A problem for achieving informed choice

Most agree that, if all else is equal, patients should be provided with enough information about proposed medical therapies to allow them to make an informed decision about what, if anything, they wish to receive. This is the principle of informed choice; it is closely related to the notion of informed consent. Contemporary clinical trials are analysed according to classical statistics. This paper puts forward the argument that classical statistics does not provide the right sort of information for informing choice. The notion of probability used by classical statistics is complex and difficult to communicate. Therapeutic decisions are best informed by statistical approaches that assign probabilities to hypotheses about the benefits and harms of therapies. Bayesian approaches to statistical inference provide such probabilities.

Community-based Peer Groups: an Intervention Programme for Teenage Mothers

This paper assesses the use of community-based peer groups as an intervention strategy to provide teenage mothers with an opportunity to share common experiences, receive social support and identify links between personal and social problems. The method utilized in a recent community project on teenage pregnancy is outlined. Over a period of 8 weeks a group of 10 teenage mothers met weekly to share their experiences of pregnancy and motherhood. The facilitators used various games and audio-visual aids to build rapport and to enhance willingness to discuss sensitive topics. The final session comprised a 1-day training workshop to enable the participants to act as co-facilitators for similar groups in the future. The evaluation indicated that the participants felt empowered by the opportunity to discuss common experiences and to have their perceptions affirmed by their peers. The potential value of this programme within the broader mental health context of South Africa is briefly discussed, and also the possibility of adding a consciousness-raising element to such groups.     

Schema Theory: A Critical Appraisal and Reevaluation

The authors replicated and extended results from the gunfight paradigm (A. Welchman, J. Stanley, M. Schomers, R. Miall, & H. Bulthoff, 2010a) in which participants moved faster when reacting to the perceived initiation of an opponent compared to initiating an action themselves. In addition to replicating these movement time effects, the authors found that time to peak velocity, peak velocity, and movement-endpoint dispersions were similarly impacted. The findings are discussed in terms of a triggering mechanism involved in ballistic and internally generated movements.