The health expectancies of older Australians

Health expectancies of the states ‘Disability-free’ and ‘Disabled’ are estimated for Australian females and males aged 60 and over, both by cohort from 1980 and current for survey years 1981, 1988, 1993 and 1998. Modifications of recently developed logistic regression techniques are used rather than the standard 1971 method due to Sullivan. Results from the three later surveys are broadly similar and differ in important respects from those of the 1981 survey. Based on the last three surveys our estimates support the view that, depending on age, two-thirds or more of the increase in female life expectancy over the decade 1988–1998 is spent in the Disabled state. The situation is worse for elderly men, for whom all of the increased years of expected life are estimated to be spent in the Disabled state. The findings do not support rectangularization of the survival curve or Disability-free survival curve.     

A Note on Trend Decomposition: The 'Classical' Approach Revisited with an Application to Surface Temperature Trends

This note reconsiders the 'classical' approach to trend estimation and presents a modern treatment of this technique that enables trend filters which incorporate end-effects to be constructed easily and efficiently. The approach is illustrated by estimating recent Northern Hemispheric temperature trends. In so doing, it shows how classical trend models may be selected in empirical applications and indicates how this choice determines the properties of the latest trend estimates.     

Drawing out culture: productive methods to measure cognition and resonance

Theories of culture and action, especially after the cognitive turn, have developed more complex understandings of how unconscious, embodied, internalized culture motivates action. As our theories have become more sophisticated, our methods for capturing these internal processes have not kept up and we struggle to adjudicate among theories of how culture shapes action. This article discusses what I call “productive” methods: methods that observe people creating a cultural object. Productive methods, I argue, are well suited for drawing out moments of shared automatic cognition and resonance. To demonstrate the value of productive methods, I describe my method of asking focus group participants to devise and draw AIDS campaign posters collectively. I then 1) show how this productive method made visible distinct moments of both automatic and deliberative cognition, 2) offer an operational definition of resonance and demonstrate how the process of drawing revealed moments of resonance, and 3) suggest how this method allowed me to investigate the relationship between cognition and resonance and their effect on action. To conclude, I discuss strategies for using productive methods and advocate for their use in measuring culture.     

Business cycle asymmetry and duration dependence: an international perspective

The business cycle behaviour of macroeconomic variables has long been of interest to economists, and attention has recently focused on two aspects of this behaviour - the 'stylized facts' of cyclical asymmetry and duration dependence. Cyclical asymmetry is where the economy behaves differently over the expansion and recession phases of the business cycle. Duration dependence, on the other hand, concerns the question of whether, for example, the probability of a cyclical expansion is dependent on how long the expansion has been running, or whether business cycle lengths tend to cluster around a particular duration. Using an international data set containing annual output per capita for 22 countries, we focus attention on non-parametric techniques for extracting cyclical components and for modelling and testing asymmetry and duration dependence. Once outliers, primarily associated with wars, are omitted, there is little international evidence of asymmetry. There is considerably more evidence of duration dependence, which is detected in the majority of countries using a variety of non-parametric tests. There is thus widespread evidence against the constant hazard hypothesis that cyclical patterns occur simply by chance. Business cycle durations do appear to cluster around certain values, with the average duration being about 3.6 years.     

Issues of Stability and Change in Interest Development

Interest development is not an easily studied process. There are at least 4 methods for examining the process of stability and change over time: relative stability, absolute stability, profile stability, and structural stability. A program of research that focuses on examining these 4 types of stability is summarized relative to the issues pertinent to the development of vocational interests in children and adolescents.     

A Validation of the Subjective Vitality Scale Using Structural Equation Modeling

Ryan and Fredericks (1997) measure of vitality, thesubjective feeling of being alive and alert, wasdeveloped in the context of a single factor analysis.The present investigation employed structural equationmodeling (SEM) to assess construct validity andutility of the new measure. A large sample (N = 526) wascollected in two waves, allowing the investigators tofurther develop the model proposed by Ryan andFrederick, and to then validate it on a second dataset. The final model is presented, and the process ofachieving that model is discussed, as are the relativestrengths of SEM in test development.     

Estimating the locations and number of change points by the sample-splitting method

This paper derives a sequential testing and estimation method for the number of change points in structural-change models. In the first step, the parameters are estimated by a one-change model. The null hypothesis that there is no structural change against the alternative of one change is tested. If the null is rejected, then the whole sample is split into two subsamples by using the estimated change point in the previous step as a cutoff point. The same procedure is repeated until the null in each subsample is accepted. We argue that this method can consistently estimate the number, locations and magnitudes of changes. Situations in which the sample splitting method fails are also discussed. Received: April 22, 1997; revised version: October 15, 1999