Use of videotape feedback with severely disturbed adolescents.

A year of group therapy using videotape feedback with seriously disturbed adolescents offers evidence that such feedback facilitates the correction of these youngsters' distorted body images, low self-esteem, lack of capacity for self-observation, and poor peer relationships. The conscious use of videotape also played an integral part in the group process. It seemed to serve as a third therapist, with considerable amounts of resistance and transference focused on the equipment as it went through the process of being monster, toy and useful tool. An additional benefit was provided to the cotherapists in terms of supervision, and in teaching other staff the techniques of group therapy.     

Separable Preferences,Strategyproofness, and Decomposability

We consider strategyproof social choice functions defined over product domains. If preferences are strict orderings and separable, then strategyproof social choice functions must be decomposable provided that the domain of preferences is rich. We provide several characterization results in the case where preferences are separable only with respect to the elements of some partition of the set of components and these partitions vary across individuals. We characterize the libertarian social choice function and show that no superset of the tops separable domain admits strategyproof nondictatorial social choice functions.     

A Latent Class Binomial Logit Methodology for the Analysis of Paired Comparison Choice Data

A latent class model for identifying classes of subjects in paired comparison choice experiments is developed. The model simultaneously estimates a probabilistic classification of subjects and the logit models' coefficients relating characteristics of objects to choices for each respective group among two alternatives in paired comparison experiments. A modest Monte Carlo analysis of algorithm performance is presented. The proposed model is illustrated with empirical data from a consumer psychology experiment that examines the determinants of perceived consumer risk. The predictive validity of the method is assessed and compared to that of several other procedures. The sensitivity of the method to (randomly) eliminate comparisons, which is important in view of reducing respondent fatigue in the task, is investigated.     

RANKING ECONOMICS DEPARTMENTS IN EUROPE: A STATISTICAL APPROACH

We provide a ranking of economics departments in Europe and we discuss the methods used to obtain it. The JEL CD‐ROM serves as a database for a period covering ten years. Journals are ranked using a combination of expert opinions and citation data to produce a scale from 1 to 10. The publication output and habits of fifteen European countries plus California are then compared. Individuals with a contribution greater than a predetermined minimum level are regrouped into departments which are ranked according to their total scores. A standard deviation is provided to underline the uncertainty of this ranking. (JEL: I29, D63, C12, C14)     

Active participation in preventionist professional practices: a specific ergonomics training course

Currently, the different forms of corporate management methods (quality circles, lean manufacturing, etc.) are usually based on employee mobilisation. Very often, the goal of this type of approach is at best, to ensure that employees embrace corporate projects, or otherwise to impose changes on them without taking into account the real work and difficulties that they face daily. However, do these employee solicitation methods converge with participatory approaches as envisaged by ergonomists and more generally, preventionists? Based on the observation that the activity of institutional preventionists evolves with regulatory constraints and work related to the monitoring of indicators, the implementation and steering of the participatory approach within companies may be a major lever for prevention. After describing the foundations of a participatory approach, this paper will present a training experiment aimed at implementing and promoting employee participation in prevention efforts. The content of this training is then analysed with regard to the balance between methodology and the use of trainees' narratives. The results of the training session are presented from the point of view of the development prospects for pedagogical tools and the organisation of the training.     

Ergonomics at Volkswagen Brasil. Multidisciplinary work to equalize health, productivity and quality

Following the technological developments and presented to the multidisciplinary processes as automakers, Volkswagen Brazil, represented by its ergonomists, through this paper, shows the importance of ergonomic efficiency of management applied to various levels of life of a product, since its creation to its final implementation on production lines.The preventive work of ergonomists during the processes leading to production of a vehicle is accomplished through assessments on a simulated system called the Digital Factory. Since the initial stages to final product delivery there is a need for a multidisciplinary aligning the concepts of ergonomics, productivity and quality of product. Industrial Engineering, Process Engineering, ergonomists and workers are involved in the analysis made through the Workshop's showing the importance of discussion between the various users of the systems. The processes of series are also equipped with a set of certifications flow of job and planned audits on items that describe processes and applied ergonomics.     

Sequential legislative lobbying

In this paper, we analyze the equilibrium of a sequential game-theoretical model of lobbying, due to Groseclose and Snyder (Am Polit Sci Rev 90:303–315, 1996), describing a legislature that vote over two alternatives, where two opposing lobbies compete by bidding for legislators’ votes. In this model, the lobbyist moving first suffers from a second mover advantage and will make an offer to a panel of legislators only if it deters any credible counter-reaction from his opponent, i.e., if he anticipates to win the battle. This paper departs from the existing literature in assuming that legislators care about the consequence of their votes rather than their votes per se. Our main focus is on the calculation of the smallest budget that the lobby moving first needs to win the game and on the distribution of this budget across the legislators. We study the impact of the key parameters of the game on these two variables and show the connection of this problem with the combinatorics of sets and notions from cooperative game theory.     

Longitudinal Links Between Gambling Participation and Academic Performance in Youth: A Test of Four Models

Gambling participation and low academic performance are related during adolescence, but the causal mechanisms underlying this link are unclear. It is possible that gambling participation impairs academic performance. Alternatively, the link between gambling participation and low academic performance could be explained by common underlying risk factors such as impulsivity and socio-family adversity. It could also be explained by other current correlated problem behaviors such as substance use. The goal of the present study was to examine whether concurrent and longitudinal links between gambling participation and low academic performance exist from age 14 to age 17 years, net of common antecedent factors and current substance use. A convenience sample of 766 adolescents (50.6% males) from a longitudinal twin sample participated in the study. Analyses revealed significant, albeit modest, concurrent links at both ages between gambling participation and academic performance. There was also a longitudinal link between gambling participation at age 14 and academic performance at age 17, which persisted after controlling for age 12 impulsivity and socio-family adversity as well as current substance use. Gambling participation predicts a decrease in academic performance during adolescence, net of concurrent and antecedent personal and familial risk factors.     

Relations between Theory of Mind and Indirect and Physical Aggression in Kindergarten: Evidence of the Moderating Role of Prosocial Behaviors

The present study examined the association between theory of mind and indirect versus physical aggression, as well as the potential moderating role of prosocial behavior in this context. Participants were 399 twins and singletons drawn from two longitudinal studies in Canada. At five years of age, children completed a theory of mind task and a receptive vocabulary task. A year later, teachers evaluated children's indirect and physical aggression and prosocial behavior. Indirect aggression was significantly and positively associated with theory of mind skills, but only in children with average or low levels of prosocial behavior. Physical aggression was negatively associated with prosocial behavior but not with theory of mind. Each analysis included gender, receptive vocabulary, and the respective other subtype of aggression as control variables. These results did not differ between girls and boys or between twins and singletons. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Distribution of the random future life expectancies in log-bilinear mortality projection models

Projected life tables are obtained from forecasting methods and account for future improvements in longevity. Since the future path of mortality is unknown, working with projected life tables makes the survival probabilities stochastic. The resulting demographic indicators in turn become random variables. This paper aims to study the distribution of period and cohort life expectancies derived from projected life tables. To fix the ideas, we adopt here the standard Lee–Carter framework, where the future forces of mortality are decomposed in a log-bilinear way. Exact formulas are derived for period life expectancies, and approximations are proposed for cohort life expectancies. In the latter case, numerical illustrations based on Belgian population data show that the relative accuracy is remarkable.