The use of power transformations in small area estimation

Sample surveys are usually designed and analysed to produce estimates for larger areas. Nevertheless, sample sizes are often not large enough to give adequate precision for small area estimates of interest. To overcome such difficulties, borrowing strength from related small areas via modelling becomes essential. In line with this, we propose components of variance models with power transformations for small area estimation. This paper reports the results of a study aimed at incorporating the power transformation in small area estimation for improving the quality of small area predictions. The proposed methods are demonstrated on satellite data in conjunction with survey data to estimate mean acreage under a specified crop for counties in Iowa.     

Boundary Spaces

While shows like The X-Files and 24 have merged conspiracy theories with popular science (fictions), some video games have been pushing the narrative even further. Electronic Art's Majestic game was released in July 2001 and quickly generated media buzz with its unusual multi-modal gameplay. Mixing phone calls, faxes, instant messaging, real and "fake' websites, and email, the game provides a fascinating case of an attempt at new directions for gaming communities. Through story, mode of playing, and use of technology, Majestic highlights the uncertain status of knowledge, community and self in a digital age; at the same time, it allows examination of alternative ways of understanding games' role and purpose in the larger culture. Drawing on intricate storylines involving government conspiracies, techno-bio warfare, murder and global terror, players were asked to solve mysteries in the hopes of preventing a devastating future of domination. Because the game drew in both actual and Majestic-owned/-designed websites, it constantly pushed those playing the game right to borders where simulation collides with " factuality'. Given the wide variety of "legitimate' conspiracy theory, alien encounters and alternative science web pages, users often could not distinguish when they were leaving the game's pages and venturing into " real' World Wide Web sites. Its further use of AOL's instant messenger system, in which gamers spoke not only to bots but to other players, pushed users to evaluate constantly both the status of those they were talking to and the information being provided. Additionally, the game required players to occupy unfamiliar subject positions, ones where agency was attenuated, and which subsequently generated a multi-layered sense of unease among players. This mix of authentic and staged information in conjunction with technologically mediated roles highlights what are often seen as phenomenon endemic to the Internet itself; that is, the destabilization of categories of knowing, relating, and being.     

An Empowerment Approach in Teaching a Class about Autism for Social Work Students

Social workers are being asked to respond to the rapidly increasing number of individuals and families affected by Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, the curricula in schools of social work have limited content on disabilities. This article describes a course which prepares social work students for work with individuals with ASD through an empowerment approach in an ever-changing socio-cultural and political environment. This approach changes the focus of disabilities from a narrow perspective on particular services and rehabilitation to a broader concern with human rights, social inclusion and quality of life. The article describes the development of the course in collaboration with a university disability program, the areas of emphasis for the course (family focused, interdisciplinary, lifespan) and the multiple modes of delivery. The implications of teaching the course as an elective or as integrating it further into the curriculum are discussed.     

Patterns of Volunteer Activity in Professional Associations and Societies

Professional and occupational societies rely on volunteers for leadership, expertise, member recruitment, fundraising, legislative activity, and many other activities. Yet, volunteerism in the professions has received very little analytic attention. This study uses a large, international dataset produced by the American Society of Association Executives to examine patterns of volunteer activity in 23 professional associations and societies. A comparative analysis allows us to test widespread theories on the factors that predict volunteer activity in the particular context of professional life, where the motivations to volunteer may vary. Our findings suggest that some patterns of professional volunteer activity mirror what we can expect in a non-professional context (i.e., church or community volunteering), while other patterns are distinct. Our findings have particular relevance in understanding that a professional??s demographic characteristics and voluntary preferences are context-specific and must be accounted for in volunteer recruitment efforts.     

A growth mixture Tobit model: application to AIDS studies

This paper presents an alternative analysis approach to modeling data where a lower detection limit (LOD) and unobserved population heterogeneity exist in a longitudinal data set. Longitudinal data on viral loads in HIV/AIDS studies, for instance, show strong positive skewness and left-censoring. Normalizing such data using a logarithmic transformation seems to be unsuccessful. An alternative to such a transformation is to use a finite mixture model which is suitable for analyzing data which have skewed or multi-modal distributions. There is little work done to simultaneously take into account these features of longitudinal data. This paper develops a growth mixture Tobit model that deals with a LOD and heterogeneity among growth trajectories. The proposed methods are illustrated using simulated and real data from an AIDS clinical study.     

Lessons learned about collaborative evaluation using the Capacity for Applying Project Evaluation (CAPE) framework with school and district leaders

Schools, districts, and state-level educational organizations are experiencing a great shift in the way they do the business of education. This shift focuses on accountability, specifically through the expectation of the effective utilization of evaluative-focused efforts to guide and support decisions about educational program implementation. In as much, education leaders need specific guidance and training on how to plan, implement, and use evaluation to critically examine district and school-level initiatives. One specific effort intended to address this need is through the Capacity for Applying Project Evaluation (CAPE) framework. The CAPE framework is composed of three crucial components: a collection of evaluation resources; a professional development model; and a conceptual framework that guides the work to support evaluation planning and implementation in schools and districts. School and district teams serve as active participants in the professional development and ultimately as formative evaluators of their own school or district-level programs by working collaboratively with evaluation experts. The CAPE framework involves the school and district staff in planning and implementing their evaluation. They are the ones deciding what evaluation questions to ask, which instruments to use, what data to collect, and how and to whom results should be reported. Initially this work is done through careful scaffolding by evaluation experts, where supports are slowly pulled away as the educators gain experience and confidence in their knowledge and skills as evaluators. Since CAPE engages all stakeholders in all stages of the evaluation, the philosophical intentions of these efforts to build capacity for formative evaluation strictly aligns with the collaborative evaluation approach.     

Cohort Differences in Parental Financial Help to Adult Children

In this article, we examine birth cohort differences in parents’ provision of monetary help to adult children with particular focus on the extent to which cohort differences in family structure and the transition to adulthood influence these changes. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study from 1994 to 2010, we compare financial help to children of three respondent cohorts as the parents in these birth cohorts from ages 53–58 to 57–62. We find that transfers to children have increased among more recent cohorts. Two trends—declining family size and children’s delay in marriage—account for part of the increase across cohorts. However, other trends, such as the increase in the number of stepchildren and increasing child’s income level, tend to decrease the observed cohort trend.     

The Congruence Between Adolescents and Their Parents’ Gender-Role Attitudes in Urban Slums of Allahabad,India

Gender role differentiation intensifies during adolescence. The current study explores gender-role attitudes among unmarried young men and women aged 15–21 residing in the slums of Allahabad, India. The survey asked a series of questions about gender role attitudes to young men and women and to their parents (relating to work and educational attainment for girls, marriage and husband–wife relations). Since either the father or mother responded to the parent questionnaire, data analyses are based on subsets of mother–daughter pairs (n = 2124), mother–son pairs (n = 2135), father–son pairs (n = 788), and father–daughter pairs (n = 452). No significant differences emerged in terms of adolescent background characteristics of the four groups and the adolescent population of the study. A fair amount of congruence in gender role attitudes was found in the mother–daughter and father–son pairs for most items. However, a similar pattern was not visible in the father–daughter or mother–son pairs. Multivariate regression analysis indicated strong influence of parental attitudes on the adolescent’s attitudes. While education led to a shift in girls’ attitudes to gender egalitarian ones, it did not impact the attitudes of adolescent boys.