Processes of adjustment in organized out-of-school activities: opportunities and risks

Participation in organized out-of-school activities leads to long-term psychosocial and educational benefits for young people. Now we're learning which features of these activities best support individual children.     

Lorenz non-consistent welfare and inequality measurement

Typical welfare and inequality measures are required to be Lorenz consistent which guarantees that inequality decreases and welfare increases as a result of a progressive transfer. We explore the implications for welfare and inequality measurement of substituting the weaker absolute differentials and deprivation quasi-orderings for the Lorenz quasi-ordering. Restricting attention to distributions of equal means, we show that the utilitarian model – the so-called expected utility model in the theory of risk – does not permit one to make a distinction between the views embedded in the differentials, deprivation and Lorenz quasi-orderings. In contrast it is possible within the dual model of M. Yaari (Econometrica 55 (1987), 99–115) to derive the restrictions to be placed on the weighting function which guarantee that the corresponding welfare orderings are consistent with the differentials and deprivation quasi-orderings respectively. Finally we drop the equal mean condition and indicate the implications of our approach for the absolute ethical inequality indices.     

Simulation for the complex Bingham distribution

The complex Bingham distribution is relevant for the shape analysis of landmark data in two dimensions. In this paper it is shown that the problem of simulating from this distribution reduces to simulation from a truncated multivariate exponential distribution. Several simulation methods are described and their efficiencies are compared.     

Nonverbal cues employed in discriminating between disabled persons and actors

Undergraduate subjects were seen to accurately discriminate between simulating actors and genuinely disabled males confined to wheelchairs. Judgments were based on skill in manipulating the wheelchair, poorer muscular development of the disabled, and on appearance of clothing. Implications for research on the disabled employing actors was discussed.This study was supported by a grant from the York University Faculty of Arts awarded to the first two authors. The project was performed as the third author's Honours thesis. The authors wish to thank all participants for their cooperation and assistance in making this research possible. The authors also wish to thank Gail Kenyon, Coordinator of the Centre for Handicapped Students who helped recruit participants for the videotaping and to Lucie Cantrell, Executive Officer of the York University Counselling and Development Centre who arranged for the use of the Centre's facilities and equipment.     

Ethnicity and Organization: Jewish Communities in Eastern Europe and the United States*

In their most essential respects, the immigrant communities of American Jews (and the total American Jewish community) were a direct continuation of those which appeared in East Europe, prior to 1914. Using archives, government reports, and texts (primary and secondary) this paper reconstructs the sociohistorical environment in which they appeared. The extensive communal organization which characterized both settings, actually served the interests of societal demands. These institutions provided needed (often emergency) services to the community, but they also supported the out-group's status, as determined by the larger society. A clear picture emerges of the impact on the collective Jewish, and individual Jew's, adaptation to society within a highly developed and organized community.