Determinants of outcome in the pathways through care for children hearing voices

Auditory hallucination, or hearing voices, is generally associated with psychopathology. In psychiatry it is inter-preted as a symptom of an illness, with no connection to the individual's life history. Voice hallucinations in childhood occur in a variety of contexts and have variable long-term outcomes. Little is known about the course of the experience. In this study, 80 children and youngsters hearing voices were interviewed on four occasions over a period of three years about the content of the voices and their overall experience of voices, focusing on the determinants for a promising outcome in the pathways through care. The results indicate that the need for care in the context of the experience of voices is associated not only with high levels of problem behaviour and associated negative symptoms of psychosis, but also, independently, with an appraisal of the voices in terms of anxiety, depression, dissociation and frequency of occurrence. In 60 per cent of the participants the voices disappeared during the three-year research period. The relationship between the disappearance of voices and the course of mental health treatment is, however, ambiguous.     

A MCMC algorithm to fit a general exchangeable model

Consider the exchangeable Bayesian hierarchical model where observations y_i are independently distributed from sampling densities with unknown means, the means µi, are a random sample from a distribution g, and the parameters of g are assigned a known distribution h. A simple algorithm is presented for summarizing the posterior distribution based on Gibbs sampling and the Metropolis algorithm. The software program Matlab is used to implement the algorithm and provide a graphical output analysis. An binomial example is used to illustrate the flexibility of modeling possible using this algorithm. Methods of model checking and extensions to hierarchical regression modeling are discussed.     

Asymptotic Distribution for Symmetric Spacing Statistics

A new procedure for testing the H ₀: μ₁ = ··· = μ _k against the alternative H _u :μ₁ ≥ ··· ≥μ _r  ≤ ··· ≤ μ _k with at least one strict inequality, where μ _i is the location parameter of the ith two-parameter exponential distribution, i = 1,…, k, is proposed. Exact critical constants are computed using a recursive integration algorithm. Tables containing these critical constants are provided to facilitate the implementation of the proposed test procedure. Simultaneous confidence intervals for certain contrasts of the location parameters are derived by inverting the proposed test statistic. In comparison to existing tests, it is shown, by a simulation study, that the new test statistic is more powerful in detecting U-shaped alternatives when the samples are derived from exponential distributions. As an extension, the use of the critical constants for comparing Pareto distribution parameters is discussed.     

Breakdown points for redescending m-estimates of location

Breakdown point is one measure of the robustness of an estimate. This paper discusses some unusual properties of the breakdown points of M-estimates of location.     

Social welfare in the light of topic modelling

With an increased focus on social well-being in response to a burgeoning global economy exposing the weaknesses of social welfare policies, research output in the field has grown exponentially. Keeping track of the evolving research themes proves difficult due to the steady rise in the number of studies published in the interdisciplinary field of social welfare. Therefore, researchers need a comprehensive overview to confirm the current shape of the field based on the published research. Using a latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm as a topic modelling technique, this study identified 12 prominent themes from more than 10,000 research outputs on social welfare published from 2000 to 2020 in Scopus-indexed journals. Such an exploratory text-mining approach to literature review provides broad insights into the diversity of research and may serve as a foundation for further in-depth studies. Identifying these 12 thematic areas and their sub-themes allows us to articulate the complexity and diversity of social welfare issues, which go far beyond the field of well-established welfare economics or social work. The study shows that the topic of ‘social welfare’ has not only evolved over time but has significantly broadened its meaning. It can no longer be solely synonymous with institutional social security. We contend that research in this area needs to take into account a broader and more systematic range of determinants constituting the dynamic character of social welfare.