Effects of information on college students' perceptions of antidepressant medication

The authors examined the impact of pharmaceutical companies' advertisements on college students' perceptions of depression and concomitant treatment with antidepressants among 13 male and 31 female undergraduates from a midwestern university. The students were randomly assigned to groups that read either pharmaceutical company advertisements or scientific information about depression and its treatment. The analysis revealed that 40% of the women in the advertisement condition as opposed to 1 woman (6%) in the scientific condition rated themselves as having mild, moderate, or severe depression on the Beck Depression Inventory, second edition. Women in the advertisement condition were significantly more likely to believe that depression required treatment with antidepressant medication and were more willing than women in the scientific condition to suggest antidepressant treatment to others.     

The competitive advantage: strategic thinking for physician leaders

Physician executives should manage their career strategies like a well-run company. Learn how to start thinking aout your career strategy.     

The Home Office and random allocation experiments

By examining the history of the random experiment in the Home Office in the United Kingdom, this article demonstrates that research is not an altogether rational process and that fashion, personality, and politics are at least as important as science and evidence when setting research and policy programs and determining methodologies. The article also shows that even in 1970, the research world was a village and that issues and fashions on one side of it could determine the outcome of decisions on the other side, even though they had no direct relevance. On a more optimistic note, the article shows how the fashions go in cycles so that if you could not get the research funded in the last cycle, just wait 20 years for the cycle to come around and try again.     

The impact of non-bottleneck variation in a manufacturing cell

Protective capacity is the 'extra' capacity placed at non-bottleneck resources to absorb random disruptions in planned levels of performance so that the bottleneck resource continues to be effectively utilized. A full factorial experiment with a simulation model was conducted to explore issues associated with the quantity and location of processing variance in a five-station manufacturing cell. The cell's performance was measured using both mean flow time ( MFT ) and bottleneck shiftiness ( SHIFT ) for 3 patterns of variance for the non-bottlenecks at 5 different levels of variation. In order to investigate the importance of the quantity of added capacity on the variation both a low level of protective capacity (10%) and a high level (50%) were considered. The results indicate that having the higher variation work centres close to the bottleneck provides reduced MFT and SHIFT . The performance measures improved at both the low and high setting of protective capacity.     

Use of a conceptual model of societal drivers of ecological change in South Florida: Implications of an ecosystem management scenario

Human-dominated ecosystems such as in South Florida's Everglades region are greatly affected by societal actions and choices, and efforts to restore degraded ecosystems must take into account the societal drivers of ecosystem change. A conceptual model of societal-ecological interactions within the region illustrates connections between major societal drivers, such as water management and land use, and ecological stressors, such as loss of habitat and nutrient loading. Using the conceptual model as an initial guide for discussion, examination of a restoration scenario for the region shows that social and economic effects from activities proposed in a restoration scenario will likely affect most sectors of South Florida. Political effects from changing land and water management practices likely will be significant, as will the physical effects of changing water structures and management practices. Conceptual models such as this can aid in the initial stages of ecosystem restoration discussions and can assist in planning for subsequent social science evaluations of specific societal impacts of actual proposed governmental restoration alternatives. In crafting restoration scenarios, local, regional, and national decision makers can use conceptual models such as this to help broaden the early considerations of how possible future changes in societal drivers, including management choices, will change ecological stressors that affect ecosystem health.     

The Determinants of Management Development: The Views of MBA Graduates

This article is derived from survey data obtained from a structured sample of 450 MBA graduates and is part of a wider programme of research investigating the current state of management development in Britain. The intention is to analyse the determinants of the amount, the methods and the impact of management development systems in UK organizations and to assess these findings in relation to a comparable analysis of HRD managers. Both the amount and the variety of management development methods are greater than has been previously reported and, for the HRD sample, the impact of this activity is broadly positive. While agreeing on the amount, MBA managers are less enthusiastic about the availability and effectiveness of management development they have experienced. Overall, the management development policy choices made by organizations are consistently the most influential in determining outcomes, and the implications for this are discussed.     

Monte carlo evidence on the robustness of conditional moment tests in tobit and probit models

This paper numerically examines the size robustness of various conditional moment tests in misspecified tobit and probit models. The misspecifications considered include the incorrect exclusion of regressors, ignored heteroskedasticity and false distributional assumptions. An important feature of the experimental design is that it is based on an existing empirical study and is more realistic than many simulation studies. The tests are seen to have mixed performance depending on both the original null hypothesis being tested and type of misspecification encountered.     

The Intervening Role of Relational Aggression between Psychological Control and Friendship Quality

This study investigated the associations among psychologically controlling parenting, relational aggression, friendship quality, and loneliness during adolescence. A model was proposed in which relational aggression plays an intervening role in the relations between both parental psychological control and friendship outcomes. In a sample comprised of middle adolescents and their parents, process analyses revealed that psychological control (indexed by parent and adolescent reports) positively predicted adolescents' self-reported relational aggression that, in turn, negatively predicted friendship quality and positively predicted loneliness. The model held for both mothers and fathers and was not moderated by adolescent gender. The discussion focuses on possible mechanisms explaining the relations among psychological control, relational aggression, and friendship outcomes.