The COVID‐19 Pandemic and Families in Japan

This paper, which is authored by members of the Japanese Association of Family Therapy (JAFT), describes the COVID‐19 pandemic in Japan from a family systems perspective. The authors are active members of JAFT and include current and past presidents and officers. We describe the course of the pandemic and the ways in which government policies to mitigate the pandemic have affected Japanese families. Challenges that affect Japanese families include the inability to participate in family and social rituals, prescribed gender roles that specifically affect women, high suicide rates, and prejudice against those who are at risk of spreading the infection. The need to shelter in place has also forced family homes to function as a workplace for parents, classrooms for children, and day care services for frail elders, which has resulted in psychological distress among individuals and conflicts among families. We discuss ways that therapists have worked with Japanese families using online therapy.     

The racialized patterns of police violence: The critical importance of research as praxis

The tragic killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police resulted in hundreds of thousands of protestors marching in the streets demanding change. The call for change criticized the killing of Blacks by law enforcement and challenged White supremacy as an institution of social control and racial violence. A key component of the marches and protests was a message to the residents of the United States: “Black Lives Matter.” As society grapples with a reckoning, researchers studying police violence for the past 6 decades have been empirically and theoretically debating the reasons why use of force by law enforcement continues to have a higher proportion of Black and Brown victims compared to Whites. Although the research on fatal police killings was studied by only a small number of individuals prior to 2014, after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri the research in different areas of the country increased rapidly as did the forms of analysis and research disciplines making their own contributions. The Washington Post and Guardian news agencies established that deaths at the hands of the police were occurring for at least 900 to 1100 individual deaths per year for which firearms resulted in the greatest cause of death. As US government agencies failed to produce a national data source on police involved killings, the media took a leading role in providing greater national understanding. The authors examine what role academic researchers contribute to the discussion for solutions, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds. As protestors march, lawyers sue and defend, and politicians create new forms of legislation, researchers need to play a more important role initiating critical studies, making sense of the data, and providing a theoretical framework for which police violence can be understood. This article will provide an overview of the literature on racialized police violence, point out key patterns involving racial and ethnic disparities, and emphasize how researchers can play a more important role in advocating for change.     

Community care for adults with severe mental disorders in rural China: A case study

In China, family care is the dominant form of care for people with mental disorders. Since 2004, the government has been developing a community‐care model that places more responsibility on community organisations and the local governments at the provincial, municipal and county levels for the provision of formal care. As a large number of people with severe mental disorders live in rural China, this case study was conducted in a rural county in order to examine the development of community care. It was found that, although family care remains dominant, families’ need for formal care is increasing. Community services have improved, but their development is constrained by several contextual and micro factors. In this study, it is argued that the community‐care model introduces a process of reconfiguration of the relative responsibility for care among the family, social organisations and the government, but progress depends on further administrative and fiscal reforms.     

现代激进主义文化思潮中的家庭重建——以《女铎》小说中的婚姻家庭观为视角

《女铎》是创刊于1912年,停刊于1951年的一份较有影响的妇女刊物。除了宣扬基督教义,还致力于提高妇女道德及普及新知识。《女铎》发表的小说多展示普通人日常生活中的温馨,所关涉的主题多为呈现于婚姻家庭中舍己的爱,这种爱又多是经历生活的艰难及双方的摩擦后而得的,因而显得愈发可贵。其中的女性常常不是软弱无力或哀怨愁苦,而是具有自尊自立自强的人格、直面人生困境的勇气以及对家庭邻舍的责任等美德。小说呈现出对女性生命价值的尊重,以及个体生命成长与贡献社会之间的平衡意识,揭示出新女性在个人与他者、感情与事业、社会与家庭等方面的调和努力,并本着建设的目的给出解决问题的答案,因而是对现代女性争取恋爱及婚姻自由之后道路的继续探索的体现。较之那些止于冲破旧家庭的新女性的塑造之作,无疑是一种深入;较之很多新文学作品中灰暗失败的新女性生活,也是一种积极的婚姻家庭模式的建造。     

A Psychometric Review of Measures Assessing Discrimination Against Sexual Minorities

ABSTRACT

Discrimination against sexual minorities is widespread and has deleterious consequences on victims’ psychological and physical wellbeing. However, a review of the psychometric properties of instruments measuring lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) discrimination has not been conducted. The results of this review, which involved evaluating 162 articles, reveal that most have suboptimal psychometric properties. Specifically, myriad scales possess questionable content validity as (1) items are not created in collaboration with sexual minorities; (2) measures possess a small number of items and, thus, may not sufficiently represent the domain of interest; and (3) scales are “adapted” from measures designed to examine race- and gender-based discrimination. Additional limitations include (1) summed scores are computed, often in the absence of scale score reliability metrics; (2) summed scores operate from the questionable assumption that diverse forms of discrimination are necessarily interrelated; (3) the dimensionality of instruments presumed to consist of subscales is seldom tested; (4) tests of criterion-related validity are routinely omitted; and (5) formal tests of measures’ construct validity are seldom provided, necessitating that one infer validity based on the results obtained. The absence of “gold standard” measures, the attendant difficulty in formulating a coherent picture of this body of research, and suggestions for psychometric improvements are noted.     

Creating the Next Wave of Family Therapy

This article is an exploration of family therapy in Australia based on interviews with seven leading Australian family therapists: Max Cornwell, Carolyn Quadrio, Ron Perry, Laurie MacKinnon, Brian Stagoll, Banu Moloney and Jim Crawley. It explores the attributes and qualities of what makes a good family therapist and seeks to understand how the next generation of therapists can generate a new enthusiasm for family therapy.     

Family Background and the Process of Ability Formation*

This paper takes a sociometric approach to the process of skills formation in children as they mature into adults. Honda suggests that meaningful communication with family as a child is the determining factor that raises those abilities (ability β ¹ ) that fall outside of scholastic aptitude – motivation, personal relations skills, personality, and emotions. Along with considering the results of Honda's thesis, I have constructed an operating hypothetic model that includes two additional factors: the financial state of the family during childhood, and the transition of the communication target from within the family to a target outside the family. The data for this investigation were then verified. From the results, the direct effect of the observed family communication, when isolated from other influencing variables in the formation of abilities β, is not as decisive a factor as Honda emphasized. It was clear that the financial status of the family played a role, as did the indirect results of the intermediary shift from communication within the family to outside the family (the process of children becoming socially independent). The results of this analysis show that we should not necessarily be looking for the decisive factors of abilities β within the family; if anything, it reflects the existence of a formative route for abilities β that capitalizes on the resources outside the family. Based on the above, the results also show the potential for the introduction of social intervention to address the disparity and inequality in skills formation, and the possible anticipation of more rationality in the overblown discourse surrounding the role of the family in facilitating educational ability.     

The generalized odd half-Cauchy family of distributions: Properties and applications

We introduce and study general mathematical properties of a new generator of continuous distributions with one extra parameter called the generalized odd half-Cauchy family. We present some special models and investigate the asymptotics and shapes. The new density function can be expressed as a linear mixture of exponentiated densities based on the same baseline distribution. We derive a power series for the quantile function. We discuss the estimation of the model parameters by maximum likelihood and prove empirically the flexibility of the new family by means of two real data sets.     

A procedure for testing the equality of k dependent correlation coefficients

A procedure is proposed for testing the equality of k dependent correlation coefficients. The procedure is simulated utilizing Monte Carlo techniques; and, a method for post hoc probing is also suggested.     

Modeling censored data using modified lambda family

In the present article we propose the modified lambda family (MLF) which is the Freimer, Mudholkar, Kollia, and Lin (FMKL) parametrization of generalized lambda distribution (GLD) as a model for censored data. The expressions for probability weighted moments of MLF are derived and used to estimate the parameters of the distribution. We modified the estimation technique using probability weighted moments. It is shown that the distribution provides reasonable fit to a real censored data.