Attitudes of nursing students toward death and dying: A research note

Fear, denial, and the avoidance of death and dying appear to be products of life in modern society. While society insulates most people from contact with the death and dying of others, there are professions that come into repeated contact with dying individuals. The present study uses the Collett‐Lester Fear of Death Scale to analyze the Fear of Death and Dying for Self and Others (four subscales) among a sample of registered nurses (BA level). Over a 10‐year period, nurses’ fears concerning death and dying were measured at three points—before a course on death and dying (Pretest), after the course (Posttest), and at a point in their professional nursing practice (Retest). The results suggest that these nurses’ fears of death for self and others change at a statistically significant level over the Pretest and Posttest observations; however, the changes are temporary. The Fear of Dying for Self and Others tends to decline significantly over the Pretest and Retest observations. Age, religion, religiosity, and employment factors were also analyzed vis‐à‐vis the Fear of Death and Dying Subscales. Some directions for additional research into nurses’ fears about death and dying are given.     

The ritual abuse of children: Implications for clinical practice and research

The development of a 14‐year‐old female from defending herself from sexual crimes to committing such a crime is presented in case‐report form. Her individual history, family dynamics, and transgenerational patterns are explored. A review of the current literature is utilized to understand why some abused persons become abusers.     

Inference for the Generalized Normal Laplace Distribution

The generalized normal Laplace distribution has been used in financial modeling because of its skewness and excess kurtosis. To estimate its parameters, we use a method based on minimizing the quadratic distance between the real and imaginary parts of the empirical and theoretical characteristic functions. The quadratic distance estimator (QDE) obtained is shown to be robust, consistent, and with an asymptotically normal distribution. The goodness-of-fit test statistics presented follow an asymptotic chi-square distribution. The performance of the QDE is illustrated by simulation results and an application to financial data.     

Risk Characterization for Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is a broad term that encompasses materials, structures, or processes that utilize engineered nanomaterials, which can be defined as materials intentionally designed to have one or more dimensions between 1 and 100 nm. Historically, risk characterization has been viewed as the final phase of a risk assessment process that integrates hazard identification, dose‐response assessment, and exposure assessment. The novelty and diversity of materials, structures, and tools that are covered by above‐defined “nanotechnology” raise substantial methodological issues and pose significant challenges for each of these phases of risk assessment. These issues and challenges culminate in the risk characterization phase of the risk assessment process, and this article discusses several of these key issues and approaches to developing risk characterization results and their implications for risk management decision making that are specific to nanotechnology.     

Sampling from a Discrete Distribution While Preserving Monotonicity

This article describes a cutpoint sampling method for efficiently sampling from an n-point discrete distribution that preserves the monotone relationship between a uniform deviate and the random variate it generates. This property is useful for developing a sampling plan to reduce variance in a Monte Carlo or simulation study. The expected number of comparisons with this method is derived and shown to be bounded above by (m + n ?1)/n, where m denotes the number of cut-points. The alias sampling method, which is regarded as the most efficient table sampling technique, generally lacks the monotone property and requires 2n storage locations, whereas the proposed cutpoint sampling method requires m + n storage locations. The article describes two modifications for cases in which n is large and possibly infinite. It is shown that circumstances arise in which the cutpoint method requires fewer comparisons on average than the alias method does for exactly the same space requirement. The article also describes an algorithm to implement the proposed method.     

Father Involvement and Childhood Injuries

Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death for children in the United States. Parental supervision is a key factor in preventing injuries, but little is known about the role of fathers. Today, one quarter of children live with a single mother, and another third live with a mother and her new partner, resulting in tremendous diversity in the amount and type of paternal involvement in children's lives. The authors examined the effects of involvement by resident biological, nonresident biological, and resident social fathers on the risk of injury among children from birth to age 5 using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,352). They found that living with a social father and social fathers' more frequent engagement with children increase risk of injury, but only for the youngest children. Higher levels of fathers' cooperative parenting reduce children's risk of injury regardless of fathers' biological or residential status.     

MONITORING IN TEAMS: USING LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS TO STUDY A THEORY OF THE FIRM

Alchian and Demsetz’s influential explanation of the classical business firm (The American Economic Review, 1972, 62, 777–795) argues that there is need for a concentrated residual claim in the hands of a central agent, to motivate the monitoring of workers. We model monitoring as a way to transform team production from a collective action dilemma with strong free riding incentives to a productivity‐enhancing opportunity with strong private marginal incentives to contribute effort. In an experiment, we have subjects experience team production without monitoring, team production with a central monitor, and team production with peer monitoring. Then subjects vote on whether to employ the central monitor, who gets to keep a fixed share of the team output, or to rely on peer monitoring, which entails a coordination or free riding problem. Our subjects usually prefer peer monitoring but they switch to the specialist when unable to successfully self‐monitor. We provide evidence for situations in which team members resist the appointing of a central monitor and succeed in overcoming coordination and free riding problems as well as for a situation in which an Alchian–Demsetz‐like firm grows in the laboratory.     

The Cultural Dimension of Metagovernance: Why Governance Doctrines May Fail

National cultures often reflect a preference for one of the ideal-types hierarchical, network or market governance. A comparison of four similar policy cases in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and the European Commission reveals that successful public managers under certain conditions are able to construct and design productive mixtures of the three styles. They applied metagovernance, a process of designing and managing situationally optimal combinations of the three competing, and to an extent mutually undermining, governance styles. Their national cultures and politico-administrative traditions co-determined the governance mixture which would work in a given situation. The research reinforces the case already made by others, that governance doctrines cannot be transferred as ‘best practices’ from one nation to another without adaptation. The article suggests that the future does not lie in inventing new management and governance doctrines, but in investing in post-dogmatic public management.