‘Back to our Roots?’ Re-visiting psychoanalytically-informed baby and young child observation in the education of student social workers

While there is a well-established literature on psychoanalytically-informed baby and young child observation in social work education, little has been published recently. This paper reviews the rationale for its use, evaluating its impact on students’ learning in the light of contemporary policy and practice contexts facing social work education. Analysis of feedback gained from a recent cohort, identifies three ways in which learning through baby and young child observation contributes: firstly, students encounter and learn about the complexity of child development from the direct experience of observing and secondly, observing facilitates the development of important skills for practice; students’ ‘use of self’. Thirdly, through observing, students describe how they develop the capacity to take-up and sustain a professional role. Well-structured teaching and learning through observation is therefore shown to provide a rigorous, theoretically-grounded contribution to the training of university-based social work students entering this complex and challenging professional field.     

高斯与观测误差分布的发现

在数理统计的发展史上,最重要的事件也许就是观测误差分布的发现。统计学家们在寻找观测误差分布的过程中,创造了许多有用的统计理论和方法,不过观测误差分布发现的优先权最终属于伟大的德国科学家高斯。文章主要介绍了高斯发现观测误差分布的思考过程,并期望读者能从高斯天才的思想中获得有益的启迪。     

A Preliminary Examination of the Effects of Observer Presence on Work-Related Behavior in a Simulated Office

The current study evaluated the effects of prolonged observer presence on individuals' work-related behavior within sessions and across sessions. Participants were three undergraduate students who transcribed articles at a computer workstation in a simulated office setting. Overall, participants demonstrated increases and decreases in their work-related behavior in the presence of an observer. The demonstration of spontaneous recovery suggests that those decreases were due to fatigue, not habituation. Although limitations exist in the current study, this study represents an initial step toward examining behavioral habituation in humans to prolonged observer presence. Future researchers are encouraged to conduct analog studies with more participants, and various observer presence schedules, to determine whether performance changes to direct observation are habituation, fatigue, attention-related changes, or some other confound.     

Global economy of signs and selves: A view of work regimes in call centers in the Philippines

Reflecting on the global nature of third-party offshore call center and its implications on the agent, this piece is an account of the researcher's own experience, observations, and interactions as a call center worker. Using the theoretical frame Global economy of signs and selves, weaving ideas from Scott Lash and John Urry, Pierre Bourdieu and Erving Goffman, the study looks at some dimensions and conditions of global service work experienced by Filipino agents. With the relocation of accounts offshore, call centers in the Philippines have given rise to a growing section of society required by the imperatives of their work to “defy” time and space, synchronizing their cycles and routines according to the rhythms and cycles of a distant social dimension and the imperatives of globalized production. Although relocation has allowed firms to reduce costs and make use of cheaper labor, the distance traversed by this new call center platform comes with some hidden costs, borne by workers, who may themselves take these other forms of work they deliver for granted. Highlighting under-emphasized, undervalued and misrecognized aspects of call center work, the study attempts to link the global, the local and the personal, while emphasizing the social and symbolic work involved in call center production.     

《尚书·尧典》四仲中星观测年代考

利用岁差原理进行推算,是解决《尧典》四仲中星观测年代问题的有效途径。然而,中外学者由此推算的结果却差别很大。究其原因,在于人们对当时的观测条件认识不一。根据重新讨论和认定的观测条件,可以推得《尧典》四仲中星的观测年代在殷末周初。     

Joint Modelling of Survival and Longitudinal Data with Informative Observation Times

In this paper, we consider the joint modelling of survival and longitudinal data with informative observation time points. The survival model and the longitudinal model are linked via random effects, for which no distribution assumption is required under our estimation approach. The estimator is shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal. The proposed estimator and its estimated covariance matrix can be easily calculated. Simulation studies and an application to a primary biliary cirrhosis study are also provided.     

An additive–multiplicative mean model for panel count data with dependent observation and dropout processes

This paper discusses regression analysis of panel count data with dependent observation and dropout processes. For the problem, a general mean model is presented that can allow both additive and multiplicative effects of covariates on the underlying point process. In addition, the proportional rates model and the accelerated failure time model are employed to describe possible covariate effects on the observation process and the dropout or follow‐up process, respectively. For estimation of regression parameters, some estimating equation‐based procedures are developed and the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators are established. In addition, a resampling approach is proposed for estimating a covariance matrix of the proposed estimator and a model checking procedure is also provided. Results from an extensive simulation study indicate that the proposed methodology works well for practical situations, and it is applied to a motivating set of real data.     

Penalized likelihood-ratio test for finite mixture models with multinomial observations

Due to the irregularity of finite mixture models, the commonly used likelihood-ratio statistics often have complicated limiting distributions. We propose to add a particular type of penalty function to the log-likelihood function. The resulting penalized likelihood-ratio statistics have simple limiting distributions when applied to finite mixture models with multinomial observations. The method is especially effective in addressing the problems discussed by Chernoff and Lander (1995). The theory developed and simulations conducted show that the penalized likelihood method can give very good results, better than the well-known C(α) procedure, for example. The paper does not, however, fully explore the choice of penalty function and weight. The full potential of the new procedure is to be explored in the future.     

Local polynomial estimation of Poisson intensities in the presence of reporting delays

Summary.  The system for monitoring suicides in Hong Kong has considerable delays in reporting as the cause of death needs to be determined by a coroner's investigation. However, timely estimates of suicide rates are desirable to assist in the formulation of public health policies. This motivated us to develop a non-parametric procedure to estimate the intensity function of a Poisson process in the presence of reporting delays. We give closed form estimators of the Poisson intensity and the delay distribution, conduct simulation studies to evaluate the method proposed and derive their asymptotic properties. The method proposed is applied to estimate the intensity of suicide in Hong Kong.