RACE-OF-INTERVIEWER EFFECTS IN A PREELECTION POLL VIRGINIA 1989

All published preelection surveys of the 1989 Virginia gubernatorialcontest overestimated the vote share of the black candidateand eventual victor, Douglas Wilder. We offer a "social desirability"interpretation of the polls' inaccuracies and hypothesize thatclaiming support for Wilder was the socially desirable responsefor some whites, especially when the interviewer was black.We show a race-of-interviewer effect on the vote intention ofwhite respondents of 8–11 percentage points in a preelectionsurvey of Virginia voters. The effects were greatest among whiteDemocrats and among whites who were more uncertain of theirvote intention. We discuss the implications of these findingsfor race-of-interviewer research and for improving the accuracyof preelection forecasts in contests with black and white opposingcandidates.     

The Association between Child Abuse and Attempted Suicide

Summary A recent survey by the authors has demonstrated that attemptedsuicide is common in parents, particularly mothers, who abusetheir children. However, the nature of the association betweenchild abuse and attempted suicide is complicated. Here somepossible types of association are suggested. In management ofchild abuse, special note should be taken of a history of attemptedsuicide in the parents because, in some cases, it suggests apoor prognosis. Similarly, young children of parents who attemptsuicide should be assessed in case they are at risk of abuse.     

The Impact of Character-training Courses Upon Young People: an Empirical Investigation

Summary This article reports an attempt to assess the impact of character-trainingcourses upon young people. Seventy-seven young people from aLancashire-based company were interviewed both before, and aftertheir participation on the courses. From previous studies andliterature produced by the courses, five possible effects werehypothesized: (1) That the courses increase the social competenceof trainees. (2) That following the courses young people putmore into and get more out of life. (3) Trainees subsequentlydevelop new leisure interests. (4) The courses develop leadershipqualities. (5) Following courses young people are more likelyto participate in community service. The interview scheduleswere designed to test these hypotheses. Comparisons betweenreplies received from pre- and post-trainees confirmed onlyone of the hypotheses: following their training the young peopledid develop leisure interests related to the content of thecourses. Otherwise the data collected before and after the coursesdid not follow the predicted patterns. Further analysis of thedata suggested that the courses have an additional and unintendedeffect: namely that they make young people less settled at work     

Convergence of Heavy-tailed Monte Carlo Markov Chain Algorithms

Abstract.  In this paper, we use recent results of Jarner & Roberts ( Ann. Appl. Probab., 12, 2002, 224) to show polynomial convergence rates of Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithms with polynomial target distributions, in particular random-walk Metropolis algorithms, Langevin algorithms and independence samplers. We also use similar methodology to consider polynomial convergence of the Gibbs sampler on a constrained state space. The main result for the random-walk Metropolis algorithm is that heavy-tailed proposal distributions lead to higher rates of convergence and thus to qualitatively better algorithms as measured, for instance, by the existence of central limit theorems for higher moments. Thus, the paper gives for the first time a theoretical justification for the common belief that heavy-tailed proposal distributions improve convergence in the context of random-walk Metropolis algorithms. Similar results are shown to hold for Langevin algorithms and the independence sampler, while results for the mixing of Gibbs samplers on uniform distributions on constrained spaces are rather different in character.     

Perceptions of Stigma and User Involvement in Child Welfare Services

Correspondence to Dr E. M. Scholte, Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences/Centre for Research on Youth Welfare, University of Leiden, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. Summary This paper explores the perceptions of social disqualificationor ‘stigma’ that service users attributed to publicchild welfare services in random samples of service users takenfrom the Netherlands, a part of Spain (Catalonia) and a partof the United Kingdom (Wales). It was found that, in all threesamples, foster and residential care invoked the greatest senseof stigma, while the health related and the preventive familyservices were perceived as the least stigmatizing types of publicwelfare services. Comparative analysis further revealed thata positive attitude towards the use of public welfare services,a perception of supportive or non-stigmatizing social normsregarding the use of such services, and a perception of publicwelfare services as helpful correlated in all three sampleswith higher levels of user satisfaction and involvement in theservices. It was further found that, in the British and Spanishsamples, a positive attitude towards public welfare services,as well as a perception of public welfare services as helpfulfor their recipients, were the predominating factors promotinghigher levels of satisfactory user involvement in the services,while, in the Dutch sample, a perception of supportive socialnorms was the factor that most promoted satisfactory user involvement.     

Academic stratification and education plans: a reassessment*

On a suggéré que le système interne de stratification dans les écoles joue un plus grand rôle dans les projets scolaires des étudiants que ne fait le milieu social d'où ils sortent. Dans cette étude, on propose que cette interprétation est fausse; l'erreur résulterait, au niveau conceptuel, d'une importance excessive donnée à l'autonomie des structures pédagogiques, et, au niveau analytique, de l'utilisation d'une technique empirique qui aggrave l'erreur. On présente ici et une autre orientation théorique et une autre technique méthodique, lesquelles permettent de préciser avec plus d'exactitude la corrélation entre les variables significatifs. It has been suggested that the internal school stratification system has more to do with the educational plans of students than does the class background of the student. In this paper it is suggested that this is an incorrect interpretation resulting from, at the conceptual level, an overemphasis on the autonomy of educational structures and from, at the analysis level, the use of an empirical technique which exacerbates the error. An alternative theoretical orientation and methodological technique which more clearly specifies the interrelationship among the salient variables is presented.     

EVIDENCE ON PRICE ADJUSTMENT COSTS IN U.S. MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

This paper investigates the degree of rigidity in prices of manufactured products in the U.S., conditional on labor costs. I extend Rotemberg's model of quadratic price-adjustment costs and find that prices are costly to adjust: after a year, about 40 percent of adjustment remains to be completed for aggregate manufacturing, while for some industries the adjustment is twice as slow. But manufacturing prices are less sluggish than prices in the U.S. economy as a whole. Thus, nominal rigidity in other markets, such as those for services or labor, may be important.     

Immigration,trade and ‘ethnic surplus value’: a critique of Indo–Canadian transnational networks

It is often argued that countries hosting large populations of skilled immigrants might benefit from their cultural and economic competencies in the development of international trade networks. Yet, in so doing, the state can be criticized for fetishizing the ethnic immigrant in market terms in order to extract ‘ethnic surplus value’. In this article, I examine these debates empirically in the case of India–Canada immigration and trade using interviews with traders, officials and immigrant entrepreneurs in British Columbia, Canada. Findings suggest that the supposedly positive relationship between trade and immigration is not obvious in the India–Canada case and there is no convincing evidence of the state managing successfully to extract ‘ethnic surplus value’. Rather, what appears most compelling is evidence of what can be termed a discourse of regional disadvantage circulated by immigrant and non‐immigrant business actors alike regarding the nature of India–Canada relations. Interview respondents link this discourse of disadvantage to the regional history of Indian immigration to Canada, which has traditionally comprised Sikhs from rural Punjab, and it functions to essentialize Indian immigrant ethnicity spatially within both the Indian and Canadian contexts. I focus on the theme of the extraction of ‘ethnic surplus value’ and regional disadvantage to reveal the limitations of both arguments about the economic nature of immigrant‐led network development. In both cases, I challenge these ideas with a critical emphasis on the role of immigrant agency and offer a more nuanced and complicated reading of the role of the state. As a result, I offer a detailed reading of how socio‐spatial immigrant networks are formed and operate at the regional scale, and how this complicates more abstract theoretical formulations regarding the trade and immigration nexus.