CDC Says for First Time That THC Could Be Behind Vaping Deaths and Illnesses

CDC press release

MMWR article

From Time magazine, 27 Sept 2019

Link to Time article

Controlling opioids injection problems: Advances from Canada

Link to article

Aren’t you glad someone out there is paying attention to these issues?

Voice of America. Our Efforts To Improve Comprehension

Harlow redux

Harlow and the new neuroscience

Judgment about inter-species research is required:

Gain/Pain Ratio

p

From: 

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=pWqLBQAAQBAJ&rdid=book-pWqLBQAAQBAJ&rdot=1&source=gbs_vpt_read&pcampaignid=books_booksearch_viewport

Fox and Davidson, 2014.

Worth reading.

media view of vaping as of late Sept 2019

link to vaping article

Drug prevention in Iceland (per Proesora Zila Sanchez, UNIFESP)

Iceland prevention approach

More on Measurement Equivalence Modeling: MGCFA

On Detecting Systematic Measurement Error in Cross-Cultural Research: A Review and Critical Reflection on Equivalence and Invariance Tests

Diana Boer, Katja Hanke, Jia He

Journal of Crosscultural Research

Volume: 49 issue: 5, page(s): 713-734

Article first published online: May 21, 2018; Issue published: June 1, 2018

ESEM

ESEM (Asparouhov & Muthén, 2009; Marsh, Morin, Parker, & Kaur, 2014) is especially helpful when dealing with many groups where strong levels of invariance are often unattainable, and goodness-of-fit indices are weak. ESEM is an extension of the CFA approach. According to Marsh and colleagues (2010), ESEM integrates the best aspects of the CFA/SEM and the EFA approaches. The use of SEM in the exploratory approach means that it makes use of confirmatory tests of a priori factor structures as well as associations with latent factors, and multigroup tests of full measurement invariance (Marsh et al., 2014). The advantage of the ESEM is that it is not restricted because, in a conventional CFA approach, each item only loads on one factor. Items are allowed to load on all factors in ESEM. ESEM can be used for interrelated or independent factors by modeling oblique or orthogonal factor structures (Bowden, Saklofske, van de Vijver, Sudarshan, & Eysenck, 2016). ESEM is a fairly novel procedure that has not yet been often applied in content-related research; yet, it appears promising, and we would welcome further testing of its applicability in future research.

Bayesian approximate invariance

Bayesian approximate invariance testing is another promising approach to remedy some of the problems of conventional MGCFA. Instead of constraining the parameters of loadings and/or intercepts to be exactly the same across groups, this approach allows small differences in these parameters across groups (Muthén & Asparouhov, 2012; van de Schoot et al., 2013). The underlying rationale is that absolute invariance is unattainable and slight variations may not severely hinder comparability. Hence, a valid comparison can still be achieved. In two simulation studies (Muthen & Asparouhov, 2012; van de Schoot et al., 2013) involving a two-group and a 10-group comparison, respectively, appropriate model specifications (also called priors) that admit a certain degree of flexibility were proposed. In operational terms, pairwise differences in each parameter (loadings and/or intercepts) across groups can be modeled to follow a normal distribution with a mean of zero and a very small variance (.01 or .05).

Several applications with such prior specifications have been reported in multiple group comparisons (see, for example, Bujacz, Vittersø, Huta, & Kaczmarek, 2014; Cieciuch, Davidov, Schmidt, Algesheimer, & Schwartz, 2014; Davidov et al., 2015; He & Kubacka, 2015; Zercher, Schmidt, Cieciuch, & Davidov, 2015). We know that ignoring the lack of invariance may lead to biased comparative research results (Guenole & Brown, 2014). We do not know yet in the case of approximate invariance, whether the relaxed constraints would bias the parameters and distort the findings. In a few studies, it was shown that factor scores derived from a conventional CFA and the approximate approach were very similar (Davidov et al., 2015; Zercher et al., 2015). Simulation studies that examine the impact of different priors and the consequences of demonstrating approximate invariance are in much need (van de Schoot et al., 2013).

Alignment

Alignment is a third promising approach to estimate group-specific factor means and variances without requiring full measurement invariance (Asparouhov & Muthén, 2014). In a sense, alignment can be viewed as exploratory, where it incorporates a simplicity function similar to the rotation criteria used in EFA to discover the most optimal measurement invariance pattern (i.e., the simplest model with the fewest noninvariant parameters) and to estimate the factor mean and variance parameters in each group. This approach has been tested in multigroup CFA models with maximum likelihood as well as in Bayesian estimation, and it has been extended to IRT modeling (Muthén & Asparouhov, 2014).

Given its very recent development, only a few applications are available to date. De Bondt and Van Petegem (2015) used the Bayesian approximate invariance test with alignment optimization in evaluating the psychometric quality of an overexcitability scale, in which they showed the superiority of this combined approach compared with a conventional CFA with modification indices when comparing male and female students. Desa and Carstens (2015) proposed to apply this approach in the future in large-scale assessment contexts such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), as it legitimates mean comparisons in dozens of groups without requiring full measurement invariance. Weziak-Bialowolska (2014) tested gender ideology in the World Value Survey with CFA with and without alignment. She reported different patterns of country factor means from these two methods, and suggested that comparisons of the country rankings were valid provided that a correction for noninvariance of certain factor loadings and/or intercepts is applied in the alignment framework. Similar to the Bayesian approximate invariance tests, the implications of using alignment on the validity of cross-cultural comparisons await further investigation.

In sum, various older and newer techniques are available to assess measurement invariance and to distinguish error from cultural variance. Given the importance of establishing ground of comparability for drawing conclusions about how and in which form culture influences psychological states and processes, we further investigate to what extent invariance tests have been implemented in cross-cultural research.

Peyote

Link do online book

International Talk Like A Pirate Day, Every 19th of September, me hearties...

Learn to dance like a pirate on International Talk Like A Pirate Day, Every 19th of September, me hearties...

Dance like a pirate!

English-to-Pirate Online Translator:

English/Pirate Translating Tool

ABC-Oz article by linguistics professor:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-19/international-talk-like-a-pirate-day-preserving-old-languages/11527148

Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review

J. Webster, R.T. WatsonAnalyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review

MIS Quarterly, 26 (2) (2002)

xiii–xxiii

Read free online via JSTOR

SALIS: online library

The SALIS Collection: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs

bibliographic resource

Online Probing (OP) To Complement Measurement Equivalence Modeling

NECESSARY BUT INSUFFICIENT:

WHY MEASUREMENT INVARIANCE TESTS NEED ONLINE PROBING AS A COMPLEMENTARY TOOL

By:Meitinger, K (Meitinger, Katharina)^[ 1 ]

PUBLIC OPINION QUARTERLY

Volume: 81

 Issue: 2

 Pages: 447-472DOI: 10.1093/poq/nfx009 Published: SUM 2017

Link to article

Examples of online probing approach:

Online supplement to article

See also:

Meitinger, K., Braun, M., & Behr, D. (2018). Sequence Matters in Online Probing: the Impact of the Order of Probes on Response Quality, Motivation of Respondents, and Answer Content. Survey Research Methods, 12(2), 103-120. https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2018.v12i2.7219

https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/srm/article/view/7219

“Drug Addicts Are Human Beings”

“Drug Addicts are Human Beings” 1938

Concepts and names

This PLOSOne article deserves a careful look.

PLOS Medicine

I studied operations research, as a discipline, in JHU Prof Charles Flagle’s NIMH T32 program’s regular workgroup series and seminars on Operations Research in Mental Health, with a reach back to ‘efficiency studies’ of 100+ years ago (leading to assembly line cost savings) and learning WE Deming’s work to re-build the Japanese economy after WWII. Flagle stressed context, as in this VA oriented contribution.

We used Deming’s quality control concepts to construct our Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) field survey’s multi-stage sequenced sampling design (MSSS) in 1980, published in 1985:

Anthony et al., Archives of General Psychiatry, 1985

I am hopeful that ‘Implementation Science’ will emerge with its own theory, concepts, principles, and approaches, and with more than a ‘purple passion,’ as fields sometimes emerge in the public health sciences.

Deming

Flagle:

Charles D. Flagle, (2002) Some Origins of Operations Research in the Health Services. Operations Research 50(1):52-60.

OR origins 

Iraq and methamphetamine in 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/world/middleeast/iraq-drug-addiction-meth.htmlLink to NYT article

The Distracting Draw Of Smartphones

Link to transcript. 2-3 minute podcast

The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief'

The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief'
by Terry Gross

FA - September 9, 2019

Journalist Stephen Kinzer reveals how CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb worked in the 1950s and early '60s to develop mind control drugs and deadly toxins that could be used against enemies.

Link to article

Online resource for you to monitor

Prof. Samet’s Informative Newsletter from his R25 program

Vaping in the news

Vaping in the news link.

Johns Hopkins Opens New Center for Psychedelic Research

Hopkins center article

Don’t believe every cats and dogs story you’ve been told.