Comparative Morality Judgments About Lesbians and Gay Men Teaching and Adopting Children

The purpose of this study was to compare morality judgments of American Catholics and the general public about lesbians and gay men adopting and teaching children. The general sample endorsed higher agreement that lesbians and gay men should be allowed to adopt and to teach children compared to the Catholic only sample. Older participants were less accepting than all other age groups, and there was an interaction effect between education and political ideology such that those with less education and with more politically conservative beliefs were generally less accepting of lesbians and gay men adopting and teaching children.     

Parenting Stress in Employed and At-Home Mothers in Italy

In Italy, there has been strong cultural support for motherhood as the ideal female role. As increasing numbers of Italian mothers enter the workforce, little is known about the effects of maternal employment. An examination of parenting stress that included work status and Type A Behavior Pattern (TABP) was conducted with 174 employed and at-home mothers in Italy. Higher TABP was associated with higher maternal stress in employed mothers and more stressful parent-child interactions for at-home mothers. The strength of the relationship between parenting stress and TABP varies by maternal work status and parenting stress domain. Considering these results, personality characteristics that are incongruent with feminine gender schema may be especially relevant to the prediction of parenting stress.     

Fitting E(max) models to clinical trial dose-response data

We consider fitting Emax models to the primary endpoint for a parallel group dose–response clinical trial. Such models can be difficult to fit using Maximum Likelihood if the data give little information about the maximum possible response. Consequently, we consider alternative models that can be derived as limiting cases, which can usually be fitted. Furthermore we propose two model selection procedures for choosing between the different models. These model selection procedures are compared with two model selection procedures which have previously been used. In a simulation study we find that the model selection procedure that performs best depends on the underlying true situation. One of the new model selection procedures gives what may be regarded as the most robust of the procedures.     

The role of the minimum clinically important difference and its impact on designing a trial

The minimum clinically important difference (MCID) between treatments is recognized as a key concept in the design and interpretation of results from a clinical trial. Yet even assuming such a difference can be derived, it is not necessarily clear how it should be used. In this paper, we consider three possible roles for the MCID. They are: (1) using the MCID to determine the required sample size so that the trial has a pre-specified statistical power to conclude a significant treatment effect when the treatment effect is equal to the MCID; (2) requiring with high probability, the observed treatment effect in a trial, in addition to being statistically significant, to be at least as large as the MCID; (3) demonstrating via hypothesis testing that the effect of the new treatment is at least as large as the MCID. We will examine the implications of the three different possible roles of the MCID on sample size, expectations of a new treatment, and the chance for a successful trial. We also give our opinion on how the MCID should generally be used in the design and interpretation of results from a clinical trial.     

The shrinking or disappearing observed treatment effect

It is frequently noted that an initial clinical trial finding was not reproduced in a later trial. This is often met with some surprise. Yet, there is a relatively straightforward reason partially responsible for this observation. In this article, we examine this reason by first reviewing some findings in a recent publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association. To help explain the non‐negligible chance of failing to reproduce a previous positive finding, we compare a series of trials to successive diagnostic tests used for identifying a condition. To help explain the suspicion that the treatment effect, when observed in a subsequent trial, seems to have decreased in magnitude, we draw a conceptual analogy between phases II–III development stages and interim analyses of a trial with a group sequential design. Both analogies remind us that what we observed in an early trial could be a false positive or a random high. We discuss statistical sources for these occurrences and discuss why it is important for statisticians to take these into consideration when designing and interpreting trial results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of schools and school programs upon adolescent sexual behavior

Because most youth are enrolled in school for many years before they initiate sex and when they initiate sex, schools have the potential for reducing adolescent sexual risk-taking. This paper reviews studies which examine the impact upon sexual risk-taking of school involvement, school characteristics, specific programs in school that do not address sexual behavior, and specific programs that do address sexual risk-taking. Multiple studies support several conclusions. First, involvement in and attachment to school and plans to attend higher education are all related to less sexual risk-taking and lower pregnancy rates. Second, students in schools with manifestations of poverty and disorganization are more likely to become pregnant. Third, some school programs specifically designed to increase attachment to school or reduce school dropout effectively delayed sex or reduced pregnancy rate, even when they did not address sexuality. Fourth, sex and HIV education programs do not increase sexual behavior, and some programs decrease sexual activity and increase condom or contraceptive use. Fifth, school-based clinics and school condom-availability programs do not increase sexual activity, and either may or may not increase condom or contraceptive use. Other studies reveal that there is very broad support for comprehensive sex- and HIV-education programs, and accordingly, most youth receive some amount of sex or HIV education. However, important topics are not covered in many schools.     

Effective approaches to reducing adolescent unprotected sex,pregnancy, and childbearing

In the United States, there exist a multitude of different approaches to reducing adolescent sexual risk-taking, unintended pregnancy, childbearing, and sexually transmitted disease, including HIV. While many of these approaches have some positive effects upon some outcomes (such as greater knowledge), only some of these programs actually delay the initiation of sex, increase condom or contraceptive use, and reduce unprotected sex among youth. This article summarizes a review of 73 studies and their respective programs, and describes four groups of programs which have reasonably strong evidence that they delay sex, increase condom or contraceptive use, or reduce teen pregnancy or childbearing. These four groups of programs include (a) sex and HIV education curricula with specified characteristics, (b) one-on-one clinician-patient protocols in health settings with some common qualities, (c) service learning programs, and (d) a particular intensive youth development program with multiple components.     

When All That Is Solid Melts Into Language: Judith Butler and the Question of Matter

Judith Butler's analysis of corporeal matters offers an exemplary account of the hidden political agenda within the very grain of representation and discourse. This essay, however, argues that language and its political implications are even more complex and curious than Butler concedes. The author contests the conflation of writing with Culture, as if Culture is the constitutive and enclosed space of productivity and transformation. She argues that the question of Nature has not been provoked in Butler's analysis but answered and dismissed much too quickly. The author extends the problematic of writing to biology and suggests that Nature is literate.