Towards a Balanced Account of Autism Etiology

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Drash and Tudor describe six sets of reinforcement contingencies which may be present in the environments of some children eventually diagnosed with autism and...     

Factors influencing the acceptance of volunteer home-visiting support offered to families with new babies

This study investigated the characteristics of families with a new baby, screened to identify families with vulnerability, who did not take up the offer of home‐visiting support from a community volunteer. Using logistic regression, background factors were compared with those families receiving support. Those not receiving support, 59.1% of those referred, were more socially, educationally and economically disadvantaged, living in more disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Those who received support were more likely to have larger families, no local support network, or had family members with health or mental health problems. One in nine families referred had not been reached by the support service. In brief qualitative telephone interviews, mothers who did not take up the offer of support reported changing their mind, wanting to cope without help and in some cases feeling that the support offered did not meet their specific needs. Policy implications are suggested, in particular offering support to new parents thought to be vulnerable within a statutory framework, with sufficient infrastructure and resources to conduct outreach work. Research implications include making a concerted effort to find out about families who decide not to take part in service evaluation studies, or who drop out after initial agreement.     

What Happens When Nonprofits Use Quality Models for Self‐Assessment?

Two tools to assist organizational self‐assessment have recently become popular in the U.K. nonprofit sector, providing the opportunity for a comparative study of how such tools are used in practice. Because both spring from the quality movement in management, the study also provided a chance to observe how quality ideas evolve as they are applied in nonprofit contexts. The study found that self‐assessment can indeed enable constructive review processes in a wide range of contexts. However, when the models “work” it is in rather different ways than is suggested by the terms in which they are promoted.     

THE CONSEQUENCES OF QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS FOR SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY:

This article demonstrates how mesodomain analysis and multilevel longitudinal qualitative research contribute to theorizing about major issues, (e.g., macro/micro dichotomy). Mesodomain analysis examines the consequential, dialectical, and contingent intersections of history, structure, and social action. Results from a processual study of state educational policy show its transformations in movement from the national level through state levels down to local district and teacher practices. The results are analyzed in terms of the emergence of social organization from interaction, the extension of networks across space and time, and the linkage of levels into a larger framework.     

ON STUDENTIZING AND BLOCKING METHODS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE BOOTSTRAP WITH DEPENDENT DATA

Gōtze & Kūnsch (1990) announced that a certain version of the bootstrap percentile-t method, and the blocking method, can be used to improve on the normal approximation to the distribution of a Studentized statistic computed from dependent data. This paper shows that this result depends fundamentally on the method of Studentization. Indeed, if the percentile-t method is implemented naively, for dependent data, then it does not improve by an order of magnitude on the much simpler normal approximation despite all the computational effort that is required to implement it. On the other hand, if the variance estimator used for the percentile-t bootstrap is adjusted appropriately, then percentile-t can improve substantially on the normal approximation.     

Assigned and Felt Status in Relation to Observer-Coded and Participant-Reported Smiling

Three experiments examined the relation of smiling to experimentally assigned interpersonal status and, within status groups, to self-reported feelings of status/power. In two of the experiments, participants' reports of own and partner smiling were also gathered and examined in relation to assigned status. In Studies 1 and 2, assigned status had no impact on smiling. In Study 3, lower-status participants smiled more than their higher-status partners in one experimental task; in the other task, lower-status participants smiled more than their higher-status partners only when the higher-status person was instructed to be controlling. In none of the experiments was self-reported status/power significantly related to actual smiling. Participant-reported smiling revealed a status effect that was much stronger than that found for actual smiling. Women smiled more than men, and this effect could not be accounted for in terms of status roles nor self-reported feelings of status/power.