Which Voluntary Organizations Function as Schools of Democracy? Civic Engagement in Voluntary Organizations and Political Participation

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Voluntary organizations have been praised as “schools of democracy” that promote citizens’ political...     

Daily and season-long fantasy sports participation and gambling-related problems among a sample of college students at three universities

Traditionally, fantasy sports have been played in season-long leagues, but recently daily fantasy sports (DFS) have emerged, allowing participants to play fantasy contests over shorter periods of time. Although participating in fantasy sports contests with entry fees or deposits could be considered a form of gambling, very few studies have examined associations between fantasy sport participation and gambling-related problems. Using a 2016 sample of college students (N = 941) at three institutions, this study examined associations between fantasy sports participation (season-long and DFS) and (1) gambling, (2) gambling frequency, and (3) endorsing DSM-5 gambling disorder (GD) criteria. The study found that engagement with fantasy sports and paying to play increased the likelihood of gambling and more frequent gambling. Respondents who paid an entry fee/deposit to play fantasy sports gambled more frequently than those who did not, and respondents who participated in DFS endorsed more DSM-5 GD criteria than those who did not. Because of the association found between DFS play and gambling-related problems in some participants, the study suggests that mental health professionals who treat clients with gambling problems be cognizant of DFS and that some clients might be experiencing problems with DFS.     

BRIDES FOR SALE: CROSS‐BORDER MARRIAGES AND FEMALE IMMIGRATION

Developed East Asian countries import a large number of women from abroad as brides every year, although such cross‐border marriages virtually did not exist 20 years ago. With a theoretical framework and empirical evidence, we argue that developed Asian countries' demand for foreign brides is the consequence of improvement in women's economic status and gender‐discriminative household arrangements that insufficiently incorporate women's improved status in marriage. We offer sets of empirical evidence in line with our argument, using various macro‐ and microlevel datasets. (JEL A12, J12, J61)     

Mobile Phone Usage Preferences: The Contributing Factors of Personality,Social Anxiety and Loneliness

Psychological factors and social relationships are important components that influence an individual’s communication style. This paper aims to examine the association of personality factors, social anxiety (SA) and loneliness with mobile phone (MP) usage preferences on the basis of voice calling and text messaging. Malaysian MP users (N = 187) completed four questionnaires (Mobile Phone Usage Questionnaire, Big Five Inventory, Interaction Anxiousness Scale and UCLA Loneliness Scale) on paper or online via a web-link. Multiple regression analyses revealed that personality, SA and loneliness broadly predicted preferences for voice calling or text messaging. Further analyses examining the predictability of time spent on voice calls/text messaging and number of people called/exchanged text messages also revealed some significant findings in regards to the openness-to-experience personality dimension, loneliness and SA. The findings of this research have important implications to tailoring the delivery of psychological services to individuals diagnosed with chronic loneliness and SA.     

Catching‐up or Leapfrogging in the Indian IT Service Sector: Windows of Opportunity,Path‐creating,and Moving up the Value Chain

Indian IT service firms are successfully competing with world leaders and research on the industry is emerging. Providing analysis at firm rather than industry level, this article identifies the windows of opportunity open to Indian firms, with the following findings: (i) the catching‐up process by Indian IT firms can be classified as a three‐stage ‘body shopping–offshoring–global delivery model’, comparable with the three steps in original equipment, own‐design and own‐brand manufacturing; (ii) the window of opportunity for Indian firms was primarily the techno‐economic paradigm shift, and secondarily the government's regulation and support of the industry; and (iii) Indian firms initially partially re‐invented their own path by offshoring and created their own global delivery model, gradually moving to higher value‐added services.     

Methods for estimating relative risk in studies of common binary outcomes

Studying the effect of exposure or intervention on a dichotomous outcome is very common in medical research. Logistic regression (LR) is often used to determine such association which provides odds ratio (OR). OR often overestimates the effect size for prevalent outcome data. In such situations, use of relative risk (RR) has been suggested. We propose modifications in Zhang and Yu and Diaz-Quijano methods. These methods were compared with stratified Mantel Haenszel method, LR, log binomial regression (LBR), Zhang and Yu method, Poisson/Cox regression, modified Poisson/Cox regression, marginal probability method, COPY method, inverse probability of treatment weighted LBR, and Diaz-Quijano method. Our proposed modified Diaz-Quijano (MDQ) method provides RR and its confidence interval similar to those estimated by modified Poisson/Cox and LBRs. The proposed modifications in Zhang and Yu method provides better estimate of RR and its standard error as compared to Zhang and Yu method in a variety of situations with prevalent outcome. The MDQ method can be used easily to estimate the RR and its confidence interval in the studies which require reporting of RRs. Regression models which directly provide the estimate of RR without convergence problems such as the MDQ method and modified Poisson/Cox regression should be preferred.     

Eliciting Survival Expectations of the Elderly in Low-Income Countries: Evidence From India

We examine several methodological considerations when eliciting probabilistic expectations in a developing country context using the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI). We conclude that although, on average, individuals are able to understand the concept of probability, responses are sensitive to framing effects and to own versus hypothetical-person effects. We find that overall, people are pessimistic about their survival probabilities compared with state-specific life tables and that socioeconomic status does influence beliefs about own survival expectations as found in previous literature in other countries. Higher levels of education and income have a positive association with survival expectations, and these associations persist even when conditioning on self-reported health. The results remain robust to several alternative specifications. We then compare the survival measures with objective measures of health. We find that activities of daily life, height, and low hemoglobin levels covary with subjective expectations in expected directions.     

A residual-based test for autocorrelation in quantile regression models

Quantile regression (QR) models have been increasingly employed in many applied areas in economics. At the early stage, applications in the QR literature have usually used cross-sectional data, but the recent development has seen an increase in the use of QR in both time-series and panel data sets. However, testing for possible autocorrelation, especially in the context of time-series models, has received little attention. As a rule of thumb, one might attempt to apply the usual Breusch–Godfrey LM test to the residuals of a baseline QR. In this paper, we demonstrate analytically and by Monte Carlo simulations that such an application of the LM test can result in potentially large size distortions, especially in either low or high quantiles. We then propose a correct test (named the QF test) for autocorrelation in QR models, which does not suffer from size distortion. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the proposed test performs fairly well in finite samples, across either different quantiles or different underlying error distributions.