Transaction Costs and Coalition Stability under Majority Rule

Government program allocations are more stable and more equally shared than theory predicts. Although various explanations have been offered, we emphasize the high transaction costs of political negotiations and coalition enforcement. Cycling predictions ignore the cost to politicians of repeatedly forming coalitions and neglect the opportunity costs of failed coalitions and the loss of related government programs that bring valuable constituent benefits. Because of these costs, Congress relies on coalitions larger than the minimum necessary to enact a program, adopts relatively egalitarian programmatic sharing rules, and resists efforts to change those allocations. To illustrate we analyze the Federal Highway Trust Fund.     

Predicting Change in Marital Satisfaction Throughout Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy

Emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) is an empirically validated approach to couple therapy that uses attachment theory to understand the needs and emotions of romantic partners. EFT is recognized as one of the most effective approaches to couple therapy, but to guide therapists in their use of EFT, a theoretically based model to predict change is needed. This study tested such a model by recruiting 32 couples, and 14 therapists who provided approximately 21 sessions of EFT. Couples completed self‐report measures of marital satisfaction, attachment security, relationship trust, and emotional control at pre‐ and posttherapy and after each therapy session. Results of hierarchical linear modeling suggested that individuals higher on self‐report attachment anxiety and higher levels of emotional control had greater change in marital satisfaction across EFT sessions. Assessing attachment security at the start of therapy will inform therapists of the emotion regulating strategies used by couples and may help couples achieve positive outcomes from EFT.     

Normative Accountability: How the Medical Model Influences Transgender Identities and Experiences

The medicalization of gender variance is a key force in transgender people's experiences of embodiment, identity, and community. While most directly dictating experiences of diagnosis and medical classification, it is important to acknowledge that the effects of medicalization are widespread across social contexts and institutions. I explore the medical model of transgender identity, with special attention to its current diagnostic classification, in order to highlight how transgender people's interactional experiences of gender are shaped by medical authority. I review literature that highlights the operation of the medical model as a normative accountability structure in its influence across multiple institutions of social life including health and healthcare, transgender community groups, and legal classification.     

Tables to facilitate fitting lu distributions

This paper is concerned with estimating the parameters of Tadikamalla-Johnson's L_Udistributions based on the method of moments. Tables of the parameters of the L_U distribution are given for selected values of skewness (0.0(0.05) 1.0(0.1)2.0) and for twenty values of kurtosis at intervals of 0.2. The construction and use of these tables is explained with a numerical example.     

Randomized nomination sampling for finite populations

We propose a randomized minima–maxima nomination (RMMN) sampling design for use in finite populations. We derive the first- and second-order inclusion probabilities for both with and without replacement variations of the design. The inclusion probabilities for the without replacement variation are derived using a non-homogeneous Markov process. The design is simple to implement and results in simple and easy to calculate estimators and variances. It generalizes maxima nomination sampling for use in finite populations and includes some other sampling designs as special cases. We provide some optimality results and show that, in the context of finite population sampling, maxima nomination sampling is not generally the optimum design to follow. We also show, through numerical examples and a case study, that the proposed design can result in significant improvements in efficiency compared to simple random sampling without replacement designs for a wide choice of population types. Finally, we describe a bootstrap method for choosing values of the design parameters.     

Conflict Frequency and Relationship Quality Across the Transition to Parenthood

Longitudinal data from 293 Dutch couples were used to examine the association between conflict frequency and relationship quality across the transition to parenthood, which is known as one of the most challenging events in the early stages of marriage. More frequent conflict during pregnancy was related to lower levels of relationship quality across the transition to parenthood, and lower levels of relationship quality during pregnancy were associated with more frequent conflict across the transition to parenthood. A comparison of two models showed that frequent conflict is more likely to be a determinant than a consequence of lower relationship quality. The results suggest a complicated but identifiable association between conflict frequency and relationship quality that may inform the development and modification of primary interventions targeting new parents.     

Representations of the Chinese in Anglophone Caribbean fiction

In West Indian societies, the Chinese, as relative latecomers, provide an example of a minority group coping with a foreign culture and subject to assessment by earlier arrivants. They often appear only briefly in novels, but their presence contributes to pictures of ‘authentic’ village communities and to impressions of culturally and economically diverse urban centres. Despite their economic links with the communities in which they live, novelists depict them as existing outside the power relations of Creole societies which are determined largely by class and colour oppositions stemming from the experiences of slavery and colonialism.     

Empowering teen peers to prevent bullying: The Bully Busters Program for high school (Peer leader guide and CD) by Horne,A. M., Nitza,A., Dobias,B. F., Jolliff,D. L., Raczynski,K. A., & Voors,W.

This article describes low-cost and tested procedures which may be used by the social work pracritioner-researcher for collection of data about what takes place in groups in natural setting. Some technical issues in uses of tapes of group sessions obtained by portable cassette recorders are explored. Content analysis as a research technique is explained and illustrations provided. Process analysis through measurement of such dimensions as frequency and initiator of speech is described.