The Effects of Importance of Religion and Church Attendance on Adolescents' Moral Beliefs

Drawing on the work of Emile Durkheim ([1912] 1995) and Rodney Stark (2001 Stark, Rodney. 2001. Gods, Rituals, and the Moral Order. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40(4): 619–636. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) as well as research on the anti-ascetic thesis and reference group theory, we formulate a series of hypotheses regarding the effects of church attendance and importance of religion on adolescents' moral beliefs about marijuana use, getting drunk, hitting, and property offenses. The results of our study suggest that moral beliefs are more consistently and strongly related to importance of religion than to church attendance. Furthermore, much of the effect of church attendance on moral beliefs is mediated by importance of religion. Finally, we find evidence that importance of religion moderates (interaction) the effect of church attendance on moral beliefs. When adolescents believe religion is important, frequent church attendance further strengthens their moral beliefs. On the other hand, when adolescents believe religion is not important, frequent church attendance may actually reduce moral beliefs.     

Making Firefighters Deployable

Although sociologists have devoted a considerable amount of research to exploring high-risk organizations, they have not yet developed an adequate explanation as to why individuals working within such organizations place themselves in harm’s way and how organizations ensure they remain there. This article addresses this gap by analyzing how the United States Forest Service motivates wildland firefighters to participate in life-threatening activity. Drawing on ethnographic research and content analyses of official documents, it describes the process by which firefighters come to develop a specific disposition towards risk taking, a disposition through which they view firefighting as an activity void of danger, and how this disposition maintains its shape, and even grows stronger, after confronting its biggest challenge: the death of a firefighter.     

Materials receiving capacity and inventory management

This paper analyses the optimal level of materials receiving capacity for a manufacturer that receives deliveries from many suppliers. Inventory levels and inventory carrying costs depend on the frequency of deliveries and thus, on the materials receiving capacity. An analytic model that captures the tradeoff between inventory costs and materials receiving costs is presented and discussed. The receiving cost is modeled as increasing in discrete jumps of varying sizes whenever materials receiving resources are added. Practical issues in implementing the model are highlighted and methods to reduce the marginal materials receiving cost are discussed. The paper also discusses connections to the JIT approach for production environments where materials receiving is heavily automated.     

A stocks and flows approach to a theory of human migration with examples from past Irish migration

While scientists from many disciplines have contributed to the understanding of specific instances of human migration, there is need for a more general theory of voluntary migration. This paper presents and tests (using data on Irish migration) an economic model which could serve as the core of a multidisciplinary general theory. The economic model postulates earnings differentials between countries and regions as the proximate cause of the generation of a stock of migrants. As a result of institutional barriers, personal inertia, incomplete knowledge of earnings differentials, etc., not all of the existing stock becomes a flow of migrants in any year. Application of this model to migration between different countries or between the same countries at different time periods can be of value to scientists in many disciplines in isolating the underlying causes for differing rates of awareness of and response to earnings differentials by potential migrants.     

Implementation issues for consumer-directed programs: comparing views of policy experts, consumers, and representatives

An increasing number of aging community providers and consumers support consumer-direction (CD) in long-term care services. In regard to devolution, consumer-direction goes beyond the usual approach of shifting responsibilities from the federal government to state governments to bring programs "closer to the people." Consumer-direction goes even further by placing resources directly in the hands of consumers. Yet, many questions remain unanswered regarding how to implement CD personal assistance services in general, and especially for older persons. This article describes the importance of examining views from multiple key stakeholders involved in implementing CD programs. We report on three background studies that have informed the Cash and Counseling Demonstration and Evaluation (CCDE) design and implementation-policy expert interviews as well as surveys and focus groups with consumers and representatives. As a fourth data source, we drew upon experiences in designing the CCDE and initial results from the first year of implementation. Each of the three studies on its own provided essential information for planning the CCDE. However, when we examined the studies together, and added CCDE design and implementation experiences, views expressed by the different stakeholders formed a type of multi-perspective "dialogue" that expanded our knowledge about implementing CD services. We hope this increased knowledge will help expand the availability of such services for consumers of any age who want to direct their own care.     

Inference for general parametric functions in box‐Cox‐type transformation models

The authors propose a simple but general method of inference for a parametric function of the Box‐Cox‐type transformation model. Their approach is built upon the classical normal theory but takes parameter estimation into account. It quickly leads to test statistics and confidence intervals for a linear combination of scaled or unsealed regression coefficients, as well as for the survivor function and marginal effects on the median or other quantité functions of an original response. The authors show through simulations that the finite‐sample performance of their method is often superior to the delta method, and that their approach is robust to mild departures from normality of error distributions. They illustrate their approach with a numerical example.     

Trouble en Route: Drug Trafficking and Clientelism in Rio de Janeiro Shantytowns

This article examines the ways that endemic drug trafficking has affected local level politics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Drawing on ethnographic analysis of political exchanges in the 1998 national elections in three favelas (shantytowns), I argue that drug trafficking has changed the practice of clientelism. Evidence and analysis in this paper will show that the persistence of drug trafficking in the city has led to the emergence of a two-tiered clientelist system in which politicians make exchanges with traffickers who then, in turn, provide some benefits to favela residents in return for their votes. This results in an arrangement that provides votes to politicians and limited assistance to the poor but does little to build the legitimacy of the political system.

Shortest prediction intervals for the birnbaum-saunders distribution

Shortest prediction intervals for a future observation from the Birnbaum-Saunders distribution are obtained from both frequentist and Bayesian perspectives. Comparisons are made with alternative intervals obtained via inversion. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to assess the approximate intervals.