Preparing Parents for Adoption: An Agency Experience

To prepare for the complexities of family formation, 78 prospective adoptive parents participated in Pre-Adopt, a psychosocial educational orientation program offered by one private nonprofit agency. The five-session curriculum included an overview of adoption policies and procedures, discussion of the child placement process, exploration of couples' adoption concerns and expectations about child characteristics, information about adoption laws and birth-parent/child searches, and examination of anticipatory fantasies about birth parents. Program evaluation yielded statistically significant and clinically meaningful findings about changes in emotional readiness to adopt, parenting knowledge, and satisfaction with group participation, adoption policies and agency practices. Practice implications are considered.     

Farming Patterns,Rural Restructuring,and Poverty: A Comparative Regional Analysis1

Abstract This study examines the contentions of two recent perspectives on rural economic organization and their implications for poverty. Building from (1) agrarian political economy and (2) the rural restructuring literatures, we present a comparative regional analysis of how farming patterns and other aspects of economic organization differentially affect poverty in rural areas. Data are based on 2,349 nonmetropolitan U.S. counties for the 1970–1980 period. Nonhired labor-dependent, family-operated farming (smaller and larger family farming) has relatively similar cross-regional effects on rural poverty. The effects of industrialized farming are more spatially variant, suggesting that this type of farming is integrated into regional political economies in different ways than are simple commodity units. However, farming patterns have only a small effect on rural poverty relative to other factors, such as the local employment structure, characteristics of the population, and geographic location. The results of this study highlight the need to move beyond the farm sector to understand both the dynamics of this sector and the socioeconomic consequences of rural restructuring. More broadly, the study underscores the importance of testing general sociological relationships under different spatial (e.g., regional) contexts.     

THE EFFICACY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF MARITAL AND FAMILY THERAPY: A PERSPECTIVE FROM META-ANALYSIS

This article reviews the major findings from a multiproject meta-analysis of the effects of marital and family therapy (MFT). Across 163 randomized trials, MFT demonstrates moderate, statistically significant, and often clinically significant effects. No orientation is yet demonstrably superior to any other, nor is MFT superior to individual therapy. Cost effectiveness information is scant in these 163 studies, but supportive. Randomized experiments yield very different answers from nonrandomized experimental studies of the effects of MFT, calling into question whether we should mix the two in reviews. We have also found several new differences in the ways that marital therapy (MT) and family therapy (FT) studies are conducted, making them harder to compare. Finally, important questions still exist about whether any psychotherapy, including MFT, yet has sufficient information about how well research generalizes to everyday clinical practice.     

Estimating the Rayleigh distribution scale parameter from doubly censored samples—Some comments

In a recent paper in this journal, Lee, Kapadia and Brock (1980) developed maximum likelihood (ML) methods for estimating the scale parameter of the Rayleigh distribution from doubly censored samples. They reported convergence difficulties in attempting to solve numerically the nonlinear likelihood equation (LE). To mitigate these difficulties, they employed approximations to simplify the LE, but found that the solution of the resulting simplified equation can give rise to parameter estimates of erratic accuracy. We show that the use of approximations to simplify the LE is unnecessary. In fact, under suitable parametric transformation, the log-likelihood function is strictly concave, the ML estimate always exists, is unique and finite. Furthermore, the LE is easy to solve numerically. A numerical example is given to illustrate the computations involved.     

Construction and selection of tightened-normal-tightened sampling inspection scheme of type TNT-(n1, n2; c)

A table is presented for the construction and selection of tightened-normal-tightened sampling scheme of type TNT-(n1, n2;c). Efficiency of TNT-(n1, n2;c) scheme over conventional single and double sampling plans is discussed.     

A simultaneous-equations model of the relationship between public sector bargaining legislation and unionization

This paper estimates a simultaneous-equations model with public sector bargaining laws and union membership treated as jointly-determined variables. The extent of public sector unionization has a significant positive influence on the passage of prolabor bargaining legislation and bargaining legislation has strong, independent effects on the extent of public sector unionization. We gratefully acknowledge the research support provided by Minbo Kim and Parisun Chantonahom.     

中国林史学科的奠基人——纪念张钧成先生逝世一周年

张钧成先生是我国著名的林业历史学家.该文从林业史学科建设、林业史研究概况、中国古代林业通史、中国古代林业思想和传统文化、林业科技史和经济史、近现代林业史等研究领域,概述了张先生的学术成就,并回顾了张先生高尚的人生哲学和宝贵的治学经验.张先生的研究成果和治学经验,为我国林史学科的发展奠定了基础.     

Valuation of childhood risk reduction: the importance of age, risk preferences, and perspective.

This article explores two problems analysts face in determining how to estimate values for children's health and safety risk reductions. The first addresses the question: Do willingness‐to‐pay estimates for health risk changes differ across children and adults and, if so, how? To answer this question, the article first examines the potential effects of age and risk preferences on willingness to pay. A summary of the literature reporting empirical evidence of differences between willingness to pay for adult health and safety risk reductions and willingness to pay for health and safety risk reductions in children is also provided. The second dimension of the problem is a more fundamental issue: Whose perspective is relevant when valuing children's health effects—society's, children's, adults‐as‐children, or parents'? Each perspective is considered, followed ultimately by the conclusion that adopting a parental perspective through an intrahousehold allocation model seems closest to meeting the needs of the estimation problem at hand. A policy example in which the choice of perspective affects the outcome of a regulatory benefit‐cost analysis rounds out the article and emphasizes the importance of perspective.