Key Determinants to using Telehealth Technology to Serve Medically Ill and Depressed Homebound Older Adults

Despite the increasing evidence for the effectiveness of telehealth technology in screening and treating chronic diseases, and comorbid depression among older adults, they have been slowly adopted by home health care (HHC) agencies. Therefore, this study aimed to identify factors that determine telehealth technology adoption. Twenty directors from the National Association for Homecare & Hospice member agencies completed a 45-min telephone interview. Questions were asked regarding their perceptions of telehealth, the key determinants of telehealth adoption and use, and recommendations they would give on telehealth adoption. The majority of the participants perceived telehealth as effective for managing symptoms and reducing cost. Meanwhile, some participants had a mixed feeling toward telehealth for depression care as they did not recognize their agency as equipped with the necessary resources and trained staff. Moreover, significant determinants of telehealth adoption included the agency-related characteristics, the patient-home environment, reimbursement and cost-related factors, and staff telehealth perception. Findings imply that there is a need for financial support both at the state and the federal levels to encourage telehealth adoption among HHC agencies. Future studies should consider exploring strategies used by successful programs to overcome barriers.     

Approximations to the multivariate normal integral

We propose a simple and efficient way to approximate multivariate normal probabilities using univariate and bivariate probabilities. The approximation is computationally tested for the trivariate and quadrivariate normal probabilities. A few problems of higher dimensions were also tested.     

Moral sentiments and social choice

We examine the implications, for social choice, of individuals having an intrinsic sense of fairness. Taking the viewpoint that social justice reflects the moral attitudes of the constituent members, we analyze the effect of the intensity of the individual sense of fairness on the solution of Nash bargaining over random allocation procedures. We use a stylized model of university admission policies to illustrate our approach. We show that even if social policies are ultimately determined by the bargaining power of the different groups, a society whose members have a common notion of fairness tends to implement fairer admission policies when the intensity of the sense of fairness of individual members increases. While working on the research that is summarized in this paper the authors visited several institutions. Edi Karni visited the Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University and GRID, at Ecole Normale Superieur de Cachan. Zvi Safra visited CERMCEM and EUREQua, at the University of Paris I and LIP6, at the University of Paris 6. The hospitality of these institutions is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to the editor and two anonymous referees for their very useful comments and suggestions. Zvi Safra thanks The Israel Science Foudation (grant 1299/05) for its support.     

Arab-Jewish Bilingual Coeducation in Israel: A Long-Term Approach to Intergroup Conflict Resolution

This article offers insights into a new educational adventure in Israel that attempts to overcome interethnic conflict through bilingual coeducation. These insights were gathered during a two-year research project in which the authors followed the activities of two recently established Arab-Jewish bilingual schools. Their analysis is based primarily on qualitative data of educational and sociocultural processes involved in the functioning and development of the schools as they relate to four major areas: language, cultural and religious identity, national identity, and social interactions. The study showed the potential benefits of one type of intergroup contact, namely, bilingual long-term coeducation, but also shed light on the complexity and the difficulties facing all of the parties involved in such an adventurous enterprise.     

Unbounded behaviorally consistent stopping rules

In this article we study behaviorally consistent stopping rules in an unbounded search from a known distribution with no recall and with positive search cost. We show that if the searcher's preferences are quasi-convex in the probabilities, then behaviorally consistent search strategies in the unbounded case are obtained as limits of the corresponding bounded search strategies and are characterized by reservation levels property. Unlike optimal stopping rules under expected utility theory, however, the reservation levels may not be monotonically increasing in the number of permissible stages of the search process, and, in the unbounded case, may not be unique.     

Reporting bad results: The ethical responsibility of presenting abused women's parenting practices in a negative light

The purpose of this paper is to present and analyse the ethical dilemmas involved in presenting research findings that describe abused women's parenting practices in a negative light. The study was based on data collected by in‐depth interviews for the purpose of examining the turning point among 20 Israeli abused women who refused to live with violence and took active steps to stop it while staying with the perpetrator. Overall the analysis indicated successful survival stories but the women's parenting practices became questionable. This raised dilemmas as to how to present such findings and what are the ethical implications related to interventions with abused women.     

On the nonexistence of Blackwell's theorem-type results with general preference relations

A well-known theorem of Blackwell states that, when quantity of information is properly defined, every expected utility decision maker prefers more information to less; for more general preferences, however, the theorem is no longer true. In this article, we investigate the extent to which Blackwell's Theorem does not hold and describe conditions, and situations, under which information is still valuable. We also show that, for many types of additions of information, there exists a decision maker who will reject this information.We thank Niv Ahituv, Larry Epstein, Uzi Segal, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments. This article was partially financed by the Israel Institute of Business Research.