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Elsevier

Books in Social sciences and humanities

  • Blinding as a Solution to Bias

    Strengthening Biomedical Science, Forensic Science, and Law
    • 1st Edition
    • Christopher T Robertson + 1 more
    • English
    What information should jurors have during court proceedings to render a just decision? Should politicians know who is donating money to their campaigns? Will scientists draw biased conclusions about drug efficacy when they know more about the patient or study population? The potential for bias in decision-making by physicians, lawyers, politicians, and scientists has been recognized for hundreds of years and drawn attention from media and scholars seeking to understand the role that conflicts of interests and other psychological processes play. However, commonly proposed solutions to biased decision-making, such as transparency (disclosing conflicts) or exclusion (avoiding conflicts) do not directly solve the underlying problem of bias and may have unintended consequences. Robertson and Kesselheim bring together a renowned group of interdisciplinary scholars to consider another way to reduce the risk of biased decision-making: blinding. What are the advantages and limitations of blinding? How can we quantify the biases in unblinded research? Can we develop new ways to blind decision-makers? What are the ethical problems with withholding information from decision-makers in the course of blinding? How can blinding be adapted to legal and scientific procedures and in institutions not previously open to this approach? Fundamentally, these sorts of questions—about who needs to know what—open new doors of inquiry for the design of scientific research studies, regulatory institutions, and courts. The volume surveys the theory, practice, and future of blinding, drawing upon leading authors with a diverse range of methodologies and areas of expertise, including forensic sciences, medicine, law, philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, and statistics.

  • The Search for Sanity

    The Commonwealth and International Library
    • 1st Edition
    • S. Leff + 1 more
    • Robert Robinson + 1 more
    • English
    The Search for Sanity provides a comprehensive discussion of the issue of mental illness. The book begins by addressing the question of whether society is sick. This is followed by separate chapters on the social aspects of mental health; the problems caused by sex such as prostitution, sexually transmitted disease, and illegitimate births; how the quest for power can destroy people; and ways people try to escape from reality, including drug use and alcohol consumption. Subsequent chapters cover the treatment for mental illness, how treatment helps, hospital care, and ways the community can help. The final chapter deals with the promotion of mental health and prevention of mental illness.

  • Science of Mind

    The Quest for Psychological Reality
    • 1st Edition
    • Bozzano G Luisa
    • English
    This book explains the social factors that shape the nature of theory and research traditions in psychology. It presents a broad treatment of the construction of theory and knowledge in science and philosophy with particular emphasis on psychological thinking. Du Preez, emphasizing the "evolution of knowledge," discusses theory and research across behaviorism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, cognitive psychology, and many other psychological areas, placing them in their socio-philosophical contexts.

  • Subsistence and Survival

    Rural Ecology in the Pacific
    • 1st Edition
    • Timothy P. Bayliss-Smith
    • English
    Subsistence and Survival: Rural Ecology in the Pacific covers the ecology of man's environment, man's use and perception of biological resources, and the physiology and health of the human organism itself. The geographical range of this text extends from the glaciated uplands of Papua New Guinea, through the montane forests and grasslands of the Highlands, into the coastal jungles, and across to the smaller islands and atolls of the South West Pacific. This book is organized into five parts encompassing 14 chapters. The first part deals with the theory and applications of human ecology. The next part considers first the International Biological Program in New Guinea concerning the link between human ecology and biomedical research. This part also explores the nutritional adaptation among the Enga and in Melanesia, and then introduces the principles of environmental health engineering as human ecology. The subsequent two parts highlight the impact of human activities on the environment, with an emphasis on the association between environmental exploitation and human subsistence. The final part discusses the relevance of self-subsistence communities for world ecosystem management. This book will be of great value to anthropologists, geographers, human biologists, nutritionists, botanists, and public health engineers.

  • Studies in Dyadic Communication

    • 1st Edition
    • A. W. Siegman + 1 more
    • English
    Pergamon General Psychology Series: Studies in Dyadic Communication focuses on the mechanics, principles, methodologies, and approaches involved in dyadic communication. The selection first elaborates on experimental manipulations of interviewer variables; interview structure and interviewer style in initial interviews; and effects of ambiguity and anxiety on interviewee verbal behavior. Discussions focus on the effects of anxiety on interviewee verbal behavior, previous findings on ambiguity and productivity, influence in psychotherapy, patient reactions to interviewer style, and interview and therapy dyads. The text then takes a look at relationship and verbal behavior in the initial interview and temporal patterns of dialogue. The book ponders on interview synchrony, body movement-speech rhythm relationship as a cue to speech encoding, and analysis of movement behavior during clinical interview. Topics include communicative intent with body-focused movements, object- body-focused dichotomy as an intent to communicate, analysis of body-focused movements, movement and speech rhythm, and movement and speech output. The selection is a valuable reference for researchers interested in dyadic communication.

  • Simulation-Gaming: On the Improvement of Competence in Dealing with Complexity, Uncertainty and Value Conflicts

    Proceedings of the International Simulation and Gaming Association's 19th International Conference, Utrecht University, Netherlands, 16-19 August 1988
    • 1st Edition
    • J.H.G. Klabbers + 3 more
    • English
    This volume records the Proceedings of the International Simulation and Gaming Association's 19th International Conference which took place at Utrecht University in 1988. Seven sections are contained in the volume. The first section on complexity, uncertainty and conflict deals with theoretical and methodological issues. This is the introduction to the conference theme "On the improvement of competence". The following sections cover broad areas: organizational change, business simulation, policy exercise, methodology, learning environments, and special topics such as environmental planning, health care, diplomatic games and gambling.

  • The International Monetary System

    An Essay in Interpretation
    • 1st Edition
    • E. Hoffmeyer
    • English
    This book interprets the historical evolution of how and why the international monetary system has been transformed. The strategies of the major decision-makers are defined and described, and an analysis made of how these strategies were adapted. The structure of the analysis differs from other such contributions, in that it does not concentrate on the way in which disturbances have developed, but rather on describing the pattern of reaction of policy makers to disturbances, and in particular on the political element in the decisions. This structure of analysis makes relevance criteria somewhat different from most academic literature on the international monetary system. A substantial amount of evidence is presented that has hitherto been largely neglected by experts; for example the sterling support schemes, the gold pool transactions, the use of the swap network, Schiller's preparation of the German block floating, the intervention pattern among key currencies, and the views arising from the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee.In order to facilitate comparison with other presentations careful documentation is provided of the points made. Apart from the literature referred to in the Bibliography, all material used - comprising documents, memoranda, publications and communiqués - has been organized in a computer index containing about 500 entries. Background material covered by one or more of these entries is available to the interested reader.

  • Productivity and U.S. Economic Growth

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 169
    • Dale Jorgenson + 2 more
    • English
    Between 1948 and 1979, economic activity in the United States increased almost twice as much as over the entire preceding course of American history. The traditional explanation of this remarkable development emphasizes productivity growth. In the most sophisticated study to date of the factors currently affecting economic growth, the authors of this book show that capital formation is far more important, with the growth of labor resources and productivity a distant second. Their conclusions rest on a far more detailed empirical base than any ever assembled in studies of economic growth. For example, the authors distinguish among 81,600 types of labor input – broken down by age, sex, education, occupation, and industry of employment. Similarly, they disaggregate capital by industry, class of asset, and tax treatment. Their analysis of economic growth is from the ``bottom up'' rather than the ``top down'' approach used in earlier work. The new findings imply that efforts to revive U.S. economic growth must focus on increased supplies of capital and labor inputs. This is the key to more rapid growth and international competition.One of the most important features of the book is the way in which it successfully integrates the theory of producer behavior with the indexing and measurement of production growth. The authors present startling new findings showing that less than one-fourth of overall growth is attributable to advances in productivity.

  • The Political Economy of Social Security

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 179
    • B.A. Gustafsson + 1 more
    • English
    In many western countries with slow economic growth and population growth the increasing cost of the social security system is a concern. The contributions in this volume address this issue from various angles, theoretically as well as empirically and also taking into account institutional conditions.This book discusses current social security policy issues and related research from a number of western countries. Papers include the following subjects: - Recent policy changes in the UK and the Federal Public of Germany - Distributional effects of social security - Public choice models of social security - Economic incentive effects of unemployment insurance and occupational pensions - The macroeconomic effects of the growth of benefits and their financing

  • Psychology in and out of Court

    A Critical Examination of Legal Psychology
    • 1st Edition
    • M. King
    • English
    This book is a critical study of the work of legal psychologists, particularly in the United States, and the assumptions upon which the work is based. It rejects an experimentalist model of legal psychology and claims that the use of such a model is not scientific and therefore superior to other ways of analysing the legal system. It proposes ultimately an approach based upon the interpretive nature of human social experience and its effects upon behavior.

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