Risk Analysis: Celebrating the Accomplishments and Embracing Ongoing Challenges

As part of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis and Risk Analysis: An International Journal, this essay reviews the 10 most important accomplishments of risk analysis from 1980 to 2010, outlines major accomplishments in three major categories from 2011 to 2019, discusses how editors circulate authors’ accomplishments, and proposes 10 major risk-related challenges for 2020–2030. Authors conclude that the next decade will severely test the field of risk analysis.     

Gender differences in social workers’ assessments and help-giving strategies towards single parents

The study investigates Swedish male and female social workers’ assessments and help-giving strategies towards single parents applying for income support. The study was carried out with the help of a vignette distributed as a mail questionnaire. Results show that social workers tend to conform to assessments and help-giving strategies that are consistent with expectations linked to their own gender role.     

Quality of work and job satisfaction: comparing female part-time work in four European countries

Adding to the debate on the integrative or marginalizing nature of female part-time work, this article provides a comparative analysis of the implications of female part-time work for different intrinsic job quality dimensions and job satisfaction. Drawing on national micro-data from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, our multivariate analyses show cross-national similarities in terms of lower job learning opportunities for female part-timers. We found a significantly higher incidence of repetitiveness only among Swedish female part-timers and lower degrees of task discretion among British, Dutch, and Swedish women working part-time hours. Female part-timers were either equally satisfied with their work as female full-timers or even more satisfied. This held true also after accounting for the lower intrinsic job quality of part-time work. While women working part-time hours were as affected by their job quality characteristics as were full-timers, we conclude that the shorter hours of work per se provide an important additional source of job satisfaction.     

Does Iconicity in Pictographs Matter? The Influence of Iconicity and Numeracy on Information Processing,Decision Making,and Liking in an Eye‐Tracking Study

Researchers recommend the use of pictographs in medical risk communication to improve people's risk comprehension and decision making. However, it is not yet clear whether the iconicity used in pictographs to convey risk information influences individuals’ information processing and comprehension. In an eye‐tracking experiment with participants from the general population (N = 188), we examined whether specific types of pictograph icons influence the processing strategy viewers use to extract numerical information. In addition, we examined the effect of iconicity and numeracy on probability estimation, recall, and icon liking. This experiment used a 2 (iconicity: blocks vs. restroom icons) × 2 (scenario: medical vs. nonmedical) between‐subject design. Numeracy had a significant effect on information processing strategy, but we found no effect of iconicity or scenario. Results indicated that both icon types enabled high and low numerates to use their default way of processing and extracting the gist of the message from the pictorial risk communication format: high numerates counted icons, whereas low numerates used large‐area processing. There was no effect of iconicity in the probability estimation. However, people who saw restroom icons had a higher probability of correctly recalling the exact risk level. Iconicity had no effect on icon liking. Although the effects are small, our findings suggest that person‐like restroom icons in pictographs seem to have some advantages for risk communication. Specifically, in nonpersonalized prevention brochures, person‐like restroom icons may maintain reader motivation for processing the risk information.     

Diffusion Indexes With Sparse Loadings

The use of large-dimensional factor models in forecasting has received much attention in the literature with the consensus being that improvements on forecasts can be achieved when comparing with standard models. However, recent contributions in the literature have demonstrated that care needs to be taken when choosing which variables to include in the model. A number of different approaches to determining these variables have been put forward. These are, however, often based on ad hoc procedures or abandon the underlying theoretical factor model. In this article, we will take a different approach to the problem by using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) as a variable selection method to choose between the possible variables and thus obtain sparse loadings from which factors or diffusion indexes can be formed. This allows us to build a more parsimonious factor model that is better suited for forecasting compared to the traditional principal components (PC) approach. We provide an asymptotic analysis of the estimator and illustrate its merits empirically in a forecasting experiment based on U.S. macroeconomic data. Overall we find that compared to PC we obtain improvements in forecasting accuracy and thus find it to be an important alternative to PC. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Urban and peri-urban agriculture and its implication on food and nutrition insecurity in northern Ghana: a socio-spatial analysis along the urban–rural continuum

Food and nutrition insecurity remains a challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. Several studies have examined food and nutrition insecurity in urban or rural areas but have not captured the whole continuum. Between November and December 2013, 240 households were surveyed along the urban–rural continuum in Northern Ghana. The study objective was to understand the socio-spatial dynamics of household food and nutrition insecurity and to investigate the role played by urban, peri-urban and rural agriculture. The study found that there was more involvement in agriculture in rural areas compared to peri-urban areas and urban areas. Households from urban areas were more food insecure (HFIAS >?11) compared to their counterparts in peri-urban and the rural areas. Stunting increased by 3.4 times (p?=?0.048) among households located in the peri-urban area. Wasting was reduced by 0.16 times among household that produced staple food or vegetables (p?=?0.011). Overweight was reduced by 0.04 times among households that produced livestock (p?=?0.031). The results reveal a socio-spatial dimension of food and nutrition insecurity that is related to agricultural activities.     

Producing public goods in networks: Some effects of social comparison and endogenous network change

As actors participate in the production of public goods, processes of social comparison may affect the decisions about the individual contributions as well as the endogenously changing structure of an underlying social network. This leads to the transformation of an ordinary n-player Prisoner's Dilemma of collective action into an n-player coordination game. The paper uses agent-based simulations to trace the formation of public goods while varying network characteristics, such as density, segregation, or the strength of relationships. Additionally, the usage of both a forward- and a backward-looking agent model shows possible implications of different assumptions about the actors’ decision making.     

On the reciprocity of connections in weighted and unweighted networks

Bivariate Bernoulli and bivariate geometric distributions are proposed to model reciprocity in weighted and unweighted networks. Sampling properties of commonly used reciprocity measures are studied, under both presence and absence of reciprocity. Extensions to situations where link parameters depend on outgoing and incoming nodes are investigated. Results are illustrated with a data set, on 50 anesthesia providers at a hospital, that describes the number of times an anesthesia provider starting an operation transfers his/her responsibilities to another anesthesia provider.