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Social support has a significant effect on the response to illness and treatment. The au thors present some of the findings and practical applications originating from a collaborative study, including a clinical indicator tool for the diabetic patient. This information gives the home health care professional an expanded knowledgebase to use in developing individualized care plans for the elder home care diabetic. © 1992, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.

Kirillov and Reshetikhin introduced rigged configurations as a new way to calculate the entries of the Kostka matrix. Macdonald defined the two-parameter Kostka matrix whose entries generalize. We use rigged configurations and a formula of Stembridge to provide a combinatorial interpretation of in the case where is a partition with no more than two columns. In particular, we show that in this case, has nonnegative coefficients. © 1995 American Mathematical Society.

This paper presents a fresh approach to a general education mathematics course. The basic idea is to turn the customary mathematics class on its head by focusing on applications first, through a reading of articles from magazines and newspapers, and then turning to the technical mathematical details. A description of the topics that were covered in my course, along with references to various publications, is given. A course such as this one is important because it conveys how mathematics is serving the goals of society. © 1994 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

One of the problems which many companies face is the distribution of inventory from one or more centrally located distribution centers. The retail, industry, and in particular the women's clothing industry, faces the additional problem that not only does the merchandise have to be distributed but it must be distributed in such a way that every store gets a reasonable spread of colors and sizes. This research attempts to optimize the multi-criteria allocation objective by developing a computer algorithm. In order to be implemented any algorithm developed must be computationally efficient due to the size of the industry and other system related programming constraints. The algorithm which was developed not only provided a solution which was a marked improvement regarding the color spread of the merchandise but was also efficient enough to be immediately implemented on a national basis. © 1992.

A presentation of case studies forms the focus for an exploration of the discovery of an abortion or adoption used as the management of an unwelcome pregnancy which occurred in the context of the marital system. Managing an impasse in the middle phase of therapy in each case led to the emergence of information which then allowed the therapist to work with the couple system to alleviate the core situation out of which presenting problems emanated. In these cases the unwelcome pregnancy had the potential to be cataclysmic to the couple system. Therefore, the possibility that a couple is concealing an abortion or an adoption should be considered by couples' therapists when there is little or no response to usual strategies for change. The reason for concealment is immaterial. What is paramount is that the therapist bring the event to the fore of treatment and work with a couple to put closure on what is generally an unresolved issue. © 1999, by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Objective: To review family-based treatment research. A growing body of research and several meta-analytic reviews demonstrate that family-based treatments are effective for a variety of child and adolescent disorders. In addition, an emerging tradition of family-based process research has begun to identify important ingredients of effective family psychotherapy. This article reviews these advances and their implications for future research. Method: Selected studies on the treatment of schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, attention deficit, conduct disorder, and substance abuse are reviewed, as well as several process research and meta-analytic studies. Results: Family-based therapies have been shown to be effective for treating schizophrenia, conduct disorder, and substance abuse. Some data support their effectiveness in the treatment of eating disorders. Few studies have targeted internalizing disorders. A process research tradition is emerging, but it is in need of methodological advances, Meta-analytic studies suggest that family-based therapies are as effective as other models. Conclusions: More well-designed studies with diverse populations are needed to assess accurately the effectiveness of this increasingly popular treatment approach.

This nine-year study examined the extent to which selected admissions criteria of 34 family therapy doctoral students predicted their future performance on clinical, academic, research, and other job-related criteria. Age and clinical background were positively related to clinical ratings after three years. Letters of recommendation and student autobiographies were positively related to qualify and quantity of publications. Graduate Record Examination scores and interview ratings were not predictive of any of the criterion variables at three or six years. Additional findings are presented and discussed.

This paper presents the theoretical basis and the associated perceptions of race relations that characterized a race relations competence workshop which served as the educational component of an overall program to improve race relations among managers within the fictitiously named XYZ Corporation. Workshop activities combined didactic and experiential methods and focused on group and individual levels of learning based on embedded intergroup relations theory. An assessment of the race relations competence workshop was carried out as part of an overall effort to evaluate the race relations improvement program in the company. Employing measures of both global evaluation and perceptions of race relations among managers, the study showed that Blacks evaluated the workshop more favorably than Whites, that reports of having information about the workshop were positively associated with favorable evaluations of the workshop, that workshop participants more than nonparticipants were likely to perceive Whites as hurting Blacks and less likely to perceive Blacks as hurting Whites. Additional analyses showed that, while the workshop generally had favorable effects for participants, the groups most likely to show unfavorable consequences were White male first level managers younger than 41 years and White female first level managers older than 40 years.

Bonding is an essential factor in the establishment and maintenance of an intimate committed relationship. Dissecting elements of bonding leads to an understanding of the internal structure of the marriage. Attraction and bonding are different and equally vital in turning initial romance into enduring intimacy. The process of attraction based on projections developing into an enduring bond between peers merges relationship purpose and a rationale for emotional involvement. This occurs when attention is accorded to each of the factors of bonding; ego-equality, respect, interdependence and reality grounding. In therapy, a couple’s bonding can be assessed through the isomorphic qualities actualized in the therapeutic joining process. Discussions includes over bonded and under bonded couples, their presenting problems, and a treatment focus for each condition. © 1991 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Since the typical account longevity is short, agencies should anticipate their likelihood of loss, seek to forestall and invest in their client relationships. A model is proposed for examining account lifetimes, which can offer guidance on the likely retention of future accounts. The impact of agency structural characteristics on longevity is also examined, and compared for both U.S. and U.K. markets. Results for both markets indicate that cumulative account dissolution increases at a decreasing rate over time. Greater account longevity is associated with larger agency size (both in terms of agency billings and employees), and agency age but not with stability of billings growth. Evidence suggests that several structural characteristics of agencies reflect the motivation and/or ability to maintain accounts. © 1999 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

To gain insight into how people select life insurance policies, we conducted a controlled experiment to see how consumers with varying levels of expertise make choices among life insurance policies when provided relevant information presented in an easy-to-use format. We found that those with greater product class knowledge engage in qualitatively and quantitatively different decision processes than those with less knowledge, and therefore are likely to reach different decisions. Specifically, experts are statistically more likely to engage in pairwise/multiple comparisons and to evoke a greater number of choice criteria. There is directional support that they search for more information as well. For all participants, the number of information searches far exceeded the number of elimination and choice criteria evoked. © 1998 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

A growing body of literature suggests that experts are little if at all better than novices in terms of the quality of decision outputs, To explain this counter-intuitive finding, the authors propose a conceptual framework that focuses on initial problem structure as a key moderator of the effect of expertise on performance, Specifically, they argue that the expert-novice performance differential should be greatest at moderate levels of problem structure and weakest at both extremes. To examine this central hypothesis, the authors conduct a controlled experiment that compares experts with novices when solving a complex problem that had characteristics of a moderately ill-structured problem, Relative to novices, the authors find that experts select fewer, but more diagnostic, information inputs and are more consistent when evaluating nonquantified inputs, As a result, they make more accurate and tightly clustered judgments than do novices, and. also are more confident in their decisions. To examine the moderating influence of problem characteristics, certain task variables are manipulated to increase or decrease initial problem structure. As hypothesized, the benefits of expertise are less pronounced when solving a problem with increased initial structure.