Boiled Eggs and Baked Beans - a personal account of a hearing researcher's journey through Deaf Culture

This article forms a reflexive account of the trials, pains and joys of the launch of a hearing researcher into 'Deaf Culture' - the unique world of British Sign Language (BSL) users. Three resources of reflexive data are utilised; the researcher's experiences of learning BSL with other hearing signers; participant observation data from a Unit for Deaf people with psychiatric problems and finally, experiences of interviewing members of a national organisation of Deaf people. These experiences reflect the assumptions and preconceptions the hearing world holds concerning Deaf people and the remarkable ways in which the latter rationalise them and attempt to subvert them. The intellectual issues addressed here concern the role and status of researchers within foreign settings, the problems of enculturisation and the physical and social effects experienced whilst undertaking this type of research.     

Bedtime without Battles: Using a Behavioural Approach to Establish Bedtime Routines: Giving Parents of Nursery and Primary Age Children a Focus for their Difficulties

Summary Twelve children (age range 3–10 years) who had been referredto the Reading Child and Family Guidance Clinic with a varietyof presenting problems, but who were also reluctant to go tobed, were offered the opportunity to try to establish a bedtimeroutine. It was felt that a behavioural approach, focussingon one major problem area, would have a generalized therapeuticsignificance within the family. Using a contract and rewardssystem, in nine cases a non-argumentative bedtime was establishedwithin 4 weeks and this remained at follow up 6–8 weekslater. In one of these cases the routine broke down but waslater re-established. In three cases the initial response wasencouraging but the parents were unable to persist with theplan. In most cases the benefits of having a less tired childand a less tired parent reduced the severity of other problemareas of behaviour.     

Defensive Social Work

Correspondence to Nigel Harris, Department of Philosophy, The University, Dundee DD1 4HN. Summary Social workers with child clients face the possibility thatsome mistake or oversight of theirs could lead to a child abusetragedy, for which they may suffer opprobrium and blighted careers.How can they guard against such risks? This paper shows howsocial workers might use different types of ‘defensive’measure to protect themselves. These parallel the types of measureused by some doctors, particularly in the United States, facedwith risks of litigation on grounds of malpractice. Becausedefensive practices have undesirable consequences, it is importantto find ways to eliminate their use by protecting social workersby other means.     

OPTIMAL STRATEGIES FOR WORKERS ON TEMPORARY LAYOFF

In this paper we analyze the worker's behavior when faced with job offers which include possible temporary layoff spells of varying (known) durations. We show that of the three strategies which can be optimal, two involve search in all or part of the layoffs. We also show that the duration of any particular spell plays no role in determining which strategy is optimal to pursue. And finally, we develop an index for evaluating jobs with different wage and layoff probabilities and show that the worker's reservation wage monotonically increases, decreases or remains constant during the course of a layoff.     

Approximate Bayesian Inference in Spatial Generalized Linear Mixed Models

Abstract.  In this paper we propose fast approximate methods for computing posterior marginals in spatial generalized linear mixed models. We consider the common geostatistical case with a high dimensional latent spatial variable and observations at known registration sites. The methods of inference are deterministic, using no simulation-based inference. The first proposed approximation is fast to compute and is 'practically sufficient', meaning that results do not show any bias or dispersion effects that might affect decision making. Our second approximation, an improvement of the first version, is 'practically exact', meaning that one would have to run MCMC simulations for very much longer than is typically done to detect any indication of error in the approximate results. For small-count data the approximations are slightly worse, but still very accurate. Our methods are limited to likelihood functions that give unimodal full conditionals for the latent variable. The methods help to expand the future scope of non-Gaussian geostatistical models as illustrated by applications of model choice, outlier detection and sampling design. The approximations take seconds or minutes of CPU time, in sharp contrast to overnight MCMC runs for solving such problems.     

PRICE PREDICTION ERRORS AND REAL ACTIVITY: A REASSESSMENT

Rational expectations, natural-rate macro-models in which aggregate demand disturbances affect the real sector through price prediction errors, while powerful and tractable analytical tools, are often perceived to be of questionable empirical relevance. This paper reexamines the empirical role of price prediction errors in determining the level of real aggregate activity. The approach is distinguished by accounting for aggregate supply-side disturbances and by more careful treatment of natural rates. Contrary to some previous studies, we find considerable empirical support for the hypothesis that demand-driven price level surprises are positively and significantly correlated with aggregate real economic activity.