Evaluative comparisons of distributions of a social variable: Ordering methods

A distribution of a social variable over a population assigns a level or value of the variable to each individual in the population. The present paper continues a study of methods of ordering distributions of a social variable that was begun in an earlier paper. The earlier paper addressed issues of meaningfulness of evaluative comparisons and then examined several fundamental criteria for social evaluation. The present paper focuses on a variety of methods of ordering distributions. It begins with additive extensions of a Pareto principle and then looks at a number of distributional dominance relations, all of which are based on individuals' preferences. Ordering methods that may be only marginally related to individuals' preferences are discussed in the latter part of the paper.     

Life Satisfaction Judgments and Item-Order Effects Across Cultures

We conducted two studies to investigate the item-order effect on life satisfaction judgments. In Study 1, Japanese and American participants completed various life-domain satisfaction items either before or after completing general life satisfaction items. American respondents weighed the best life domains more strongly than Japanese respondents, in particular when they answered domain satisfaction items before making life satisfaction judgments. Overall, Japanese tended to weigh the worst life domains more heavily when making life satisfaction judgments than Americans. We hypothesized that the Japanese patterns of life satisfaction judgments come from the chronic attention to others’ perspective. To examine this hypothesis in Study 2, Japanese participants were exposed to either the “other are not watching” or the “other are watching” manipulation. As expected, when Japanese participants were led to believe that “others are not watching,” they judged their overall life satisfaction based more heavily on the best life domains (like Americans in Study 1).     

Costs and benefits of children: implications for population policy

Family size preferences are strongly affected by parents' perceptions of the value, economic contributions, and costs of children. Better understanding of these factors can help policy-makers to improve the effectiveness of population IEC campaigns, design strategies to persuade couples to have smaller families, assess the relationship between economic development and family size preferences, and devise national population policies and family planning programs that reflect individual choices. Parents in high-fertility countries are more likely to perceive children as productive investments than those in low-fertility countries. Parents in the former countries maintain children are an economic advantage or provide practical assistance in the household; they are less likely to emphasize the psychological advantages of children. As economic development occurs, and parents no longer value children for their economic contributions, psychological and social reasons become more important. Changing fertility preferences is more complex than providing couples with family planning services. Similarly, efforts to persuade families that large families are a burden are successful only when families are already interested in reducing their family size. Efforts to persuade couples to have smaller families are likely to be more successful if there are alternative sources of old-age support available, for example, from increased household savings, public or private pensions, or greater contributions from 1st and 2nd children. Investments in education and training, especially for women and children, would also support these goals.     

Correlations,causes and heuristics in surveys of life satisfaction

Satisfaction with life domains is more highly correlated with interpersonal than with intrapersonal comparisons (Emmons and Diener, 1985). The hypothesis of the present studies is that the high correlations reflect inferences of social comparison from global satisfaction. Paradoxically, such inferences are most likely in private domains (love life, friends), where social information is scarce and relatively unimportant as a determinant of satisfaction. Study I replicates the Emmons-Diener findings, but also finds that subjects judge recent changes more important than social standing as a determinant of life satisfaction, especially in private domains. Study II examines an order effect in judgments of satisfaction. As hypothesized the correlation between social comparison and global satisfaction is higher (in private domains only) when global satisfaction is judged first than when the order of judgment is reversed.     

Discrimination and Well-Being: The Moderating Effects of Agentic Value Orientations

Experiences of discrimination significantly deteriorate both subjective well-being and health; yet some people are more resilient to these negative effects than others. Previous research has considered factors such as identity or socioeconomic status that can help people cope with discrimination. However, the literature has not yet considered the ways in which agentic value orientations may moderate the negative effect of discrimination upon well-being. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on the moderating role of openness versus conservation, and self-enhancement versus self-transcendence values as agentic orientations. Analyzing the European Social Survey Round 6 (2012) with multi-level models, this study demonstrates that both individual and national level agentic orientations moderate some of the effects of discrimination on well-being an health. These findings suggest that agentic values are potentially important cognitive resources from which individuals derive strength from when faced with adverse social experiences.     

Unmet Need for Family Planning in Developing Countries and Implications for Population Policy

Unmet need for family planning has been a core concept in international population discourse for several decades. This article reviews the history of unmet need and the development of increasingly refined methods of its empirical measurement and delineates the main questions that have been raised about unmet need during the past decade, some of which concern the validity of the concept and others its role in policy debates. The discussion draws heavily on empirical research conducted during the 1990s, much of it localized, in‐depth studies combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Of the causes of unmet need other than those related to access to services, three emerge as especially salient: lack of necessary knowledge about contraceptive methods, social opposition to their use, and health concerns about possible side effects. The article argues that the concept of unmet need for family planning, by joining together contraceptive behavior and fertility preferences, encourages an integration of family planning programs and broader development approaches to population policy. By focusing on the fulfillment of individual aspirations, unmet need remains a defensible rationale for the formulation of population policy and a sensible guide to the design of family planning programs.     

Simultaneous estimation of mortality and dispersal rates of an artificially released population

Mark-recapture methods cannot estimate both mortality and dispersal rates of a wild population simultaneously. However, when an artificially cultured population is released into an area, the initial population size and the initial population distribution are usually known. If artificially cultured individuals are released with marks or distinguished from wild individuals or if no wild individual exists in the study area, we can estimate both the mortality and dispersal rates of the artificial population. The numbers of dispersed and dead individuals are estimated from the dispersal rate from the diffusion model and the total decreasing rate estimated from a mark-recapture data. We can estimate both the time-dependent and time-independent dispersal rates from the data. We choose the best fit model that has the smallest value of Akaike's Information Criteria. We also consider ‘concentric circles approximation” of spatial distribution, in which the cumulative and frequency distributions are analytically obtained.     

What is a quality of life indicator?

The concepts of indicator, social indicator, and life quality indicator are defined and exemplified. An indicator is characterized as an observable variable assumed to point to, or estimate, some other (usually unobservable) variable. It is, then, a symptom of something else. An indicator-indicated relation can be functional or it can consist in statistical correlation. It is a corrigible hypothesis, not an arbitrary definition. As such it is best justified when incorporated into a theory, e.g. a mathematical model. A social indicator is of course an indicator belonging to some sociological context. Finally, a quality of life indicator is one that allows one to estimate degrees of well-being. Some of the problems posed by this definition are discussed. The upshot of the discussion is that a better understanding and assessment of the quality of life calls for more intense theoretical and methodological work rather than an increase in the amount of social and environmental statistics. Here as elsewhere data without ideas are sterile when not misleading.     

A fixed-effects multilevel analysis of how community family structure affects individual mortality in Norway

By using register data for the entire Norwegian population aged 50-89 in the period 1980-1999, during which there were about 720,000 deaths, I estimate how the proportions of persons who were divorced or never married in the municipality affected all-cause mortality, net of individual marital status. The data include individual histories of changes in marital status and places of residence, providing a rare opportunity to enter municipality fixed effects into the model, thereby capturing the time-invariant unobserved factors at that level. The positive health externality of marriage that is suggested in the literature is supported by some of the estimates for women. Other estimates--especially those for men--point in the opposite direction. One possible interpretation of these findings is that social cohesion is perhaps not as beneficial for people's health as often claimed, at least not for both sexes. Alternatively, the results may reflect that marriage perhaps undermines rather than strengthens social cohesion, or that other mechanisms are involved-for example, those that are related to people 's perceptions of their health relative to the health of others. Estimates from models without such municipality fixed effects are markedly different, but these also shed doubt on the notion that a high proportion of unmarried persons generally increases individual mortality.     

The social costs of cancer

The annual social costs of cancer, exclusive of economic costs such as medical costs and loss of earnings while incapacitated, are systematically developed. The social costs of cancer are believed significant because they may exceed the economic costs, and resource allocation on the basis of the economic costs alone distorts the socially optimal allocations of such resources. Some twenty-five separate social costs are identified qualitatively from a review of the oncology literature. Included are social costs to the victims of cancer, to the immediate family and colleagues of the victims, and to care-givers. These qualitative social costs are then translated into equaivalent money costs on the basis of market costs or shadow prices of imputed costs. The total social costs are computed by multiplying the average individual total social costs times the number of such individuals affected. The present value of future cost streams is also considered. The social costs of cancer apparently exceed the simple economic costs by over an order of magnitude. There are also indications that some forms of cancer incur much higher social costs than others, as well as much higher social costs than economic costs, suggesting that a more optimal allocation of public resources for reducing the total costs of the disease would shift resources to alleviation of social costs, where investment in medical therapies approaches saturation.     

Judgments toward male and transgendered victims in a depicted stranger rape

There has been an increasing amount of research interest into perceptions of male rape in recent years. However, no research has assessed how people react when a transgendered person is raped. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of transgendered status and sexuality on victim blame and perceived severity in a depicted rape scenario. The sexuality of the victim was manipulated to include a heterosexual, homosexual, cross-dresser, female-to-male transsexual, and male-to-female transsexual. It was predicted that the heterosexual victims would be judged the most positively and that heterosexual male participants would make the most anti-victim judgments. One hundred thirty-three lesbian, gay male, and heterosexual members of the general population read a scenario depicting a rape and then completed a questionnaire measuring victim blame and perceived severity of the assault. Results conformed to the predictions. Results are discussed in relation to traditional gender roles and homophobia.     

Judgments Toward Male and Transgendered Victims in a Depicted Stranger Rape

There has been an increasing amount of research interest into perceptions of male rape in recent years. However, no research has assessed how people react when a transgendered person is raped. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of transgendered status and sexuality on victim blame and perceived severity in a depicted rape scenario. The sexuality of the victim was manipulated to include a heterosexual, homosexual, cross-dresser, female-to-male transsexual, and male-to-female transsexual. It was predicted that the heterosexual victims would be judged the most positively and that heterosexual male participants would make the most anti-victim judgments. One hundred thirty-three lesbian, gay male, and heterosexual members of the general population read a scenario depicting a rape and then completed a questionnaire measuring victim blame and perceived severity of the assault. Results conformed to the predictions. Results are discussed in relation to traditional gender roles and homophobia.     

The One‐Child Policy in Shanghai: Acceptance and Internalization

China's one‐child policy is a major example of social engineering and the subject of human rights concerns. Given the significance of the policy, it is important to ascertain the attitudes of Chinese citizens. We conducted interviews in 2003 with residents of Shanghai who were of childbearing age either at the policy's inception or at the time of the interview. Our respondents, who were generally well educated, did not perceive the policy as extraordinary when it was introduced; resignation to one more intrusive government regulation was mixed with understanding and even approval of the policy. People talked about the political and social context, demographic concerns, family economic strategy, and the results of government‐engineered gender equality. Among the young interviewees, the context has changed from a population striving to get by under tight government control to a much richer population that is upwardly mobile and perceives their local government to be basically beneficial. The one‐child family is considered normal; few are still concerned with the policy per se, while others see it as unnecessary. The one‐child policy seems to reflect Shanghainese current preferences; its status as a legal requirement may be largely irrelevant.     

A close look at the demography of Afghanistan

The first survey designed to allow estimates of the demographic characteristics of Afghanistan's sedentary population was conducted during the period 1972-1974. Our analysis of these data, based on recently developed techniques for handling imcomplete or inaccurate data, suggests that this population lives under conditions that are extreme when judged by modern standards. Marriage is early, especially for females, and universal. Marital fertility conforms to a pattern of natural fertility and total fertility is high. The birth rate is among the highest in the world today, and the expectation of life at birth is among the very lowest. Mortality is lower in urban areas than in rural areas, whereas total fertility is approximately the same in both. Our estimates of fertility and mortality imply stable populations which match closely the observed age distributions for both the rural and urban areas.     

Is it Pleasure or Health from Leisure that We Benefit from Most? An Analysis of Well-Being Alternatives and Implications for Policy

International policy now constantly advocates a need for populations to engage in more physical activity to promote health and to reduce society’s health care costs. Such policy has developed guidelines on recommended levels and intensity of physical activity and implicitly equates health with well-being. It is assumed that individual, and hence social welfare will be enhanced if the activity guidelines are met. This paper challenges that claim and raises questions for public policy priorities. Using an instrumental variable analysis to value the well-being from active leisure, it is shown that the well-being experienced from active leisure that is not of a recommended intensity to generate health benefits, perhaps due to its social, recreational or fun purpose, has a higher value of well-being than active leisure that does meet the guidelines. This suggests rethinking the motivation and foundation of existing policy and perhaps a realignment of priorities towards activity that has a greater contribution to social welfare through its intrinsic fun and possibly social interaction.     

Population Density is a Key Factor in Declining Human Fertility

In studying the complex determinants of human fertility, social scientists have given little attention to population density, although reproduction has been shown to be density-dependent for a wide variety of other species. Using fixed effects models on the time series of 145 countries and controlling for key social and economic variables, we find a consistent and significant negative relationship between human fertility and population density. Moreover, we find that individual fertility preferences also decline with population density. These findings suggest that population density should be included as a variable in future studies of fertility determinants.

The Role of Community in Disaster Response: Conceptual Models

We focus on the role that community plays in the continuum of disaster preparedness, response and recovery, and we explore where community fits in conceptual frameworks concerning disaster decision-making. We offer an overview of models developed in the literature as well as insights drawn from research related to Hurricane Katrina. Each model illustrates some aspect of the spectrum of disaster preparedness and recovery, beginning with risk perception and vulnerability assessments, and proceeding to notions of resiliency and capacity building. Concepts like social resilience are related to theories of “social capital,” which stress the importance of social networks, reciprocity, and interpersonal trust. These allow individuals and groups to accomplish greater things than they could by their isolated efforts. We trace two contrasting notions of community to Tocqueville. On the one hand, community is simply an aggregation of individual persons, that is, a population. As individuals, they have only limited capacity to act effectively or make decisions for themselves, and they are strongly subject to administrative decisions that authorities impose on them. On the other hand, community is an autonomous actor, with its own interests, preferences, resources, and capabilities. This definition of community has also been embraced by community-based participatory researchers and has been thought to offer an approach that is more active and advocacy oriented. We conclude with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of community in disaster response and in disaster research.     

Unintended Population Consequences of Policies

Unintended population consequences of policies stem from three sources: (1) A policy overshoots its original goal; (2) different policies conflict, so that the implementation of one policy inhibits implementation of another policy; (3) negative consequences of a policy are unforeseen, or are anticipated but judged unlikely to be severe or considered less important than the positive aims of the policy. Examples from Singapore, South Africa, Italy, the U.S., and the former Soviet Union are discussed.     

Pictures of male homosexuals in the heads of Turkish college students: the effects of sex difference and social contact on stereotyping

The purpose of this study was to focus on the context of stereotypes of gay men, and how sex differences and social contact influence the stereotypic and counter-stereotypic attributes of them. To do that, 77 female and 106 male heterosexual undergraduate students participated in the study. The participants filled out a rating scale. The findings of the study demonstrated that male participants defined male homosexuals by using more stereotypic, less counter-stereotypic attributes, while female participants used less stereotypic and more counter-stereotypic attributes to define gay men. In the same way, participants who hadn't had any social contact with any homosexuals used more stereotypic and less counter-stereotypic attributes, while others who had had social contact with at least a homosexual defined gay men by using less stereotypic and more counter-stereotypic attributes. Both male participants and participants who hadn't had social contact with any homosexuals used more negative stereotypes than both females and participants who at least had had social contact with a homosexual. The findings were discussed in terms of gender-based judgments of gay men.