Differential parenting and children's social understanding

In the current study, a curvilinear association was examined between differential parenting and children's social understanding as measured using standardized assessments and behavioral observations. Social understanding was comprised of theory‐of‐mind and behavior indicating understanding of others’ minds (i.e., cognitive sensitivity and internal state talk and reasoning during sibling interactions). Data came from a community sample of 372 children (51.6% males; M age = 5.57, SD = 0.77), their younger siblings (M age = 3.14, SD = 0.27), and their mothers who were observed in their homes. We hypothesized that in families with higher levels of differential parenting, both favored and disfavored older siblings would display poorer social understanding, but that disfavored children would be more negatively impacted. Results from a hierarchical regression analysis indicated an inverse linear effect, rather than a curvilinear relationship, between being favored by mother and siblings’ social understanding. Specifically, disfavored older children showed higher levels of social understanding when interacting with their favored younger sibling. This relationship remained significant after controlling for variables such as age, SES, and language. Findings suggest that differential parenting plays a role in children's ability to understand others.     

Patterns of consent: evidence from a general household survey

Summary.  We analyse patterns of consent and consent bias in the context of a large general household survey, the 'Improving survey measurement of income and employment' survey, also addressing issues that arise when there are multiple consent questions. A multivariate probit regression model for four binary outcomes with two incidental truncations is used. We show that there are biases in consent to data linkage with benefit and tax credit administrative records that are held by the Department for Work and Pensions, and with wage and employment data held by employers. There are also biases in respondents' willingness and ability to supply their national insurance number. The biases differ according to the question that is considered. We also show that modelling questions on consent independently rather than jointly may lead to misleading inferences about consent bias. A positive correlation between unobservable individual factors affecting consent to Department for Work and Pensions record linkage and consent to employer record linkage is suggestive of a latent individual consent propensity.     

A Systems-Developmental Approach to Counselling Couples with Sexual Problems: Part II — Strategies for Intervention

We present a two-part model for the understanding and treatment of long-standing sexual problems, especially those involving desire discrepancy between partners. In Part I, we described a theoretical model for understanding the development of sexual problems in terms of the normal developmental patterns of relationships in current Western culture and the balances and imbalances that develop as a consequence of differences in styles of loving. In this Part II, we examine and describe the implications of the theoretical model for therapeutic intervention.     

Imagined communities, contested watersheds: Challenges to integrated water resources management in agricultural areas

Integrated water resources management is one of the major bottom-up alternatives that emerged during the 1980s in North America as part of the trend towards more holistic and participatory styles of environmental governance. It aims to protect surface and groundwater resources by focusing on the integrated and collaborative management of land and water resources and interests on a watershed basis. In this paper, we draw on the policy network perspective on governance to shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of watershed-based processes of collaboration and integration for water quality protection in agricultural areas. The policy network perspective focuses on the interaction of actors, institutions and ideas within and among policy sectors to capture the intricacies of the policy process in increasingly complex and fragmented societies. Empirically, this study is based on the analysis of agro-environmental strategies for water quality protection in the Province of Ontario over the last 15 years. The contamination of a rural municipal well in Ontario in 2000, with its tragic consequences, translated into an ongoing pluralistic debate and strong attempts to fundamentally change the provincial policy style for addressing drinking water threats, especially agricultural pollution. Based on our analysis, we suggest that meaningful scales for collaboration and integration of land and water resources and interests at the local level, from the point of view of Ontario's agricultural policy network, do not currently include the watershed. We conclude that, instead of forcing watershed-based governance structures, the exploration and examination of more creative and flexible ways of linking watershed imperatives to existing socially and politically meaningful scales in agricultural areas of Ontario and elsewhere is warranted.     

Forecasting functional time series

We propose forecasting functional time series using weighted functional principal component regression and weighted functional partial least squares regression. These approaches allow for smooth functions, assign higher weights to more recent data, and provide a modeling scheme that is easily adapted to allow for constraints and other information. We illustrate our approaches using age-specific French female mortality rates from 1816 to 2006 and age-specific Australian fertility rates from 1921 to 2006, and show that these weighted methods improve forecast accuracy in comparison to their unweighted counterparts. We also propose two new bootstrap methods to construct prediction intervals, and evaluate and compare their empirical coverage probabilities.