Social welfare functions that satisfy Pareto,anonymity, and neutrality,but not independence of irrelevant alternatives

In the presence of Pareto, non-dictatorship, full domain, and transitivity, an extremely weak independence condition disallows both anonymity and neutrality.     

How Do Heterosexual Undergraduate Students Define Having Sex? A New Approach to an Old Question

This study examined how people define having sex utilizing a new approach to this area of research. A total of 267 men and 327 women rated their degree of confidence that engaging in each of 21 physically intimate behaviors (e.g., penile-vaginal intercourse) counted as “having sex” and then qualitatively explained their reasoning. Separate ratings were made for each behavior when engaged in by the respondent and by his or her partner with someone else. Results showed that, as in previous studies, for both sexes, some behaviors (e.g., penile-vaginal intercourse) were far more confidently rated (i.e., “definitely sex”) than were others (e.g., oral-genital stimulation). Further, both men and women were significantly more certain that a behavior counted as “having sex” when considering their partner's behavior outside the relationship than when they considered their own behavior. Finally, the order in which the two scenarios (i.e., self versus partner) was presented significantly affected participants’ certainty. Qualitative results, paired with quantitative findings, suggest that individuals consider a variety of contextual factors when making these definitional decisions. The methodological and sexual health implications of these results are discussed.     

HEALTH NEEDS OF MIGRANT VIETNAMESE WOMEN IN SOUTH‐WEST BRISBANE: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

This study was conducted in the southwest area of Brisbane, Australia, and is designed to explore and assess the health needs of Vietnamese migrant women. The needs of this group are becoming increasingly urgent due to ageing of the original immigrant refugee community and decreased capacity for support from their children and families. The study used a qualitative research strategy involving focus groups and in‐depth interviews with Vietnamese women between 18–65 years and interviews with Vietnamese health care providers. It shows that the women have had to deal with culture shock, low self‐esteem, lack of friends and relatives, unrecognized professional skills and most importantly in health terms, low socioeconomic status. Significant barriers to access health services and to improved health and well‐being were also identified, such as language difficulties, transportation, time, and knowledge about health education. Recognition of specific requirements of sub‐populations as well as broader socio‐economic and cultural determinants of health should be a guide to more effective planning and implementation of health promotion strategies. The changing needs, over time, of these sub‐populations should also be recognized.     

Sociotropic Concerns and Support for Counterterrorism Policies*

Objective. An individual's personal experiences and perception of the collective experience are often linked to political attitudes, especially those concerning the national economy. In this article, we examine whether personal concern about terrorism and perceptions of public concern about terrorism affect attitudes about counterterrorism policies. In addition, we evaluate which factor is the strongest predictor across several counterterrorism policies. Method. We analyze individual‐level survey data collected during the fall of 2001. Results. Our results indicate that perceptions of public concerns are the strongest and most consistent predictor of policy attitudes about terrorism. Conclusion. The implications for theory about perceptions of public opinion and the competing role of personal interest and sociotropic concern are discussed.     

Counterintuitive behavior of social systems

This paper addresses several issues of broad concern in the United States: population trends; the quality of urban life; national policy for urban growth; and the unexpected, ineffective, or detrimental results often generated by government programs in these areas.The author does attempt to indicate how multiloop feed-back systems (to which our social systems belong) mislead us because our intuition and judgement have been formed to expect behavior different from that actually possessed by such systems. At times programs cause exactly the reverse of desired results.It is now possible to explain how such contrary results can happen. There are fundamental reasons why people misjudge the behavior of social systems. There are orderly processes at work that frequently lead people to wrong decisions when faced with complex and highly interacting systems. Until we come to a much better understanding of social systems, we should expect that attempts to develop corrective programs will continue to disappoint us.     

All Politics is Not Local: National Forces in State Abortion Initiatives

Objective. Although research suggests that national forces can play a role in local and state elections, most of this work has only recently begun to examine the potential role of national forces in state or local ballot initiative or referenda elections. Methods. Our research addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the influence of national forces, such as the timing of elections, Supreme Court rulings, the activities of interest groups, and public opinion, on state direct legislation elections. We incorporate national forces into the morality politics framework and derive specific hypotheses. We then test these hypotheses by conducting a multivariate analysis of county–level voting patterns across 16 abortion–related direct legislation elections. Results. Our results confirm most of the hypotheses derived from the morality politics framework, including those concerning the role of national forces. Conclusions. Voting patterns on abortion tend to be influenced by the presence of presidential elections, Supreme Court rulings, interest–group activity, public opinion, partisanship, college education, and conservative religious forces. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on elections, abortion policy, and morality politics.     

Rationality from a computational standpoint

A computationally viable choice function possesses, in addition to other important properties, adaptability - as new alternatives become feasible the set of best alternatives corresponding to the new feasible set can be located without having to reconsider previously rejected alternatives. Adaptability is shown to be closely related to, in fact characteristic of, the standard notions of rationality (expressed in terms of transitivity properties). Adaptability provides a generalization of conventional rationality and in addition leads to the choice function proposed by Schwartz, albeit from an entirely different route, that of computational viability.