Clinical Psychologists\u27 Perceptions of Persons with Mental Illness

Clinical psychologists have an ethical responsibility to monitor the nature and appropriateness of their attitudes toward persons with mental illness. This article presents the results of a survey of randomly selected clinical psychologists who were asked to rate the effectiveness, understandability, safety, worthiness, desirability, and similarity (to the rater) of persons with moderate depression, borderline features, and schizophrenia. The results show that psychologists perceive these individuals differently with respect to these characteristics. The results also suggest that psychologists disidentify or distance themselves from persons with personality and psychotic conditions. Implications for quality improvement and stigma reduction in the field of professional psychology are discussed

Violencia transfronteriza de género y mujeres indígenas refugiadas de Guatemala

Este artículo examina la violencia de género estructural que sufren las mujeres y las niñas indígenas refugiadas de Guatemala. Para ello, se emplea un marco analítico interseccional transfronterizo y se utilizan las declaraciones incluidas en las solicitudes de asilo y las entrevistas realizadas a 24 mujeres y niñas indígenas, complementadas con 60 entrevistas a jueces, activistas, abogados y defensores que trabajan en y para los tribunales guatemaltecos especializados en violencia de género. La política económica integrada de Estados Unidos, México y América Central, así como las políticas militares, comerciales y de inmigración de la región, son el marco más amplio en el que ha evolucionado la violencia de género y son parte integrante de las vidas de las mujeres y las niñas indígenas que huyen hoy de Guatemala

Building Alliances: Collaboration between CAUSA and the Rural Organizing Project in Oregon

This ethnography examines the components that allow quality solidarity work to happen between organizations with leadership and constituencies that are primarily people of color and primarily white, respectively. CAUSA (an immigrant rights coalition) and the Rural Organizing Project (ROP) of Oregon have developed a working relationship over ten years that has contributed to numerous victories for immigrant and farm worker rights, as well as greater consciousness among white rural activists of what it means to provide support as anti-racist allies. Because Oregon has a relatively small population (three million), and progressive organizations tend to know each other, the relationship provides an opportunity to study how such organizations manage power and historical inequalities in a manner suited for success. Ethnographer Lynn Stephen has conducted in-depth interviews with organizational leaders and members as a way to explore the history and lessons learned from the collaborative work between the two organizations. Key findings include the importance of both in-depth and sustained dialogue around the key values of work, and staff training around the issues involved with connecting to the other organization. The organizations use these techniques to build common ground. Hence, collaborative capacity can be mobilized quickly to support each other's actions as needed

Reliability analysis of structural ceramic components using a three-parameter Weibull distribution

Described here are nonlinear regression estimators for the three-Weibull distribution. Issues relating to the bias and invariance associated with these estimators are examined numerically using Monte Carlo simulation methods. The estimators were used to extract parameters from sintered silicon nitride failure data. A reliability analysis was performed on a turbopump blade utilizing the three-parameter Weibull distribution and the estimates from the sintered silicon nitride data

Stories That Make History

Lynn Stephen examines the writing of Elena Poniatowska, showing how it shaped Mexican political discourse and provides a unique way of understanding contemporary Mexican history, politics, and culture

Psychology Doctoral Students’ Perspectives on Addressing Spirituality and Religion with Clients: Associations with Personal Preferences and Training

Students (n = 543) in doctoral clinical and counseling psychology programs were surveyed about training experiences with regard to addressing the spiritual and religious beliefs and practices (SRBP) of their patients. About one fourth of the respondents indicated they had received no training related to patients’ SRBP. Another half had only read material on their own or discussed such issues with a supervisor. Nonetheless, respondents almost universally endorsed the idea that patients should be asked about spirituality and religiousness. Participants also rated the appropriateness of spiritual and religious queries that might be asked of patients. As expected, queries about the relevance of SRBP were rated as the most appropriate, whereas queries that implied a disrespectful or challenging tone were rated as the least appropriate. Participants’ personal SRBP and training that was specific to patients’ SRBP were weakly but significantly associated with appropriateness ratings. The results suggest that students are formulating ideas about how to ask patients about their spiritual and religious issues despite potentially inadequate formal instruction

Estimation and statistical inference for space-time point processes

A spatial point pattern consists of the locations of events in some sample window A ⊂ IR[superscript] d. Events may be trees in a forest, towns in a country, or epicenters of earthquakes. Assume that the locations of events are realized from some spatial point process, a random mechanism for locating events in space. One goal of spatial statistics is to model the underlying stochastic process and thus reduce a complex point pattern to one or more parameter estimates that may have some scientific interpretation;A number of techniques has been proposed for estimating the parameters of spatial point processes. However, very little is known about the statistical properties of these estimators. This research considers parameter estimation for an inhomogeneous Poisson process on A ⊂ IR[superscript] d with intensity function [lambda](s;[theta]). It is shown that the maximum likelihood estimator [theta][subscript] A and the Bayes estimator ~[theta][subscript] A are consistent, asymptotically normal, and asymptotically efficient, as the sample region A↑IR[superscript] d. This extends asymptotic results of Kutoyants (1984) for an inhomogeneous Poisson process on (0, T) ⊂IR, where T → [infinity]. Furthermore, a Cramer-Rao lower bound is found for any estimator of [theta]. The asymptotic properties of [theta][subscript] A and ~[theta][subscript] A are considered for a modulated Poisson process (Cox, 1972) and a linear Poisson process. An example is given to show that there exists an inhomogeneous Poisson process that has no consistent estimators;The marked spatial point pattern of trees and their diameters is the result of a dynamic process that takes place over time as well as space. Such marked point patterns are realizations of marked space-time survival point processes, where trees are born at some random location and time, and then live and grow for a random length of time. A model for a marked space-time survival point process is fit to data from a longleaf pine forest in southern Georgia. The space-time survival point process is divided into three components, a birth process, a growth process, and survival process, and each of the component processes is analyzed separately. By using this reductionist approach, questions concerning each individual process can be addressed that might not have been answerable had all processes been combined in the model;References. (1) Cox, D. R. (1972). The statistical analysis of dependencies in point processes. In P.A.W. Lewis (ed.), Stochastic Point Processes (pp. 55-66). New York: Wiley. (2) Kutoyants, Yu. A. (1984). Parameter Estimation for Stochastic Processes. Berlin: Heldermann Verlag

The synthesis of a mobile computerized health testing system

M.S.Joseph J. Talavag

Validation of Survey Data on Income and Employment: The ISMIE Experience

This report derives from the project "Improving survey measurement of income and employment (ISMIE)" which investigates measurement error in survey data on income and employment, using a UK sub-sample of the European Household Community Panel (ECHP). In this paper we describe the process of collecting validation data and the outcomes of the process. Validation data were obtained from two sources: employers' records and government benefit data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The former provided information on occupation and employment status, gross and net pay, membership of company pension schemes and industry sector. The latter provided histories of benefit receipt and tax credits, for example, child, disability, housing and unemployment benefits, pensions and income support. In the survey interview, respondents were asked for written permission both to obtain their DWP records and to contact their employer. They were also asked to provide information that would facilitate the process of obtaining the validation data: National Insurance number (NINO) and employer contact details. Subsequently, DWP records were extracted using a non-hierarchical matching strategy, based on different combinations of identifying variables obtained in the survey (NINO, sex, date of birth, name and postcode), and a survey of employers was carried out (mail, with telephone follow-up). The representativeness of the validation samples obtained depends on the co-operation of both survey respondents and providers of validation data, as well as errors in the matching process. We report permission rates, proportions providing matching items, match rates for the DWP data and response rates to the employer survey. We identify correlates of these measures of success at each stage of the validation process in terms of substantive characteristics of the survey respondents. Variation by subgroups is identified and implications for the representativeness of the validation sample are discussed.