Locally optimal designs for the simple death process

We demonstrate the existence and uniqueness of optimal observation schedules for discrete observation of the simple death process. Optimality is framed in the sense of observing the process at times that maximise the Fisher information for the death rate. We examine the relationship of our designs with those obtained by other authors for the simple birth process. A number of interesting properties are uncovered. Practical considerations in the application of these designs in an experimental setting are investigated, and we examine the performance of some approximately optimal designs that are usually simpler to implement. We will show that our optimal designs are highly robust to mis-specification of the death rate.     

Impact of Empowerment Training on the Professional Work of Family Peer Advocates

A pilot study using a prospective design examined the impact of a collaboratively developed training model, called the Parent Empowerment Program (PEP), for professionally-employed family peer advocates who work with caregivers of children with mental health needs. This training used a combination of didactic, practice exercises, and group discussion. It targeted specific mental health knowledge content and collaborative skills to facilitate the work of family peer advocates in empowering caregivers. Co-delivered by a family peer advocate and clinician, the training consisted of a 40-hour face-to-face training, followed by six monthly face-to-face booster sessions. A total of 15 advocates participated in assessments conducted at baseline and post-training. This group of experienced family peer advocates showed no significant increase in knowledge about mental health content, but post-training assessments indicated increased collaborative skills and mental health services self-efficacy. This initial evaluation has implications for expanding training and support for the emergent workforce of professionally-employed family peer advocates in children's mental health.     

GENDER AND THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF EDUCATION

Does education improve health more for one sex than the other? We develop a theory of resource substitution which implies that education improves health more for women than men. Data from a 1995 survey of U.S. adults with follow‐ups in 1998 and 2001 support the hypothesis. Physical impairment decreases more for women than for men as the level of education increases. The gender gap in impairment essentially disappears among people with a college degree. Latent growth SEM vectors also show that among the college educated, men's and women's life course patterns of physical impairment do not differ significantly.     

Public sociability of college‐aged male homosexuals: The gay bar and cruise block

The young, overt, college‐aged male gay community (17 to 24 age group) is examined by focusing on its public sociability. The values of this community, its locale, and its youthful members give this study unique qualities and characteristics which are distinguished from other research efforts that have predominantly focused on sociability from the perspective of the large urban, secret middle‐class older gay community. Nearly all sociability among these young gays occurs at a gay bar. The various functions of the gay bar and its major facilitators of sociability (drugs and special events) are illustrated. In addition, the cruise block, primarily utilized for exchanges of conversation and secondarily for the seeking of impersonal sex, is analyzed.     

It Takes Two to Fight in School,Too: A Social Relations Model of the Psychometric Properties and Relative Variance of Dyadic Aggression and Victimization in Middle School

Aggressive behavior has been well studied in terms of interindividual differences among aggressors and victims, but has been understudied, especially within naturalistic contexts, in terms of aggressor–victim relationships. The social relations model (SRM) is a powerful conceptual and analytic tool for studying dyadic phenomena, and we describe the use of multivariate SRM to study aggression. Boys and girls (N = 210) in middle schools (sixth and seventh grades) completed a newly created dyadic aggression and victimization inventory (DAVI). Results support the reliability and validity of the DAVI in assessing inter‐individual and inter‐dyadic differences in aggression and victimization. Occurrences of aggression were accounted for primarily by inter‐dyadic variability, indicating the importance of considering aggressor–victim relationships. We discuss the implications of this relationship focus for future research and intervention efforts.     

Reliability analysis of consecutive k-out-of-n systems with non-identical components lifetimes

In recent years, the study of reliability properties of consecutive k-out-of-n systems has attracted a great deal of attention from both theoretical and practical perspectives. In this paper we consider linear and circular consecutive k-out-of-n systems. It is assumed that lifetimes of components of the systems are independent but their probability distributions are non-identical. We study the reliability properties of the residual lifetimes of such systems under the condition that at least (n−r+1), r≤n, components of the system are operating. We also investigate the probability that a specific number of components of the above-mentioned system operate at time t, t>0, under the condition that the system is alive at time t.     

Slope Estimation for Bivariate Longitudinal Outcomes Adjusting for Informative Right Censoring Using Discrete Survival Model: Application to the Renal Transplant Cohort

Patients undergoing renal transplantation are prone to graft failure which causes lost of follow-up measures on their blood urea nitrogen and serum creatinine levels. These two outcomes are measured repeatedly over time to assess renal function following transplantation. Loss of follow-up on these bivariate measures results in informative right censoring, a common problem in longitudinal data that should be adjusted for so that valid estimates are obtained. In this study, we propose a bivariate model that jointly models these two longitudinal correlated outcomes and generates population and individual slopes adjusting for informative right censoring using a discrete survival approach. The proposed approach is applied to the clinical dataset of patients who had undergone renal transplantation. A simulation study validates the effectiveness of the approach.     

The Emergency of Climate Change: Why Are We Failing to Take Action?

Latane and Darley developed a five-stage model to understand why people do and do not help other people in emergency situations. We extend their five-stage model to explore why people do and do not take action against climate change. We identify the factors that make climate change difficult to notice and ambiguous as an emergency; we explore barriers to taking responsibility for action; and we discuss the issues of efficacy and costs versus benefits that make action unlikely. The resulting analysis is useful on two levels. For educators and policy makers, the model suggests the most efficacious approaches to galvanizing action among U.S. citizens. For social scientists, the model provides a valuable framework for integrating research from diverse areas of psychology and suggests fruitful avenues for future empirical research.