Therapy with lesbian and gay parents and their children

This article explores some of the social and clinical issues facing the many different kinds of gay and lesbian families that are becoming increasingly visible in the United States. Research findings are discussed that dispel popularly held myths and stereotypes concerning these families, gays and lesbians as parents, and their children. Clinical vignettes are presented to illustrate issues often encountered in the consulting room, some unique to gay and lesbian families and some common to all families.     

Design of a language stimulation program for children suffering abuse

This article proposes an intervention program, designed specifically for children in residential care who suffer institutionalized abuse, aimed at stimulating their use of language. The objective of the intervention procedure is to improve children's linguistic competence and their socio-affective development, as well as to enable parents to communicate and interact effectively with their children. Several studies have focused on the difficulties children suffering from abuse have with verbal expression and other areas of development. The research stresses the need to set up intervention programs that can improve the linguistic and social competence of children suffering from abuse. With such children, there is a fundamental need to develop a competence that will encourage their adaptive social skills, which are basic skills for interacting socially and which encourage the pragmatic language function, a skill needed for relating to adults and solving interpersonal problems.     

L’art des bergers et les moutons qualifiés Les figures sociales en jeu sur le marché agricole

On the basis of meticulous chronicles kept about the making of mutton in the Barèges valley in the French Pyrenees, this sociological study of markets examines changes in the complex relations formed between economic interests and local identities in farming. In the 1970s, pressure to standardize mutton for sale on a national market tended to efface the specific characteristics of local produce from this area in particular. In the 1980s however, producers tried to resist in various ways — direct sales in 1984, a brand name strategy in 1987 — against this loss of specificity in an undifferentiated marketplace. In 1995, a label of origin (AOC) was drawn up that not only singled out and stabilized local produce but also redefined groups of actors, ranging from producers who now focus on quality produce to consumers who increasingly look like gourmets searching for “originality”. Furthermore, this certification process led to closely linking the production and sale of produce to the promotion of a redefined local identity, which we might have imagined as being threatened owing to the expansion of business rationales.     

The inclusion of minority groups in clinical trials: problems of under representation and under reporting of data

Objective: To evaluate the representation of minority groups in randomized control trials (RCTs), and the frequency with which this information is reported. Study Design: Reviewers collected data on the racial/ethnic composition of study samples from all RCTs published in six leading medical journals in 1999. Results: Of the 280 RCTs, most (204, 71.3%) provided no information on the race/ethnicity of participants. Of the 89 U.S.-based RCTs, 50 (56.1%) reported their minority distribution. Relative to other trials, those funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) (n = 52) were more likely to report race/ethnicity data (55.8% vs. 23.7%; x2 = 20.9, p <_0.001) and to include nonwhite participants (13.5 % vs. 12.5%; x2=22.7, p<_0.001). Conclusion: Minority groups are currently under-represented in clinical trials. Information on the race and ethnicity of clinical trial participants is currently underreported in six leading medical journals. Reporting of minority group information was significantly better only in NIH funded trials, which also were more likely to include nonwhite participants. This suggests that mandatory reporting policies may have a positive effect on both reporting and representation.     

The reasonable man — a social choice approach

Most legal systems rely heavily on the notion of the reasonable man. Here an attempt is made to analyze the reasonable man in a social choice model. The main argument is that if the reasonable man satisfies a certain set of axioms, he essentially coincides with one of the individuals, both in terms of his preferences and in terms of his expectations.     

The Importance of Early Childhood Poverty

Most poor children achieve less, exhibit more problem behaviors and are less healthy than children reared in more affluent families. We look beyond correlations such as these to a recent set of studies that attempt to assess the causal impact of childhood poverty on adult well-being. We pay particular attention to the potentially harmful effects of poverty early in childhood on adult labor market success (as measured by earnings), but also show results for other outcomes, including out-of-wedlock childbearing, criminal arrests and health status. Evidence suggests that early poverty has substantial detrimental effects on adult earnings and work hours, but on neither general adult health nor such behavioral outcomes as out-of-wedlock childbearing and arrests. We discuss implications for indicators tracking child well-being as well as policies designed to promote the well-being of children.     

Stochastic Algorithms,Symmetric Markov Perfect Equilibrium,and the ‘curse’ of Dimensionality

This paper introduces a stochastic algorithm for computing symmetric Markov perfect equilibria. The algorithm computes equilibrium policy and value functions, and generates a transition kernel for the (stochastic) evolution of the state of the system. It has two features that together imply that it need not be subject to the curse of dimensionality. First, the integral that determines continuation values is never calculated; rather it is approximated by a simple average of returns from past outcomes of the algorithm, an approximation whose computational burden is not tied to the dimension of the state space. Second, iterations of the algorithm update value and policy functions at a single (rather than at all possible) points in the state space. Random draws from a distribution set by the updated policies determine the location of the next iteration's updates. This selection only repeatedly hits the recurrent class of points, a subset whose cardinality is not directly tied to that of the state space. Numerical results for industrial organization problems show that our algorithm can increase speed and decrease memory requirements by several orders of magnitude.