Pragmatic decisions in the evaluation of consumer satisfaction with mental health treatment

This article examines pragmatic choices which must be made in conducting consumer satisfaction assessment of mental health treatment. It is argued that choices involving sample, format, and procedure for examining satisfaction may influence the results of such research, and must be considered when creating or evaluating these efforts. These choices are examined in detail.     

Evaluating employee assistance programs. A review of methods, outcomes, and future directions

Renewed interest in assisting troubled employees has led to an upsurge in the development of employee assistance programs, coupled with demands for demonstrable effectiveness. This review examines the nature and scope of these programs, their administrative and methodological context, and the types and outcomes of evaluation studies conducted thus far. Proposals for improving future investigations through a number of different approaches and strategies are then made.     

论圣安波罗修的童贞观念

圣安波罗修之童贞观念的宗教意义在于它塑造出一种中世纪信仰的终极幻象；其心理特质在于践履童贞是中世纪女性之自由意志的选择；其社会效应在于它使中世纪女性生活乃至整个社会的风尚趋向于开放。     

Violence,murder, and fallen women: prostitution in the works of Vsevolod Garshin

This article investigates the theme of prostitution in two stories by the Russian writer Vsevolod Garshin (1855–88). Like many authors of the nineteenth century, Garshin utilizes the symbolic figure of the prostitute to question social and medical beliefs about commercial sex. Focusing on Garshin’s “Proisshestvie” (“An Occurrence”, 1878) and “Nadezhda Nikolaevna” (1885), the article traces the use of melodrama and violence in the depiction of prostitution. Particular attention is paid to Garshin’s use of St. Petersburg to add heightened meaning to the fallen woman’s plight. Connected through the Petersburg myth and the character of Nadezhda Nikolaevna, the stories complicate the traditional redemption plot associated with prostitutes by focusing on the inner life of the fallen woman and her impact on the male characters that she encounters.     

Nonlinear and non-gaussian state estimation: A quasi-optimal estimator

The rejection sampling filter and smoother, proposed by Tanizaki (1996, 1999), Tanizaki and Mariano (1998) and Hiirzeler and Kiinsch (1998), take a lot of time computationally. The Markov chain Monte Carlo smoother, developed by Carlin, Poison and StofFer (1992), Carter and Kohn (1994, 1996) and Geweke and Tanizaki (1999a, 1999b), does not show a good performance depending on noniinearity and nonnormality of the system in the sense of the root mean square error criterion, which reason comes from slow convergence of the Gibbs sampler. Taking into account these problems, we propose the nonlinear and non-Gaussian filter and smoother which have much less computational burden and give us relatively better state estimates, although the proposed estimator does not yield the optimal state estimates in the sense of the minimum mean square error. The proposed filter and smoother are called the quasi-optimal filter and quasi-optimal smoother in this paper. Finally, through some Monte Carlo studies, the quasi-optimal filter and smoother are compared with the rejection sampling procedure and the Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure.     

Hugh George Brennan: Glasgow University’s First Lecturer in Russian

To date little has been known, and less written, about the life of Hugh George Brennan, Glasgow University's first lecturer in Russian. The uncovering of previously unused Russian and British sources throwing fresh light on his life, intellectual development and occupations has made possible a fuller assessment of a significant figure in Glasgow's contribution to Slavonic Studies. Brennan lived and taught in Russia for 20 years. The resulting intense and unusually intimate experience of Russian life probably explains unconventional aspects of his Glasgow appointment. Brennan was an undoubted educational and social success in Russia. Events in the shape of the February Revolution of 1917 forced him to return to Britain. Glasgow's timely offer of a new position was the start of a very different life. This aspect of Brennan's career is reviewed mainly through his commitment to extensive public activities.     

Editorial—On the role of the humanities in urban ecology: The case of St. Petersburg

Urban ecology is increasingly interdisciplinary, with biophysical and social scientists joining forces to study how human and built environments and processes interact with non-human nature. Humanistic disciplines that study high culture and intellectual currents also bear upon urban ecology, since cities are not simply aggregates of human and non-human factors but seats of civilization and loci of concentrated creative energy. The Russian city of St. Petersburg, which Dostoevsky called the most abstract and intentional city in the world, offers an example of the way individual acts of intellectual and artistic creation affect the energy balance of a city and its interaction with ecological forces. Such concentrated creative energy may be a key to making cities sustainable, and it should not remain outside the calculus of urban ecology.     

Evaluating the impact of utility company billing plans on residential energy consumption

Many utility companies offer their customers the choice of participation in an average payment plan, which enables them to pay a fixed sum for their utility bill each month (with final settlement at the end of the billing year), instead of the conventional “pay as you go” billing procedure. Because customers on average payment plans are protected from paying large bills during peak energy-use seasons and because the information about monthly energy use and its cost is perhaps less salient to them, it was hypothesized that customers on the average payment plan would use more electricity than customers not on the plan. Using a nonequivalent control group design, the electricity consumption of a selection of customers of two utility companies (Ns = 475 and 74) was examined. The results showed that there was no evidence to support the hypothesis. Since the logic of hypothesis testing does not permit the ready acceptance of the null hypothesis, several procedural, methodological, and statistical points were made to buttress the conclusion that the average payment plans had no effect on electricity consumption.     

忏悔作为自传——论奥古斯丁《忏悔录》的自传特征

从奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》起,“忏悔”日益成为西方自传的一个重要主题。《忏悔录》以“忏悔”构建全篇,体现了强烈的基督教观念。奥古斯丁对自己内心的详尽的体察标志着西方人自我认识的发展;对个人隐秘行为和隐秘思想的揭示,使追求自我的真相,展露自己生活的私密成为西方忏悔意识较强的自传的重要内涵。在自传形式上,奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》蕴含了西方的历史自传和哲学自传的萌芽,对后世宗教自传和世俗自传都产生了深刻的影响。     

The behavior of the battered child: A behavioral deficiency syndrome resulting from developmental interferences and reactive learning

Behavioral observation of battered children reveals a generalized syndrome consisting of apathy, social isolation, emotional constriction, aggression, and intellectual, motor and language retardation. This syndrome is considered to be a ‘behavioral deficiency syndrome.’ Developmental interference imposed by abusive parents upon the child, and subsequent reactive learning by the child are discussed as etiological factors in the development of this syndrome. Implication of these etiological factors for therapy of the abusive family are also discussed.