Shaping the story: rhetoric,persuasion and creative writing in organisational ethnography

Every writer is engaged in processes of persuasion, not only in their communicating with the reader but in the very processes of thinking out their ideas. Rhetoric is inevitably an integral part of research work and research writing. All social science writing involves the creation of an artful product. This proposition is examined with reference to the author's own writing about his ethnographic research on management and key parallels are observed between the techniques of creating an ethnographic account and the rhetorical style of the creative fiction writer. The basic issues of the paper are raised in the story of a dialogue between the researcher and Tom Beeston.     

Children of open marriages: Parental disclosure and perspectives

This study concerns parents in open relationships and their disclosures of information to their children. In this sampling of seventy-one adults, 50 percent had children and each of them responded to questions concerning their open relationships and their children's awareness and involvement in these open relationships. Seventy-five percent wanted their children to be aware of their lifestyle. However, only 21 percent fully informed their children as to their involvements.James Watson is a senior psychology student at Metropolitan State College. During his years as a student he has developed a particular interest in alternative lifestyles and children of these alternatives. Mary Ann Watson received her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1969. She is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Metropolitan State College in Denver, is a Psychologist in private practice, and is codirector of Open Learning Associates, a private organization providing professional and lay workshops. She is coauthor ofBreaking The Bonds: The Realities Of Sexually Open Relationships (Tudor Press, Denver, CO).     

The Langevin distribution on high dimensional spheres

The Langevin (or von-Mises) distribution L(μ,k,q) of a unit vector in Rq has been well studied for the cases of large samples (n? 8) and high concentrations (K? 8). Here we study it as q? 8. Interesting results are only obtained when we use L(μ,q^½,q).     

U2n test for uniformity of discrete distributions

Lockhart et al. have given an elegant account of this recently. In this paper, I will show that the method which originally led to U2n works just as well in the discrete case-and suggests a proof in the continuous case.     

Reducing high blood cholesterol in children

There is compelling evidence that the process of atherosclerosis begins in childhood as a result of elevated levels of blood cholesterol and that preventing or slowing this process in childhood can extend the years of healthy life for many Americans. Health professionals need to use a variety of strategies to affect social policy in order to decrease the abuse of children whose elevated blood cholesterol has been ignored by the health care system. Through these strategies we can begin to improve the health of our children and thus ultimately improve the health of all Americans.     

A TWO STAGE PROCEDURE FOR ESTIMATING THE SIZE OF A TRUNCATED EXPONENTIAL SAMPLE

Let X₁, …, X_N be i.i.d. exponential random variables with unknown scale parameter θ. If one can observe only those X_i in (0, T₀), an estimate of N based on the J observations obtained has a variance which explodes as θ→θC. Using θC based on the observations in (0, T₀) T is computed and all X_i in (0, ) are observed. An estimate of N based on all observations in (0, ) has a bounded variance where the bound can be adjusted by proper choice of .