RESPONSE LATENCY VERSUS CERTAINTY AS INDEXES OF THE STRENGTH OF VOTING INTENTIONS IN A CATI SURVEY

This CATI study compares two measures of attitude strength,accessibility and certainty, for the purpose of predicting discrepanciesbetween voting intentions and voting behavior. Accessibilitywas indexed by response latency to a voting intention questionand certainty by a question about the finality of the votingintention. Logistic regression showed response latency to bea better predictor of discrepancies between voting intentionsand voting behavior than certainty. The theoretical implicationsof this finding as well as the practical implications of a methodfor measuring response latencies in CATI election studies arediscussed.     

THEORY AND METHOD IN STATUS ATTAINMENT RESEARCH*

This paper analyzes a contradiction between theory and method in status attainment research. The authors argue that the Meadian social psychology adopted by the status attainment researchers is incompatible with causal modeling which they use as their principal analytic tool, because Mead's ideas are inconsistent with any method which assumes unidirectional causality. A symbolic interactionist interpretation of the process of status attainment is offered in place of the causal interpretation. The symbolic interactionist interpretation removes the contradiction between theory and method and is, in addition, shown to be compatible with current sociological knowledge of the process of education. Finally, it is argued that the symbolic interactionist interpretation is also compatible with American political language, while the causal interpretation is not, and that therefore the adoption of the symbolic interactionist interpretation would permit the findings of status attainment research to speak to the question of the degree of equality of opportunity in American society as that question is asked in American politics.     

INDUSTRY EQUILIBRIUM IN NEW PRODUCT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT: A SIMPLE APPROACH

In this paper the economic framework of competition in location and/or product variety is extended to include the uncertainty accompanying new product research and development. A simple approach describing the equilibrium industry structure is first presented. Then the effects on a research industry of parametric changes in research costs such as implied by government drug policies is considered. Contrary to the implications of standard supply and demand analysis, these parametric changes are found to affect the level of research, the extent of new product innovation, and research concentration in an ambiguous fashion. For example, it is shown that an increase in research costs can increase the equilibrium level of expected innovation.     

AN EVALUATION OF A COGNITIVE THEORY OF RESPONSE-ORDER EFFECTS IN SURVEY MEASUREMENT

Previous research has documented effects of the order in whichresponse choices are offered to respondents using closed-endedsurvey items, but no theory of the psychological sources ofthese effects has yet been proposed. This paper offers sucha theory drawn from a variety of psychological research. Usingdata from a split-ballot experiment in the 1984 General SocialSurvey involving a variant of Kohn's parental values measure,we test some predictions made by the theory about what kindof response order effect would be expected (a primacy effect)and among which respondents it should be strongest (those lowin cognitive sophistication). These predictions are confirmed.We also test the "form-resistant correlation" hypothesis. Althoughcorrelations between items are altered by changes m responseorder, the presence and nature of the latent value dimensionunderlying these responses is essentially unaffected.     

A SURVEY OF TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES FOR PREDOCTORAL PSYCHOLOGY INTERNS IN MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY

The major clinical training experience for future psychologists is the one-year predoctoral internship. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of marriage and family therapy training available to predoctoral psychology interns. All identifiable internship programs were surveyed to determine training opportunities for doctoral psychology students interested in marriage and family therapy training. A questionnaire was developed and mailed to all predoctoral internshipslisted in the 1983–84 Internship Programs in Professional Psychology (IPPP) and 18 additional sites known to offer marriage and family therapy training. Results indicate that relatively few psychology internships offer substantial training in marriage and family therapy. A listing of internships offering significant levels of training was developed.     

PATHOLOGICAL INTERNET COMMUNITIES: A NEW DIRECTION FOR SEXUAL DEVIANCE RESEARCH IN A POST MODERN ERA

This article explores the impact of the Internet and related technologies on the nature of deviant behavior, deviant communities, and the future of deviance research. The idea that pathological communities, once largely suppressed by time, space, and societal restraints, can now create and use virtual communities is focal. Those new communities may expand their numbers and/or pathology, while reinforcing their rationales for rule violations. Investigation of these new virtual communities is especially complex for both conceptual and methodological reasons: identity is hard to ascertain in cyber-settings; nationality, ethnicity and other background traits and standard (e.g., random) sampling methods are not feasible. Nonetheless, the impact of communications technology on the creation and expansion of pathologically deviant communities requires exploration to determine whether, for example, immersion and social support lead to satiation-catharsis, more aggressive real-time behavior, and/or increases in the depth and number of pathological sexual preferences.     

AN ASSESSMENT OF CAUSAL INFERENCE IN SMOKING INITIATION RESEARCH AND A FRAMEWORK FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Reliably identifying the causal factors underlying youth smoking initiation is an important part of developing effective smoking prevention programs and shaping other types of smoking-related policies. The establishment of reliable scientific evidence in support of a causal link between cigarette advertising and youth smoking initiation depends on both rich longitudinal data as well as careful empirical applications. We examine basic principles of empirical scientific investigation of potential causal relationships, discuss findings of recent research on causal factors of youth smoking, and evaluate evidence from the public health literature regarding the effects of cigarette advertising on youth smoking . ( JEL I18, C5)     

RESPONSE LATENCY AS A SIGNAL TO QUESTION PROBLEMS IN SURVEY RESEARCH

This research explores the potential utility of response latencyas an index of question problems in survey research. The timerespondents took to answer three types of bad questions wascompared to the time they took to answer the repaired versionsof the questions. Questions containing a superfluous negativeand double-barreled questions took longer to answer than nearlyidentical questions without these problems. Repaired versionsof questions soliciting frequency estimates, however, took longerto answer than their problematic counter parts. The resultsare discussed in the context of a model of question answering,and their implications for survey methodology are explored.     

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE IN EMOTIONS RESEARCH: NEW STANDARDS FOR ANGER IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN CHILDREARING

A considerable body of historical work has recently been devoted to the study of emotion. Particular attention has been drawn to major changes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Western emotional standards, and probably in emotional experience as well, as West European and American society moved toward more commercial, secular bases and as intense community ties diminished. This article summarizes and evaluates this literature, assessing the importance of dealing with change, and the causation and impact of change, in emotions research. Although change is not uniform in the history of the study of emotion, such that the early modern transformation of love, anger, grief, and other emotions stands out, important shifts have developed in more recent decades as well. The second half of the article offers a case study of one such shift, as childrearing standards toward anger moved from an emphasis on channeling the emotion toward useful ends to an effort to repress or defuse anger through talking-out. This change, with interesting echoes in American adult perceptions, can be explained by new behavioral science emphases (on aggression) but particularly by the shift toward a service, and thus customer-pleasing, economy.     

A CROSS-SECTION ANALYSIS OF THE DEMAND FOR NEW AND USED AUTOMOBILES IN THE UNITED STATES

This paper investigates the effects of income and other family characteristics on the demand for new and used automobiles. The multinomial logit probability model is employed to explain a family's choice of age and number of automobiles. Two cross-section surveys are analyzed to ascertain how well these components of demand can be explained by socio-economic variables.     

WHERE DID ALL THE SAVING GO? A LOOK AT THE RECENT DECLINE IN THE PERSONAL SAVING RATE

The inadequacy of aggregate saving is often cited as an explanation of the low levels of capital accumulation and productivity growth in the United States. Aggregate saving is low in large part because of the steep decline in the personal saving rate that has occurred since 1975. This paper uses a modified life-cycle model to analyze the determinants of this recent decline in the personal saving rate. The empirical results do not support the hypothesis that the decline in the saving rate was the result of a reduction in the real rate of return. The reduction in the rate of growth of income and the changing demographic profile of the labor force are the most important factors in accounting for the fall in the personal saving rate.     

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND DEMOCRACY IN A NEW DEMOCRACY

Taiwan made the transition from political authoritarianism to democracy in the late 1980s. Data from representative samples of the Taiwan population in 1992 and 1997 show how, in the early phase of democratization, citizens varied in the extent of their democratic political behavior and attitudes. I attempt to explain these variations on the basis of variables drawn from social capital theory (participation in voluntary organizations and trust), controlling for the individual's position in the social structure (sex, age, ethnicity, marital status, socioeconomic status, and social class). The findings of the multivariate analysis support only one of the social capital hypotheses: The more organizations one participates in, the more one engages in various forms of democratic political behavior . However, organizational participation has no effect on democratic political attitudes . There is no positive reciprocal relationship between the two key social capital variables of organizational participation and trust. Trust, instead of having a positive effect, either has no net effect (on some forms of democratic political behavior) or a significant negative effect (on democratic political attitudes and petitioning a government agency). The political context of Taiwan may explain why people who distrusted Taiwan's political system were more democratic and more tolerant in their attitudes than those who had more political trust.     

DIAGNOSTICS FOR REDESIGNING SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES: MEASURING WORK IN THE CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY

Between 1986 and 1993, a program of questionnaire design andcognitive research was conducted by the Census Bureau and Bureauof Labor Statistics, to improve labor force measurements inthe Current Population Survey (CPS). As part of the researchprogram, diagnostic measures for systematically testing andevaluating alternative questionnaire versions were developedand applied. This article reports results of applying two methods,special follow-up probes and hypothetical vignettes, to themeasurement of "work" in the CPS. These measures provided bothdirect and indirect information about problems of respondentcomprehension and reporting errors. In this article, we analyzeresults using these diagnostic measures to evaluate the effectof questionnaire revisions on reporting of work activities,and we assess the consistency and usefulness of the informationprovided by alternative diagnostic measures for pretesting andselecting questions.     

THE ANSWERING MACHINE GENERATION: WHO ARE THEY AND WHAT PROBLEM DO THEY POSE FOR SURVEY RESEARCH?

Increased incidence of telephone answering machines and theuse of such devices to screen calls pose a potential threatto the representativeness of samples in telephone surveys. Usingdata from nine statewide surveys, this analysis examines theextent to which answering machines are used to screen callsand the demographic characteristics associated with answeringmachine use and call screening. Results show that at most twoto three percent of households use answering machines to screencalls, and that such screening is more likely to take placein households with higher family incomes, outside rural areas,and which include individuals who are younger and have higherlevels of education. While call screening does not presentlythreaten the representativeness of samples in telephone surveys,the increased incidence of answering machines together withthe increased percentage of households indicating these devicesare sometimes used to screen calls demonstrate that the potentialbias from this source is growing.     

MEASUREMENT ERROR IN MACROECONOMIC DATA AND ECONOMICS RESEARCH: DATA REVISIONS,GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT,AND GROSS DOMESTIC INCOME

We use a preanalysis plan to analyze the effect of measurement error on economics research using the fact that the Bureau of Economic Analysis both revises its gross domestic product (GDP) data and also publishes a second, theoretically identical estimate of U.S. output that only differs from GDP due to measurement error: gross domestic income (GDI). Using a sample of 23 models published in top economics journals, we find that reestimating models using revised GDP always gives the same qualitative result as the original publication. Estimating models using GDI instead of GDP gives a different qualitative result for three of 23 models (13%). (JEL C80, C82, E01)