Application of high-performance computing to the management of social science and demographic data

The costs of conducting censuses and surveys have always been high. Nonetheless, demographic, social, environmental, and health scientists have found it possible to gather quantities of data that far exceed the capabilities of any contemporary computing technology to extract fully the information contained in the data. Recent developments in computing and information science technology offer the promise of supporting innovative approaches to managing and analyzing data that can dramatically increase the ease of access to the information hidden within these data. This presentation describes a highly integrated system of data, metadata, instructional tutorials, hardware, and software designed to minimize the technical barriers to working with large and complex data sets. The objective is to provide easy, low-cost, fast, and meaningful access to these data for a broad spectrum of users.     

Explicit algebraic models for constructive and classical theories with non-standard elements

We describe an explicit construction of algebraic models for theories with non-standard elements either with classical or constructive logic. The corresponding truthvalue algebra in our construction is a complete algebra of subsets of some concrete decidable set. This way we get a quite finitistic notion of true which reflects a notion of the deducibility of a given theory. It enables us to useconstructive, proof-theoretical methods for theories with non-standard elements. It is especially useful in the case of theories with constructive logic where algorithmic properties are essential.The research was supported partly by the Hungarian National Fundation for Scientific Research No. 1654.     

Introduction

Many clinicians interested in group and psychoanalytic thought have followed idiosyncratic and personally constructed modes of preparation. Formal training programs tend to differ in terms of emphasis on degree of previous analytic experience, quantity of supervision, number of courses, requirements to have personal analytic group therapy, as well as length of time required to lead an analytic group. The process of psychoanalytic clinical work seems to have been temporarily idealized but essentially resisted by long ingrained North American pragmatic and spiritual value systems. This has resulted in what has amounted to a 50 year flirtation, rather than identification, with Psychoanalysis by American professional culture. The depth of curative experience for patients and the intensity of clinical acumen for practitioners make an analytic perspective important to maintain.      

On admissible communalities in factor analysis

A set of inequalities on communalities developed by Darroch [1] is used to provide some rules for determining admissible sets of communalities in factor analysis.     

Individual differences in distancing responses to women on a photo choice task

A heterogeneous sample of adult women and men responded to a Photo Choice Task (PCT) in which they were asked to make 24 choices between two persons for a hypothetical interaction; eight of the choices were between a woman and a man. Participants also responded to a measure of adherence to Sex Role Stereotypes and to a measure of Adversarial Sexual Beliefs. On the eight choices between a woman and a man on the PCT, men over 30 and younger than 30 chose women below chance level. Women over 30 made other-gender and same-gender choices that did not differ from chance, but the women under 30 chose women over men reliably more than chance. Small but significant positive correlations were found among the scores on the PCT and the belief measures; for the total sample, the greater the choice of men over women for hypothetical interactions, the greater the agreement with sex role stereotypes and with adversarial sexual beliefs. An examination of mean differences in belief scores among groups of persons whose PCT scores (choice of men over women) were low, medium, and high revealed that men who were more likely to turn away from women in hypothetical situations were also more likely to adhere to stereotyped beliefs about sex roles and to view relationships between women and men as adversarial. This same pattern of individual differences was found among women but, for women, only the relationship between PCT scores and sex role stereotyping was significant.     

Countering perfectionism in research on clinical practice II: Retrospective analysis of treatment progress

A simple correlational study is described which has methodological advantages, when compared with an equivalent manipulative (i.e., quasiexperimental) research design, for examining exploratory questions about treatment outcome. These advantages stem from the fact that retrospective designs, when compared with prospective ones, are much less likely to involve ethical problems due to offering relatively ineffective or unnecessary treatment, and less likely to involve confounds from newly hypothesized differential expectations about treatment. Based on Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) scale scores, clients with high levels of histrionic or narcissistic (and possibly also those with antisocial, compulsive and paranoid) personality traits seemed to profit more from RET than those without such traits. Clients with high levels of schizoid, avoidant, and schizotypal traits (and probably also clients with strong passive-aggressive traits, and possibly also clients with strong dependent and borderline traits) seemed to profit less from RET than those without such marked traits. We have previously shown that the relatively healthy personality traits and disorders are associated with global self-upping and the relatively sick ones with global self-downing, as well as contrasting patterns of positive and negative reactions to stressful events. Our findings here support the concept that clients who consistently handle life situations well will tend to progress most rapidly in therapy, and those who generally handle life situations badly will tend to progress slowly. Personality traits may be especially significant markers for therapeutic attention to problems stemming from global self-rating. Expectations based on the severity of global self-upping and/or self-downing may be good predictors of therapeutic progress. In contrast, expectations about RET outcomes based on severity of distress or neediness will probably be less accurate.Dr. Russell C. Leaf is Associate Professor of Psychology at Rutgers. He also directs a research project at the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy, in collaboration with the four other authors of this article, on the relationships between intake personality and mental health. He is an Institute Fellow and Supervisor, and previously served as a staff therapist and as the Institute's Director of Clinical Evaluation.Albert Ellis is President of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy.Roslyn Mass is Professor at Middlesex County College. She is in charge of data processing and analysis for the collaborative research of this authorial team, and is a Fellow of and previously served as Administrative Director of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy.Raymond DiGiuseppe is Associate Professor of Psychology at St. Johns and Director of Research and Director of Training at the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy.Diane Alington is Assistant Director and a member of the core faculty of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research at Rutgers, where she conducts a research program on sex differences in adult development.     

Differences in abstraction ability with age

Three tests of abstraction were administered to 89 optimally healthy subjects aged 30-79. Performance on all 3 tasks showed significant differences with age. This was primarily, although not entirely, the result of deficits in performance by the 70-year-old subjects. These results do not appear to be related to changes in memory ability or to a differential increase in a particular type of abstraction error.     

Sex-differentiated behaviors in nonsexist picture books

Charges of behavioral and sex-role stereotyping in preschool picture books have led to the publication of books that purportedly avoid or challenge traditional sex stereotypes (i.e., positive image or nonsexist picture books). This study sought to identify behaviors (as distinguished from sex-typed activities or social roles) exhibited by female and male characters in nonsexist books, and to compare these portrayals with those presented in more conventional picture books (Caldecott award-winners and contemporary best-sellers). A reliable coding system (interrater reliability exceeding 90%), permitting the identification of 15 target behaviors in the text and illustrations of picture books was developed and employed in the content analysis of 50 nonsexist and 46 conventional picture books. Stepwise discriminant function and chi-square analyses revealed highly independent females and nurturant and nonaggressive males in nonsexist books—portrayals that represent a clear departure from traditional sex stereotypes in this society. On the other hand, females in nonsexist books were more nurturant, emotional, and less physically active than males in either nonsexist or conventional books. Finally, with the single exception of aggressive behavior (males exceeding females), there was no indication of behavioral sex-typing in the conventional books. Implications are discussed.The author wishes to express his deep appreciation to Carol Quarton for her invaluable assistance in the development of the coding system used in this study. The author also wishes to think Mary Neal and Leslie Schindler for their careful and discriminating content analyses of the books, and Drs. George Milliken and Frank Saal for their statistical consultation. Finally, special thanks to Lorraine Nesmith, the former Children's Librarian at the Manhattan Public Library, Manhattan, Kansas, for her generous support and counsel throughout this project.     

Long-term course of psychoses in continuously hospitalized patients

Thorough reexamination of 70 patients in a long-term psychiatric ward led to partial revision of the diagnoses. Classified on the basis of Leohards's differential diagnostics, the large proportion of schizophrenics has dropped by over a third from 78% to 47%. Half of the 22 psychosis originally considered to be schizophrenia proved to be curable phasic and cycloid psychoses which had previously been overlooked and the other half were mental disturbances caused by brain-organic damage. A third of the chronic mental illnesses were found to be rooted in somatic brain lesions.