Quantifying the Distribution of Inhalation Exposure in Human Populations: 2. Distributions of Time Spent by Adults, Adolescents, and Children at Home, at Work, and at School

Using distributions of time spent at various ventilation levels, ranges of inhalation exposure in the population can be established. Distributions of exposure time were determined using results of a study by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) which focused on time spent by humans participating in various activities and the locations where the activities occurred. The daily at-home activities from the CARB study were assigned to one of three ventilation levels, generating aggregate time periods. Distinct age and gender populations were identified, and distributions for aggregate time were established for these populations at each of the ventilation levels. In addition to aggregate time spent at home, distributions for various ages and genders were established for aggregate time spent at school and work. By combining distributions of aggregate time with corresponding ventilation rates, the distribution of inhalation rates can be established for at home, at work, and at school exposures.     

Child-Oriented Family Therapy Outcome Research: Comparisons Between Brief Family Therapy and an Alternative Treatment

This paper is concerned with outcome research in child-oriented family therapy. Nine investigations comparing brief family therapy with an alternative treatment were critically reviewed. All of the studies were vulnerable to criticisms on design and methodological grounds. Problem areas included: specification of therapeutic techniques, confounding of therapeutic variables, equivalence of therapist factors, measurement of outcome, adequacy of measures and appropriate use of control groups. All studies concluded that childhood problems could be treated successfully with brief family therapy techniques. However, in the light of the design problems listed above, these conclusions should be treated tentatively.     

Alcohol advertising in college newspapers: a 7-year follow-up

The authors report on the frequency and nature of alcohol advertisements in a representative sample of college newspapers from 1984/85 and compare these with results of a similar study conducted 7 years earlier, in 1977/78. On average, nearly 24 column inches of space per issue were devoted to national alcohol advertisements in 1984/85. This represents a significant decrease from an earlier period. The space devoted to national alcohol advertisements, however, still far exceeded that for comparison products (books, soft drinks). Local alcohol advertisements averaged 20 column inches per issue and were somewhat more frequent than in the previous study. The content of the advertisements differed markedly from the messages presented 7 years earlier. Although national alcohol advertisements in 1977/78 frequently ridiculed education and study, none did so in 1984/85, when appeals were to taste and product quality instead. Fantasy themes also were relatively common. Very few national alcohol advertisements featured athletes or group drinking. Sponsorship of campus activities by the alcohol industry, however, had increased since the earlier study. In contrast to national advertisements, many local advertisements consisted of inducements to drink through special offers and happy hours. Some encouraged irresponsible and heavy drinking. Interestingly, alcohol advertisements were just as frequent in papers from states with higher minimum drinking ages and were more frequent in papers from campuses with higher proportions of women students.     

THE ELDERLY VICTIM OF HOMICIDE:

This study attempts to resolve some of the disparity between lifestyle/routine activities theory and empirical findings concerning the elderly victim of homicide. Analysis of Canadian data leads to the conclusion that the elderly are disproportionately victims of theft-based homicide, a finding not consistent with the routine activity approach. A reformulation of the theory resolves the theory/data gap.     

Treatment of the mother in the incest family: The beginning phase

This paper discusses significant counter-transference issues and presents a conceptual framework for ordering the strategies in treating the mother in the incest family. The development of empathy is suggested as the primary engagement tool, and obstacles to its development are analyzed.The major theoretical construct that is employed in formulating the treatment approach is that of the traumagenic dynamics model presented by Finkelhor and Browne (1985). The manner in which this framework can be employed in assessment and prioritizing treatment goals is outlined. Specific approaches for the beginning phase of work with the mother are then described.     

An Asymptotic Analysis of the Logrank Test

Asymptotic expansions for the null distribution of the logrank statistic and its distribution under local proportional hazards alternatives are developed in the case of iid observations. The results, which are derived from the work of Gu (1992) and Taniguchi (1992), are easy to interpret, and provide some theoretical justification for many behavioral characteristics of the logrank test that have been previously observed in simulation studies. We focus primarily upon (i) the inadequacy of the usual normal approximation under treatment group imbalance; and, (ii) the effects of treatment group imbalance on power and sample size calculations. A simple transformation of the logrank statistic is also derived based on results in Konishi (1991) and is found to substantially improve the standard normal approximation to its distribution under the null hypothesis of no survival difference when there is treatment group imbalance. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A response to M. Stone: 'How not to measure the efficiency of public services (and how one might)'

Summary.  This is a response to Stone's criticisms of the Spottiswoode report to the UK Treasury which was responding to the Treasury's request for improved methods to evaluate the efficiency and productivity of the 43 police districts in England and Wales. The Spottiswoode report recommended uses of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), which Stone critiqued en route to proposing an alternative approach. Here we note some of the most serious errors in his criticism and inaccurate portrayals of DEA and SFA. Most of our attention is devoted to DEA, and to Stone's recommended alternative approach without much attention to SFA, partly because of his abbreviated discussion of the latter. In our response we attempt to be constructive as well as critical by showing how Stone's proposed approach can be joined to DEA to expand his proposal beyond limitations in his formulations.