Normal life crises and insanity—mental illness contextualised

According to a 2005 survey, the people of Rosengård, a culturally heterogeneous borough of Malmö, Sweden, utilise considerably less mental health services in relation to their estimated needs than the rest of the city's population. A study based on interviews with people living or working in the area revealed several possible reasons. Most important was their perception of what constitutes mental illness. If the cause of one's disturbed mental state is viewed as a normal life crises rather than an illness, one does not seek medical treatment. The aim of this article is to illustrate how under-utilisation of mental health services by an immigrant population can be explained by their different perceptions of what constitutes mental illness. Interventions should add concerns regarding a client's socio-economic and psychosocial needs, rather than solely follow a medical model.     

Inequality Regimes and Men's Positions in Social Work

The aim of this article is to contribute to the exploration of men's positions in professions numerically dominated by women through an in depth analysis of the gendering practices in groups of social workers. The empirical material consists of interviews with three work groups in Sweden, each with one man and several women as members. The analysis focuses upon gendering practices in the interview setting. It shows how the positions occupied by the men in the sample confirm or undermine constructions of masculinity as dominance. Furthermore, it is argued that to fully understand men's positions in these groups the analysis needs take other forms of inequality into account in addition to gender. It is shown that in the empirical cases under scrutiny men's positions are shaped by regimes of inequality where age and gender relations, as well as notions of professional experience, are interconnected.     

An exploration of kaupapa Maori research,its principles,processes and applications

This article discusses whether the focus group method can be employed with troubled groups and for the discussion of high‐involvement topics. It analyses focus groups' discourse of high‐involvement topics, such as ‘the body’, ‘relationships’, and ‘sexuality’, conducted with female adolescents aged 15–20 years at a detention home. Contrary to the traditional belief that the focus group method is designed for low‐involvement topics and mainstream groups, our analyses of the discursive devices employed suggest that the method can indeed be used for high‐involvement topics. We also argue that other methods would not have given us ‘deeper’ insights and that the focus group method can be seen as a less intrusive method to be used in this setting.     

LEADING WITH(OUT) SACRIFICE? A PUBLIC‐GOODS EXPERIMENT WITH A PRIVILEGED PLAYER

We analyze two team settings in which one member in a team has stronger incentives to contribute than the others. If contributions constitute a sacrifice for the strong player, the other team members are more inclined to cooperate than if contributions are strictly dominant for the strong player. (JEL C91, C92, H40, H41)     

Brother correlations in earnings in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden compared to the United States

The correlation in economic status among siblings is a useful “omnibus measure” of the overall impact of family and community factors on adult economic status. In this study we compare brother correlations in long-run (permanent) earnings between the United States, on one hand, and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) on the other. Our base case results, based on very similar sample criteria and definitions for all countries, show that this correlation is above 0.40 in the United States and in the range 0.14–0.26 in the Nordic countries. Even though these results turn out to be somewhat sensitive to some assumptions that have to be made, we conclude that the family and community factors are more important determinants of long-run earnings in the United States than in the Nordic countries. Received: 27 July 2000/Accepted: 7 March 2001 All correspondence to: Anders Bj?rklund. Comments from two referees, conference participants at ESPE2000 and the Canadian Employment Research Forum, seminar participants in Aarhus, Uppsala, Bonn, and Stockholm are gratefully acknowledged. We thank NOS-S for financial support. The Swedish data collection was also supported by HSFR and SFR. The Finnish data were obtained with support from the Yrj? Jahnsson Foundation. We thank Tom Erik Aab? for preparing the Norwegian data, and Esben Agerbo for computational assistance with the Danish data. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

Principal components regression estimator and a test for the restrictions

In this article, we introduce restricted principal components regression (RPCR) estimator by combining the approaches followed in obtaining the restricted least squares estimator and the principal components regression estimator. The performance of the RPCR estimator with respect to the matrix and the generalized mean square error are examined. We also suggest a testing procedure for linear restrictions in principal components regression by using singly and doubly non-central F distribution.     

Comparisons of the Unbiased Ridge Estimation to the Other Estimations

In this article, we employ the method of empirical likelihood to construct confidence intervals of conditional density for a left-truncation model. It is proved that the empirical likelihood ratio admits a limiting chi-square distribution with one degree of freedom when the lifetime observations with multivariate covariates form a stationary α-mixing sequence.     

One-and two-sample sign tests for ranked set sample selective designs

Statistical inference based on a ranked set sample depends very much on the location of the quantified observations. A selective design which determines the location of the quantified observations in a ranked set sample is introduced. The paper investigates the effects of selective designs on one and two sample sign test statistics. The Pitman efficiencies of one- and two sample sign tests are calculated for selective designs and compared with ranked set samples of the same size. If the design quantifies observations at the center points, then the proposed procedure is superior to a ranked set sample of the same size in the sense of Pitman efficiency. Some practical problems are addressed for the two-sample sign test.