A comment on the homosexual role

Following deep relaxation, 100 college females listened to erotic guided imagery consisting of (1) sexual invitation, (2) coital contact, and (3) reflection sequences, and responded after each sequence to three measures of subjective sexual arousal and one measure of 10 discrete emotions. The sexual invitation and coital contact sequences contained 24 interspersed cues that portrayed either a casual or a committed interpersonal context. Subjects were partitioned at their respective medians on measures of sex guilt and sex history with loved and with unloved partners. Three mixed 2 (casual, committed) × 2 (median split) × 3 (sequences) MANOVAs analyzed the 13 dependent variables. The hypothesized importance of a committed context on females' subjective sexual arousal and emotional reactions received almost no support. Imagining casual sex may, however, produce more guilty emotion than imagining committed sex. As hypothesized, higher sex guilt was associated with attenuated sexual arousal and reduced enjoyment and increased frequencies and/or intensities of guilt, shame, distress, fear, surprise, disgust, anger, and contempt in response to the erotic guided imagery. Women with a history of more involved sex experience reacted to the guided imagery with less frequent and/or intense surprise, fear, guilt, shame, disgust, and contempt than less sexually experienced women. The discussion included designs of several additional studies using the promising technique of guided imagery to answer experimentally remaining questions about the place of casual sex in females' erotic response and in personalities disposed to sex guilt.     

An Influence Function Approach to Describing the Skewness of a Distribution

Skewness, like kurtosis, is a qualitative property of a distribution. A comparison of several measures of skewness of univariate distributions is carried out. Hampel's influence function is used to clarify the differences and similarities among these measures. A general concept of skewness as a location- and scale-free deformation of the probability mass of a symmetric distribution emerges. Positive skewness can be thought of as resulting from movement of mass at the right of the median from the center to the right tail of the distribution together with movement of mass at the left of the median from the left tail to the center of the distribution.     

Maximum likelihood estimation of treatment effects for samples subject to cregression to the mean

A general maximum likelihood approach for estimating the effects of treatments applied to samples subject to regression to the mean is outlined. Models may be specified in terms of three factors: whether the treatment effect is multiplicative or additive, whether the treatment group is above or below some truncation point and the type of sample involved. The way in which solutions may be obtained for all 16 models so defined is described.     

Confidence intervals on the total variance in an unbalanced two-fold nested classification with equal subsampling

A problem of interest in a variance component analysis is the construction of a confidence interval on the variance of a single observation. This article considers an unbalanced two-fold nested classification with equal subsampling and compares two methods for constructing this interval . Computer simulations indicate that one of these methods in general will provide an interval that has an achieved confidence coefficient at least as great as the stated value.     

Preparation for practice--developing and assessing DipSW students' pre-placement competence 1

Social work enters the twenty-first century in very different circumstances to those which have prevailed through the major period of its development. We are now in an era that has been characterised as that of 'post-welfarism'. Using recent theories that focus on the ideological and structural aspects of the social changes within which contemporary social work is developing, this article examines the impact and implications of such changes for social work education. Some conclusions are drawn for a critical approach to thinking about the content and process of professional education.     

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.