Three Experimental Approaches to Measure the Social Context Dependence of Prejudice Communication and Discriminatory Behavior

Empirical research on discrimination is faced with crucial problems stemming from the specific character of its object of study. In democratic societies the communication of prejudices and other forms of discriminatory behavior is considered socially undesirable and depends on situational factors such as whether a situation is considered private or whether a discriminatory consensus can be assumed. Regular surveys thus can only offer a blurred picture of the phenomenon. But also survey experiments intended to decrease the social desirability bias (SDB) so far failed in systematically implementing situational variables. This paper introduces three experimental approaches to improve the study of discrimination and other topics of social (un-)desirability. First, we argue in favor of cognitive context framing in surveys in order to operationalize the salience of situational norms. Second, factorial surveys offer a way to take situational contexts and substitute behavior into account. And third, choice experiments – a rather new method in sociology – offer a more valid method of measuring behavioral characteristics compared to simple items in surveys. All three approaches – which may be combined – are easy to implement in large-scale surveys. Results of empirical studies demonstrate the fruitfulness of each of these approaches.

Dimensional approaches to schizophrenia: A comparison of the Bern Psychopathology scale and the five-factor model of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale

The aim was to examine to what extent the dimensions of the BPS map the five factors derived from the PANSS in order to explore the level of agreement of these alternative dimensional approaches in patients with schizophrenia. 149 inpatients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders were recruited. Psychopathological symptoms were assessed with the Bern Psychopathology Scale (BPS) and the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Linear regression analyses were conducted to explore the association between the factors and the items of the BPS. The robustness of patterns was evaluated. An understandable overlap of both approaches was found for positive and negative symptoms and excitement. The PANSS positive factor was associated with symptoms of the affect domain in terms of both inhibition and disinhibition, the PANSS negative factor with symptoms of all three domains of the BPS as an inhibition and the PANSS excitement factor with an inhibition of the affect domain and a disinhibition of the language and motor domains. The results show that here is only a partial overlap between the system-specific approach of the BPS and the five-factor PANSS model. A longitudinal assessment of psychopathological symptoms would therefore be of interest.

Using multiple landscape genetic approaches to test the validity of genetic clusters in a species characterized by an isolation-by-distance pattern

Bayesian clustering methods are typically used to identify barriers to gene flow, but they are prone to deduce artificial subdivisions in a study population characterized by an isolation-by-distance pattern (IbD). Here we analysed the landscape genetic structure of a population of wild boars (Sus scrofa) from south-western Germany. Two clustering methods inferred the presence of the same genetic discontinuity. However, the population in question was characterized by a strong IbD pattern. While landscape-resistance modelling failed to identify landscape features that influenced wild boar movement, partial Mantel tests and multiple regression of distance matrices (MRDMs) suggested that the empirically inferred clusters were separated by a genuine barrier. When simulating random lines bisecting the study area, 60% of the unique barriers represented, according to partial Mantel tests and MRDMs, significant obstacles to gene flow. By contrast, the random-lines simulation showed that the boundaries of the inferred empirical clusters corresponded to the most important genetic discontinuity in the study area. Given the degree of habitat fragmentation separating the two empirical partitions, it is likely that the clustering programs correctly identified a barrier to gene flow. The differing results between the work published here and other studies suggest that it will be very difficult to draw general conclusions about habitat permeability in wild boar from individual studies.

Do Paediatric and Adult Surgeons Follow Different Approaches to Physeal Fractures?

INTRODUCTION: The treatment of paediatric fractures is the concern of several different surgical specialties. There has been no scientific investigation on the different concepts of paediatric (PS) and adult surgeons (AS). METHODS: 62 paediatric traumatologists were asked concerning their experience with physeal fractures of the leg, including ten cases. RESULTS: Growth disturbances was estimated to be more rare by PS. On evaluation of the examples there were no significant differences in the judgement of degree and direction of the displacement. For displaced fractures, PS rather preferred closed reduction and immobilisation, whereas AS favoured osteosynthesis. DISCUSSION: There were no basic differences between PS and AS in the treatment of lower limb fractures. AS tend to act more invasively. At the same time they are more concerned about growth disturbances.

An overview of the objectives of and the approaches to propensity score analyses

The assessment of treatment effects from observational studies may be biased with patients not randomly allocated to the experimental or control group. One way to overcome this conceptual shortcoming in the design of such studies is the use of propensity scores to adjust for differences of the characteristics between patients treated with experimental and control interventions. The propensity score is defined as the probability that a patient received the experimental intervention conditional on pre-treatment characteristics at baseline. Here, we review how propensity scores are estimated and how they can help in adjusting the treatment effect for baseline imbalances. We further discuss how to evaluate adequate overlap of baseline characteristics between patient groups, provide guidelines for variable selection and model building in modelling the propensity score, and review different methods of propensity score adjustments. We conclude that propensity analyses may help in evaluating the comparability of patients in observational studies, and may account for more potential confounding factors than conventional covariate adjustment approaches. However, bias due to unmeasured confounding cannot be corrected for.

Therapeutic approaches to patients with hypereosinophilic syndromes

Hypereosinophilic syndromes (HES) are a heterogeneous group of disorders that range from asymptomatic eosinophilia > 1,500/mL to aggressive disease complicated by life-threatening end organ involvement, including endomyocardial fibrosis and thromboembolism. To complicate matters further, similar clinical manifestations can occur in the setting of marked eosinophilia due to helminth infection, drug hypersensitivity, and other causes. In the past, therapy was guided only by the exclusion of these secondary causes of eosinophilia and the severity of the clinical manifestations. More recently, the availability of novel targeted therapies and a better understanding of the etiologies of some subtypes of HES have necessitated a more structured approach.