DETERMINATION AND EVALUATION OF RATE MEASUREMENTS IN THE ANALYSIS OF SPACE MEDICAL DATA

Measures of rate of change and of rate of rate of change are developed for application to physiological and psychological data. Examples are given of the use of these measures with heart-rate data for comparisons within and between subjects. It is shown that the measures provide information over and above that offered by means and variances, and that the measures appropriately reflect the impact of external variables.     

FEMALE VS. MALE ABSENCE RATES: A TEMPORAL ANALYSIS

The purpose of this research is to test the importance of temporal trends within absenteeism data for males and females. The data support previous findings of higher absenteeism rates for women when compared to men. The data also indicate the importance of temporal trends as suggested by Dansereau, Alutto, and Markham (1978). Conclusions are drawn concerning the use of absence rates as dependent variables.     

Oedipus, Darwin, and Freud: one big, happy family?

The author reviews recent sociobiological and psychoanalytic literature relevant to sexual aspects of the male Oedipus complex. Sociobiological discussions of incest and incest avoidance frequently contrast Freud's Oedipus complex with the Westermarck hypothesis. Westermarck argued that children who grow up in close association are averse to sex with each other as adults. Human and animal evidence supports the Westermarck hypothesis, and sociobiologically oriented writers have argued that it contradicts Freud's oedipal notion of an early incestuous sexual interest. However, two additional lines of evidence are relevant to such discussions. First, recent analytic theory on the Oedipus complex does not require the existence of a central, powerful, incestuous sexual drive. Second, both oedipal and sociobiological theory suggest that early familial experience forms a model for adult sexual mate choice and establishes patterns of adult sexual relationships. In these instances, sociobiological understandings of early development correspond well to oedipal theory.     

JOB-RELATEDNESS OF A POSTTRAINING JOB KNOWLEDGE CRITERION USE TO ASSESS VALIDITY AND TEST FAIRNESS

Significant job-relatedness was found for a posttraining job knowledge test criterion using an application of Lawshe's content validity method. The aide test was used as a criterion to assess the predictive validity of a vocabulary test and a civil service test with samples of black ( N = 43) and white ( N = 62) psychiatric aides. Significant validities were found on both tests, but a vocabulary test proved to be the better predictor of the criterion in both samples. The obtained validities were discussed in terms of differential validity, test fairness, and sample size. This study demonstrated that a content validity method could be applied to criteria as well as selection tests. It was concluded that content validity methods may be able to help solve the problem of criterion relevance in validation research by providing quantitative evidence of the job-relatedness of criteria.     

COHERENTISM AND THE EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION OF MORAL BELIEFS: A CASE STUDY IN HOW TO DO PRACTICAL ETHICS WITHOUT APPEAL TO A MORAL THEORY

This paper defends a coherentist approach to moral epistemology. In “The Immorality of Eating Meat” (2000), I offer a coherentist consistency argument to show that our own beliefs rationally commit us to the immorality of eating meat. Elsewhere, I use our own beliefs as premises to argue that we have positive duties to assist the poor (2004) and to argue that biomedical animal experimentation is wrong (2012). The present paper explores whether this consistency‐based coherentist approach of grounding particular moral judgments on beliefs we already hold, with no appeal to moral theory, is a legitimate way of doing practical ethics. I argue (i) that grounding particular moral judgments on our core moral convictions and other core nonmoral beliefs is a legitimate way to justify moral judgments, (ii) that these moral judgments possess as much epistemic justification and have as much claim to objectivity as moral judgments grounded on particular ethical theories, and (iii) that this internalistic coherentist method of grounding moral judgments is more likely to result in behavioral guidance than traditional theory‐based approaches to practical ethics. By way of illustrating the approach, I briefly recapitulate my consistency‐based argument for ethical vegetarianism. I then defend the coherentist approach implicit in the argument against a number of potentially fatal metatheoretical attacks.