Non‐aversive intervention in public childhood masturbation: A case study

Excess public masturbation by a 4‐year‐old girl was treated by non‐aversive treatment procedures applied in the clinic, home, and school environments. When masturbation occurred, competing non‐masturbatory behaviors were prompted and were discriminative stimuli for primary and social reinforcement. Parents and teachers administered these procedures, and the excessive public masturbatory behavior ceased after 4 months. At the 12‐month and 24‐month follow‐ups, the public masturbation remained absent, while home masturbation occurred infrequently.     

A century of international mortality trends: I

An attempt is made to summarize the chief generalizations that can be drawn from available evidence on world mortality developments during the last hundred years. Past and prospective trends are compared for three broad groups of populations or approximately those in the West, Eastern and Southern Europe, and Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Two major points of emphasis are that the usual methods of comparing regional changes can usefully be supplemented by other approaches, and that the mortality history of Western nations may prove a highly unsatisfactory guide to future trends elsewhere. The study is based on a nearly complete compilation of the national life tables on record.     

Econometric Analysis of Costing System Components in Rail Rate Regulation

In response to Congressional directive, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) has created a railroad costing system that includes as key components ratios designed to estimate variable costs associated with freight transportation. The estimated variability ratios are used to determine freight surcharges, jurisdictional threshold rates, and basic rail rates in administrative law and federal court proceedings. In this article we assess the quality and reliability of the estimated variability ratios and their components against standards from economic theory and statistical theory and practice. Our work includes reproduction of the naive ICC regressions, updated naive regressions for the latest data set, estimation based on more secure econometric foundations, and sensitivity analyses comparing alternative estimation procedures. Fundamental questions arise concerning the scientific and evidentiary standards that are required for econometric methodology in policy making and regulatory activities.     

Postdrinking sexual perceptions and behaviors toward another person: Alcohol expectancy set and gender differences

Based on research showing that alcohol expectancy and gender both play a role in sexual perceptions, we factorially crossed the apparent drinking status of yoked pairs consisting of a participant and a target person (a confederate posing as co‐participant). Alcohol expectancy interacted with gender in complex ways to influence sexual perceptions. We also found behavioral effects: men showed more erotic material to both male and female targets than women did. Men perceived the target as more sexually aroused by erotic material than women did. Men also showed more erotic material to drinking targets than to non‐drinking targets. Sexual perceptions and erotica‐showing behavior were correlated significantly and positively. We discuss these findings in terms of implications for postdrinking heterosexual encounters.     

Social Networks and Employment: Outcomes (Part 2)

In this second article, we continue to survey research that addresses work and employment from a social network perspective. Building on a companion article in this volume, which explores in‐depth the main network mechanisms presented in the literature, this article reviews studies addressing how social networks may shape key employment outcomes for both individuals and organizations. Network access and activation may shape individuals' selection into employment opportunities in addition to a variety of post‐hire outcomes including employee performance, promotion, rewards, job satisfaction, and termination. Organizations too may be influenced by their network position and by the activation of certain ties, ultimately affecting key outcomes such as firm performance, innovation, and learning measures. We conclude by discussing promising areas for future research on how social networks interact with employment.     

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.