuition research, which has tended to focus its attention at the individual level, by studying intuition collectively in team settings. From a dual‐process perspective, we investigate how expert intuition and deliberation affect decision making and learning at various levels of the organization. Furthermore, we contribute to organizational learning research by offering an empirically derived elaboration of the foundational 4I framework, identifying additional ‘feed‐forward’ and ‘feedback’ loop processes, and thereby providing a more complete account of this organizational learning model. Bridging a variety of relevant but previously unconnected literatures via our focal concept of collective intuition, our research provides a foundation for future studies of this vitally important but under‐researched organizational phenomenon. We offer theoretical and practical implications whereby expert intuitions can be developed and leveraged collectively as valuable sources of organizational knowledge and learning, and contribute to improved decision making in organizations.     

Evaluation of Smoking Cessation Classes for the Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender Community

ABSTRACT

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a smoking cessation course tailored to meet the needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Of the 44 individuals who participated, 36 were in attendance in the final class, and 88.9% of those had successfully quit smoking. The study found an increase in importance to having cessation classes in gay-identified contexts, high ratings of the cultural appropriateness of the course content, and decreasing anxiety across the classes. Participants’ assessment of their health shifted differentially based on whether they were successful at quitting.     

A Proposed Hybrid Effect Size Plus p-Value Criterion: Empirical Evidence Supporting its Use

ABSTRACT

When the editors of Basic and Applied Social Psychology effectively banned the use of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) from articles published in their journal, it set off a fire-storm of discussions both supporting the decision and defending the utility of NHST in scientific research. At the heart of NHST is the p-value which is the probability of obtaining an effect equal to or more extreme than the one observed in the sample data, given the null hypothesis and other model assumptions. Although this is conceptually different from the probability of the null hypothesis being true, given the sample, p-values nonetheless can provide evidential information, toward making an inference about a parameter. Applying a 10,000-case simulation described in this article, the authors found that p-values’ inferential signals to either reject or not reject a null hypothesis about the mean (α?=?0.05) were consistent for almost 70% of the cases with the parameter’s true location for the sampled-from population. Success increases if a hybrid decision criterion, minimum effect size plus p-value (MESP), is used. Here, rejecting the null also requires the difference of the observed statistic from the exact null to be meaningfully large or practically significant, in the researcher’s judgment and experience. The simulation compares performances of several methods: from p-value and/or effect size-based, to confidence-interval based, under various conditions of true location of the mean, test power, and comparative sizes of the meaningful distance and population variability. For any inference procedure that outputs a binary indicator, like flagging whether a p-value is significant, the output of one single experiment is not sufficient evidence for a definitive conclusion. Yet, if a tool like MESP generates a relatively reliable signal and is used knowledgeably as part of a research process, it can provide useful information.     

Employment regulation,game theory and weak employee voice in liberal economies

This article analyses the impact of information and consultation regulations – specifically the European Information and Consultation Directive – on worker participation or “employee voice” in liberal market economies (LMEs), providing both empirical and theoretical insights to complement existing research on the Directive. Using game theory and the prisoner's dilemma framework, and empirical data from 16 case studies, the authors explain why national legislation implementing the Directive is largely ineffective in diffusing mutual‐gains cooperation in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Three theoretical explanatory propositions advance understanding of the policy impact of information and consultation regulations in LMEs.     

Therapist Differentiation and Couple Clients' Perceptions of Therapeutic Alliance

Therapeutic alliance has been acknowledged as one of the catalysts for change within a therapeutic relationship. The contributions of therapists' characteristics to alliance are not often studied. From a Bowen System's Theory perspective, the therapist's level of differentiation would be highly relevant to the development of a therapeutic alliance. The hypothesis for this study was that therapists who are able to take a more differentiated stance in therapy will build a stronger therapeutic alliance. To test this hypothesis, multilevel modeling procedures were performed, using data from nine therapists and 93 couple cases collected at a large, Midwestern university. Therapist differentiation of self was found to be weakly associated with the clients' perception of therapeutic alliance across the early sessions of therapy, but not in the expected direction. Although the results were unexpected, this study provides an example of the potential of examining therapist characteristics from within one model of therapy, that can be applied across various clients and various models of therapy.     

Social Self‐Control,Externalizing Behavior,and Peer Liking Among Children with ADHD‐CT: A Mediation Model

This study investigated the role of externalizing behavior as a mediator of the relation between social self‐control and peer liking among children with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder‐combined type (ADHD‐CT). A model was proposed whereby externalizing behavior would fully statistically account for the direct relation of social self‐control to peer liking. One hundred seventy‐two children ages 7.0–9.9 years with ADHD‐CT were rated by their teachers regarding their social self‐control and by their parents and teachers regarding their rates of externalizing behavior. Same‐sex classmates provided ratings of overall liking. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the proposed model. Results supported the proposed model of externalizing behavior as fully statistically accounting for the relation of social self‐control to peer liking. This study demonstrated the crucial role that externalizing behaviors play in the social impairment commonly seen among children with ADHD‐CT.     

Fertility Decline in Prussia: Estimating Influences on Supply,Demand, and Degree of Control

Change in marital fertility in 407 Prussian Kreise from 1875 to 1910 is modeled to depend on the gap between the number of desired surviving births, N*, divided by child survival, s, and the number that would be born under natural marital fertility, M, given the age at marriage. Some fraction of this gap is averted, depending on the propensity to avert unwanted births, D. Although none of these components is observed directly, we can estimate each indirectly under strong assumptions. Decline in N*/s accounts for twice as much of the decline in fertility as does an increase in D. Natural fertility rose during the period. Unwanted births increased slightly, despite a tripling of births averted. The most important causes of decline in N* were increases in female labor supply, real income, and health workers. A rising level of education is the most important cause of increasing propensity to avert births. Demand-side changes were important causes of the transition, but changes in readiness to contracept also were important, as was the interaction of the two.     

Attention to Maternal Multimodal Naming by 6‐ to 8‐Month‐Old Infants and Learning of Word–Object Relations

We examined whether mothers' use of temporal synchrony between spoken words and moving objects, and infants' attention to object naming, predict infants' learning of word–object relations. Following 5 min of free play, 24 mothers taught their 6‐ to 8‐month‐olds the names of 2 toy objects, Gow and Chi, during a 3‐min play episode. Infants were then tested for their word mapping. The videotaped episodes were coded for mothers' object naming and infants' attention to different naming types. Results indicated that mothers' use of temporal synchrony and infants' attention during play covaried with infants' word‐mapping ability. Specifically, infants who switched eye gaze from mother to object most frequently during naming learned the word–object relations. The findings suggest that maternal naming and infants' word‐mapping abilities are bidirectionally related. Variability in infants' attention to maternal multimodal naming explains the variability in early lexical‐mapping development.     

Markov Chain Monte Carlo Techniques for Studying Interoccasion and Intersubject Variability: Application to Pharmacokinetic Data

Values of pharmacokinetic parameters may seem to vary randomly between dosing occasions. An accurate explanation of the pharmacokinetic behaviour of a particular drug within a population therefore requires two major sources of variability to be accounted for, namely interoccasion variability and intersubject variability. A hierarchical model that recognizes these two sources of variation has been developed. Standard Bayesian techniques were applied to this statistical model, and a mathematical algorithm based on a Gibbs sampling strategy was derived. The accuracy of this algorithm's determination of the interoccasion and intersubject variation in pharmacokinetic parameters was evaluated from various population analyses of several sets of simulated data. A comparison of results from these analyses with those obtained from parallel maximum likelihood analyses (NONMEM) showed that, for simple problems, the outputs from the two algorithms agreed well, whereas for more complex situations the NONMEM approach may be less accurate. Statistical analyses of a multioccasion data set of pharmacokinetic measurements on the drug metoprolol (the measurements being of concentrations of drug in blood plasma from human subjects) revealed substantial interoccasion variability for all structural model parameters. For some parameters, interoccasion variability appears to be the primary source of pharmacokinetic variation.