Evaluation of a Sexual Abuse Prevention Workshop in a Multicultural,Impoverished Urban Area

Participants in the ESPACE sexual abuse prevention workshop were in grades 1 through 4 and attended three Montreal, Canada, public schools in low socioeconomic areas. The sample was culturally diverse, with half born outside of Canada. An evaluation was conducted to explore the effects associated with participating in the workshop and the effects of booster sessions conducted two years later. Outcomes included knowledge gained, the ability to offer behavioral responses to abusive situations, peer victimization, sense of safety, empathy, self-efficacy, and support. Results revealed that participants in this sample obtained low scores on measures of sexual abuse knowledge and that short booster sessions that elicit children's recall of the learned material might produce greater improvements.     

Special features of poker

Poker is now one of the most popular types of online gambling, mostly because of its particular structural characteristics. This study aims to investigate the representations of regular poker players of the game's special features, along with their probable links with tilt (i.e. loss of control during the game) and problem gambling. Twenty-three regular poker players recruited online took part in a research interview. All interviews were recorded and fully transcribed. A quantitative lexical analysis was performed using the software Alceste®. Six classes were identified, encompassing 73% of the whole corpus. The main themes were chance vs. skill, sensations and emotions linked to poker, discovery of poker, tilt, differences between live and online gambling, and risks of excessive poker involvement. The experience of tilt appears to be an important feature of poker. Poker players also tended to report more emotional and social aspects of problem gambling than financial consequences. The results underline the structural specificities of poker through the player's representations. The role of emotions and sensations in poker, as they are both sought by the players and involved in the loss of control, may have an influence on the development and maintenance of problem gambling.     

Rethinking the nation: Apology,treaty and reconciliation in Australia

In February 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Indigenous Australians for past injustices. The apology was presented as a turning point in the history of the nation. According to Rudd, ‘there comes a time in the history of a nation when peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future’. The apology marked a new step in the reconciliation process in Australia, but as this article argues, the treaty issue – another controversial aspect of reconciliation – remains a major challenge to the Australian nation.     

Diagnostics of age‐graded linguistic behaviour: The case of the quotative system1

This article presents a cross‐variety investigation of quotatives be like and go in apparent and real time. Distributional and attitudinal evidence points to a change in progress as the underlying process for the distribution of be like. However, there is also evidence of life‐span change (Sankoff to appear). The patterning of go across age is much less clear‐cut. It could be interpreted as age grading or as a change in progress. This paper discusses seemingly contradictory findings from U.S. and British English. It will be suggested that the distribution of go is due to unstable behaviour at both the individual and the community level. Furthermore, there is evidence that go has a latent presence in the linguistic repertoire and was picked up again after its frequency dipped due to the introduction of be like. This finding ties in with other reported cases of recycling of variables ( Dubois and Horvath 1999 ).     

Firms,Destinations, and Aggregate Fluctuations

This paper uses a data base covering the universe of French firms for the period 1990–2007 to provide a forensic account of the role of individual firms in generating aggregate fluctuations. We set up a simple multisector model of heterogeneous firms selling to multiple markets to motivate a theoretically founded decomposition of firms' annual sales growth rate into different components. We find that the firm‐specific component contributes substantially to aggregate sales volatility, mattering about as much as the components capturing shocks that are common across firms within a sector or country. We then decompose the firm‐specific component to provide evidence on two mechanisms that generate aggregate fluctuations from microeconomic shocks highlighted in the recent literature: (i) when the firm size distribution is fat‐tailed, idiosyncratic shocks to large firms directly contribute to aggregate fluctuations, and (ii) aggregate fluctuations can arise from idiosyncratic shocks due to input–output linkages across the economy. Firm linkages are approximately three times as important as the direct effect of firm shocks in driving aggregate fluctuations.     

Assessing efficacy in important subgroups in confirmatory trials: An example using Bayesian dynamic borrowing

Assessment of efficacy in important subgroups – such as those defined by sex, age, race and region – in confirmatory trials is typically performed using separate analysis of the specific subgroup. This ignores relevant information from the complementary subgroup. Bayesian dynamic borrowing uses an informative prior based on analysis of the complementary subgroup and a weak prior distribution centred on a mean of zero to construct a robust mixture prior. This combination of priors allows for dynamic borrowing of prior information; the analysis learns how much of the complementary subgroup prior information to borrow based on the consistency between the subgroup of interest and the complementary subgroup. A tipping point analysis can be carried out to identify how much prior weight needs to be placed on the complementary subgroup component of the robust mixture prior to establish efficacy in the subgroup of interest. An attractive feature of the tipping point analysis is that it enables the evidence from the source subgroup, the evidence from the target subgroup, and the combined evidence to be displayed alongside each other. This method is illustrated with an example trial in severe asthma where efficacy in the adolescent subgroup was assessed using a mixture prior combining an informative prior from the adult data in the same trial with a non-informative prior.     

The ‘compliant’, the ‘pacified’ and the ‘rebel’: experiences with Swiss disability insurance

Switzerland’s social policies in the field of disability have been significantly reshaped over the last two decades by reducing the number of allowances awarded and by increasing the recourse to vocational rehabilitation measures. What stances do individuals who experience the implementation of these policies adopt? What kind of tests are they subjected to? How can we explain the posture they adopt – be it ‘compliant’, ‘pacified’ or ‘rebellious’ – when facing the (re)assignations of their identity and professional status? Drawing on interviews conducted with individuals who have recently been involved in programmes set up by Swiss disability insurance, we highlight their uncertainties and concerns relating to their place in society, as well as their reactions to disability insurance’s interventions.