Client and therapist variability with psychotherapy homework : a preliminary psychometric evaluation of two scales : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University,

The therapeutic use of homework assignments is an integral feature of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and is believed to be important in producing and maintaining client treatment gains. While there is empirical and theoretical support suggesting that homework completion may be associated with improved outcome, few studies have directly investigated specific therapist behaviours used in the integration of homework into practice. Similarly, research on client homework completion has, by far, focused solely on the quantity of homework completion rather than on any other factors found to be associated with increased client engagement with homework assignments. The recently developed Homework Adherence and Competence Scale (HAACS) was designed to specifically assess therapist competence and adherence to recommended homework behaviours used to administer homework. As a new measure of client homework completion, the Homework Rating Scale-II (HRS-II), extends the assessment of client homework completion beyond quantity only and provides a measure of the cognitive and behavioural determinants of client homework completion. The present study presents a psychometric evaluation of both the HAACS and HRS-II when rated by independent observers. Further, the present study sought to examine therapist differences in adherence and competence in administrating homework as well as investigating the temporal pattern of client homework completion

Lower Bound on the Propagation Speed of Gravity from Gravitational Cherenkov Radiation

Recently, interesting 4-D Lorentz violating models have been proposed, in which all particles have a common maximum velocity $c$, but gravity propagates (in the preferred frame) with a different maximum velocity $c_g \neq c$. We show that the case $c_g < c$ is very tightly constrained by the observation of the highest energy cosmic rays. Assuming a galactic origin for the cosmic rays gives a conservative bound of $c-c_g < 2 \times 10^{-15} c$; if the cosmic rays have an extragalactic origin the bound is orders of magnitude tighter, of order $c-c_g < 2 \times 10^{-19} c$.Comment: 8 pages with 1 figure, JHEP style. References added, slight (superficial) change

Determinants of Pediatric Care Utilization

The purpose of this paper is to understand the determinants of utilization of pediatric care -- care rendered to children by all physicians. Multivariate techniques are employed to examine four measures of pediatric care utilization in a national sample of children between the ages of 1 and 5. These measures are the probability of contacting a physician within the past year, the probability of obtaining a preventive physical examination within the past year, the number of office visits to physicians in private practice by children with positive visits, and the average quality of these visits.