TESTAMENTARY BEHAVIOR:

Content analysis and qualitative analysis of all 319 last wills that were filed in Providence Probate Court, 1985, revealed that about ten percent of the testators used testamentary material, disinheritance or altruism to express their individuality. About 42 percent of the wills were personalized directly in other ways. Forty-eight percent displayed indirect influences of family, friends and community. Less that ten percent displayed primary influences of attorneys, banks, nursing homes, governments, religions or other organizations. In the light of these findings, while none of the three major theoretical positions on testamentary behavior prevails, the individualist position is manifested more often than is the family-community position. Both of these positions are manifested much more often than is the legalist position.
These findings are related to the work of Emile Durkheim and to contemporary sociological theories of the family, community and law.     

Nonparametric smoothing in the analysis of air pollution and respiratory illness

While most of epidemiology is observational, rather than experimental, the culture of epidemiology is still derived from agricultural experiments, rather than other observational fields, such as astronomy or economics. The mismatch is made greater as focus has turned to continue risk factors, multifactorial outcomes, and outcomes with large variation unexplainable by available risk factors. The analysis of such data is often viewed as hypothesis testing with statistical control replacing randomization. However, such approaches often test restricted forms of the hypothesis being investigated, such as the hypothesis of a linear association, when there is no prior empirical or theoretical reason to believe that if an association exists, it is linear. In combination with the large nonstochastic sources of error in such observational studies, this suggests the more flexible alternative of exploring the association. Conclusions on the possible causal nature of any discovered association will rest on the coherence and consistency of multiple studies. Nonparametric smoothing in general, and generalized additive models in particular, represent an attractive approach to such problems. This is illustrated using data examining the relationship between particulate air pollution and daily mortality in Birmingham, Alabama; between particulate air pollution, ozone, and SO₂ and daily hospital admissions for respiratory illness in Philadelphia; and between ozone and particulate air pollution and coughing episodes in children in six eastern U.S. cities. The results indicate that airborne particles and ozone are associated with adverse health outcomes at very low concentrations, and that there are likely no thresholds for these relationships.     

Erhöht Globalisierung die Ungleichheit der Einkommen?

The article tests the thesis that globalization increases the earnings inequality of households. It extends the time series data set of Alderson and Nielsen (2002) who supported the globalization thesis. Alternative models provide no evidence that foreign trade, foreign investment, and migration increase inequality. The article gives reasons for these results and shows that OECD countries pass through an endogenous sectoral and demographic crisis in the transition to post-industrial service societies. Therefore, the paper adapts Kuznets’ theorem of sector dualism to the subsectors of the service economy. The polarization of value addition within the service sector appears as the crucial determinant of increased earnings inequality of households.     

The prediction of learning in family therapy training programs*

Research on family therapy training has produced very little data regarding the kinds of trainees that do best in family therapy training programs. This study attempts to provide some rough and preliminary data on that issue. One hundred and seventy trainees, drawn from seven different structural!strategic training experiences, were evaluated as to how much they learned by taking the Family Therapy Assessment Exercise pre- and posttraining. Their performance was correlated using a hierarchical regression analysis with a number of trainee variables such as amount of conjugal family experience, amount of experience doing family or individual therapy, or prior knowledge of family therapy. The results indicate that, as predicted, conjugal family experience was positively related, and prior knowledge was negatively related to performance. Prior experience doing individual therapy was also positively related to performance.     

Welfare judgments and future generations

The author argues that long-range welfare policies - policies designed to provide significant, widespread, continuing benefits to future generations, remote as well as near, at some cost to ourselves - cannot be justified by appeal to the welfare of remote future generations. He questions whether they can be justified at all. The problem is that the failure to adopt such a policy would not make any of our distant descendants worse off that he would otherwise be, since had the policy been adopted, he would not even have existed. These considerations also bring out a conflict between utilitarian and Paretian principles.     

Relational and Overt Aggression in Childhood and Adolescence: Clarifying Mean‐level Gender Differences and Associations with Peer Acceptance

Research on relational aggression has drawn attention to how girls may be likely to aggress, but the role of gender is not fully understood. There are opposing views regarding whether relational aggression is most common among girls. Current findings demonstrate that when gender differences in relational aggression are assessed with peer nominations, gender differences favoring girls are more likely: (1) in adolescence than childhood; and (2) when statistical overlap with overt aggression is controlled. Results also indicated that associations of relational aggression with peer acceptance depend on the aggressor's gender, the peer rater's gender, and whether overlap with overt aggression is controlled. Associations of relational aggression with lower acceptance became non‐significant when overt aggression was controlled, suggesting that relational aggression displayed in isolation may not damage acceptance. In fact, in mid‐adolescence, girls’ relational aggression predicted greater liking by boys. Reducing relational aggression among adolescent girls may be especially challenging if the behavior is linked with acceptance by boys.     

Addiction science and the perception of freewill

Do people think individuals with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) have freewill? How does addiction science inform views on the issue? We distinguish between two senses of freewill: 1) libertarian freewill , in which freedom turns on a particular metaphysical conception of action (sometimes operationalized as “could have done otherwise”), and 2) compatibilist freewill , in which freedom depends on the relation between the actor's psychology and her actions (e.g., “was the act what she wanted to do?”). We argue that, in different ways, scientific accounts can impact conceived freewill by linking addictive behavior to mechanisms that observers view as peripheral to the actor ( motivation modularity) . While a variety of impacts on conceived compatibilist freewill are plausible, we argue that contemporary addiction science has no direct bearing on conceived libertarian freewill. Addiction science may, however, indirectly impact conceived libertarian freewill by priming an explanatory framework in which intention is superfluous (especially materialism).     

Deaf access to justice in Northern Ireland: rethinking ‘Reasonable Adjustment’ in the Disability Discrimination Act

Abstract

This article provides findings of a qualitative study exploring the interactions of eight Deaf participants and one hearing ally with the justice system in Northern Ireland, where the Disability Discrimination Act requires solicitors to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ in order to provide effective access to Deaf clients. Three thematic categories emerged: (a) barriers to accessing justice, (b) work Deaf people do for access, and (c) the need to educate solicitors about access. A central strain ran through these themes: the idea that ‘reasonable adjustment’ must reflect the value of sign language interpreters in facilitating effective communication access for all the parties.     

Working Poor

The study compares relative risks of working poor in the US and Germany. The risk of working poor is assumed to be a consequence of both the macro-structural change towards post-industrial service societies and the micro-structural change of private households. From this twofold perspective, the guiding hypotheses are developed and then tested with the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The risk of working poor has increased both in Germany and the United States. Both commonalities and marked differences appear: Whereas high numbers of children dominate risks in the US, the German risk-set is determined by the hurdle between part-time and fulltime households, which disadvantages young and lone parents particularly. A common development is the successive devaluation of fulltime employment by sector risks which are growing into the fulltime labour market even in Germany.