Estimating herd-specific force of infection by using random-effects models for clustered binary data and monotone fractional polynomials

Summary.  In veterinary epidemiology, we are often confronted with hierarchical or clustered data. Typically animals are grouped within herds, and consequently we cannot ignore the possibility of animals within herds being more alike than between herds. Based on a serological survey of bovine herpes virus type 1 in cattle, we describe a method for the estimation of herd-specific rates at which susceptible animals acquire the infection at different ages. In contrast with the population-averaged force of infection, this method allows us to model the herd-specific force of infection, allowing investigation of the variability between herds. A random-effects approach is used to account for the correlation in the data, allowing us to study both population-averaged and herd-specific force of infection. In contrast, generalized estimating equations can be used when interest is only in the population-averaged force of infection. Further, a flexible predictor model is needed to describe the dependence of covariates appropriately. Fractional polynomials as proposed by Royston and Altman offer such flexibility. However, the flexibility of this model should be restricted, since only positive forces of infection have a meaningful interpretation.     

Pricing and location of physician services in mental health

Puzzling results of a positive association between the number of physicians per capita and the level of fees for physician services have been reported in the literature. These results may be due to misspecification of econometric models and use of data aggregated across medical specialties. It is hypothesized that the unusual results would not persist with a carefully specified econometric model for a single medical specialty. A general model of pricing and location of physician's services is applied to the market for psychiatrist's services. The results imply that the market for psychiatrist's services operates in a manner consistent with the predictions of the competitive model.     

Plan and control

Conclusion Is closer and closer social control the inevitable price of progress, a necessary concomitant of the continued development of modern social forms? We believe that this is indeed the case. Against those who see the new communications technologies as the basis for a coming communications era, and the new information technologies as the panacea for our present Age of Ignorance, our own argument is that their development has, in fact, been closely associated with processes of social management and control. The scale and complexity of the modern nation state has made communications and information resources (and technologies) central to the maintenance of political and administrative cohesion.The Information Revolution is, then, not simply and straight-forwardly a matter of technological progress, of a new technological or industrial revolution. It is significant, rather, for the new matrix of political and cultural forces that it supports. And a crucial dimension here is that of organizational form and structure. Communication and information resources (and technologies) set the conditions and limits to the scale and nature of organizational possibilities. What they permit is the development of complex and large-scale bureaucratic organizations, and also of extended corporate structures that transcend the apparent limits of space and time (transnational corporations). They also constitute the nervous system of the modern state and guarantee its cohesion as an expansive organizational form. Insofar as they guarantee and consolidate these essential power structures in modern society, information and communication are fundamental to political-administrative regulation, and consequently to the social and cultural experience of modernity.The exploitation of information resources and technologies has expressed itself, politically and culturally, through the dual tendency towards social planning and management, on the one hand, and surveillance and control, on the other. In historical terms, this can be seen as the apotheosis of Lewis Mumford's megamachine: technology now increasingly fulfils what previously depended upon bureaucratic organization and structure. But the central historical reference point is the emergence, early in the twentieth century, of Scientific Management (as a philosophy both of industrial production and of social reproduction). It was at this moment that scientific planning and management moved beyond the factory to regulate the whole way of life. At this time, the gathering of social knowledge became the normal accompaniment of action, and the manufacture of consent, through propaganda and opinion management, was increasingly based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. If, through Scientific Management, the planning and administration of everyday life became pervasive, it also became the preeminent form and expression of social control. Planning and management were, necessarily and indissociably, a process of surveillance and of manipulation and persuasion. To the extent that these administrative and dominative information strategies were first developed on a systematic basis, it was at this historical moment, we believe, that the Information Revolution was unleashed. New information and communications technologies have most certainly advanced, and automated, these combined information and intelligence activities, but they remain essentially refinements of what was fundamentally a political-administrative revolution.Recent innovations in information and communications technologies have generally been discussed from a narrow technological or economic perspective. It has been a matter of technology assessment or of the exploitation of new technologies to promote industrial competitiveness and economic growth. This, in the light of our discussion, seems a partial and blinkered vision. The absolutely central question to be raised in the context of the Information Revolution of the eighties, is, we believe, the relation between knowledge/information and the system of political and corporate power. For some, knowledge is inherently and self-evidently a benevolent force, and improvements in the utilization of knowledge are demonstrably the way to ensure social progress. Information is treated as an instrumental and technical resource that will ensure the rational and efficient management of society. It is a matter of social engineering by knowledge professionals and information specialists and technocrats. For us, the problems of the information society are more substantial, complex, and oblique.This, of course, raises difficult political and philosophical issues. These are the issues that Walter Lippmann comes up against when he recognizes in the Great Society that centralization of power which deprives [citizens] of control over the use of that power, and when he confronts the disturbing awareness that the problems that vex democracy seem to be unmanageable by democratic methods. They are the issues that Lewis Mumford addresses when he argues that the tension between small-scale association and large-scale organization, between personal autonomy and institutional regulation, between remote control and diffused local intervention, has now created a critical situation. And they are the monumental issues that concern Castoriadis in his analysis of instrumental reason and the rationalist ideology, those myths which, more than money or weapons, constitute the most formidable obstacles in the way of the reconstruction of human society.Among the significant issues to be raised by the new information technologies are their relation to social forms of organization, their centrality to structures of political power, and their role in the cultural logic of consumer capitalism. Sociological analysis is naïve, we believe, when it treats the new telecommunications, space, video, and computing technologies as innocent technical conceptions and looks hopefully to a coming, post-industrial Utopia. Better to look back to the past, to the entwined histories of reason, knowledge, and technology, and to their relation to the economic development of capitalism and the political and administrative system of the modern nation state.     

Shrewdly irrational

This comment on Professor Etzioni's essay consists of three parts. First, it suggests that much of the evidence he describes, both for and against the rationality hypothesis, is much weaker than it appears. Second, it discusses some additional evidence that poses difficulty for the narrow rationalist view. Finally, it examines Etzioni's caring and sharing evidence, which poses the sharpest challenge of all to the rationalists. It suggests that although caring and sharing is indeed irrational by the conventional standard, there are good reasons why someone who is purely self-interested might wish to become a caring and sharing person. To be such a person, it argues, is to be shrewdly irrational.     

Institutional constraints on executive greed: stratification systems in American art museums

This paper examines the stratification systems of over 200 organisations, individually represented by the internal income distributions of each organisation, in turn seen as products of executive decision-making. As a first principle, I assume that in any decision-making situation in which organisational leaders must choose between their own welfare and the welfare of their employees, they will almost always select the selfish course of action. In accordance with this axiom of executive greed, the majority of intra-organisational income distributions exhibit a substantial positive or right skew (that is, many people in the lower income levels and very few in the highest). Yet there is sufficient variation to suggest that there are forces which constrain executive greed. Combining the new structuralist perspective on stratification with resource dependency and organisational fields models, the paper examines hypotheses which maintain that the shape of internal distributive systems is affected by: (i) organisational properties, such as size and structural complexity, which empower the employee in labour relations with management; and (ii) highly-institutionalised resource dependencies which constrain income disbursement decisions. Data are taken from a US sample of art museums. The results of the analyses seriously contradict the new structuralist's empowerment accounts of the effects of size and structural complexity on stratification, and suggest that their propositions have been posed at a level which may be far too general. Certain highly-institutionalised resource dependencies are found to promote equality in internal distributive systems.I thank Ann Rotchford, Charles Perrow, Helmut Anheier and three anonymous reviewers for the useful comments that they provided on an earlier version of this paper. I am grateful to Ann Rotchford for her help in preparing the Appendix.     

Gender,values, and intentions to move in rural Thailand

"This article explores gender differences in the intentions to move among a sample of young adults in rural northeastern Thailand. Based on the value-expectancy framework of migration decisionmaking, an explanatory model is tested which includes migration-related value measures along with individual, household and community-level determinants of both intentions to move and change in intentions to move. Multinomial logistic regression results based on data from the 1992 Thailand National Migration Survey provide some support for the hypothesis of gender-specific determinants of both intentions to move and the reconsideration of migration intentions. For men, value measures of affiliation and comfort, social networks, the presence of young children in the family, and land holdings are significant determinants of migration decisionmaking; for women income and comfort values, the presence of elderly persons in the household, community size, and crop losses are the salient factors."     

The Live Creature: Understanding the School and Its Passions

This essay explores certain inherent psychological tensions and contradictions that shape the subjective experience of school life. Describing the dynamic relationship between experiences of idealization and disillusionment, the paper discusses the opportunities schools have to support the growth of students and teachers by facilitating developmental processes of reparation and recovery. The essay both follows the narrative of a series of events that occurred in a high school sociology class and outlines three concepts—axis of variation, the school romance and the live creature—to illuminate for administrators and teachers how the school can promote development by understanding the complex ways that passions organize, and, at times, disorganize, the life of a school.     

Nativity,Marital Status and Mortality in Canada*

Dans cette étude prospective, j'examine les différences de mortalité par rapport à létat civil chez sept groupes d'immigrants et les habitants nés au Canada. On croit que le lieu de naissance influe sur ce rapport par son association avec le choix de migration et avec la structure familiale. Puisque la migration choisit les individus en bonne santé, les immigrants devraient constituer une proportion saine de la population. Donc, le choix d'un époux ou d'une épouse saine devrait être d'importance secondaire dans les différences de survie parmi les étrangers célibataires ou maries. Cependant, le choix d'adhérer à l'institution matrimoniale peut être importante par rapport à la population d'origine canadienne plus grande et plus hétérogène. Quelques communautés ethniques immigrantes ont des systèmes plus complexes de rapports familiaux étendus que d'autres. D'après les principes de la théorie de la protection de la mortalité, plus grands sont les réseaux familiaux, plus petit est lécart de survie entre les individus mariés ou célibataires. Des analyses multivariées des taux de mortalité en raison d'une cause spécifique fournissent seulement une confirmation partielle pour ces rapports pour lesquels on formule une hypothèse. Les résultats des recherches les plus constants de cette étude constatent que le couple marié vit plus longtemps que les individus célibataires, que ce soient les immigrants ou les personnes originaires du Canada. Ainsi, le rapport entre l'état civil et la mortalité observéà l'échelle internationale prévaut aussi parmi les populations immigrantes et les personnes originaires du Canada. Bien que les rôles protecteurs du mariage et de la famille semblent incontestables, les données indirectes suggèrent que le choix d'un époux ou d'une épouse saine contribue aussi à la baisse des taux de mortalité des couples maries.     

Do some authoritarian governments foster physical quality of life?

A recent claim that the populations of populist authoritarian governments have relatively high physical quality of life is tested empirically and found to be true. Analysis of life expectancy in 103 countries shows that although political rights contribute to the prediction of life expectancy, net of GNP per capita, one category of authoritarian governments, here called the constrained authoritarians, has higher than expected physical quality of life. Of interest is the additional finding that location in sub-Saharan Africa has a strong negative impact on life expectancy, net of GNP and political rights.I appreciate the contributions to this paper of Linda Bush, Rebecca Miles Doan, Eugene Erickson, Joe Francis, Donald Freebairn, Victor Nee and Linda Jacobsen.     

Child abuse in South Africa: rights and wrongs

In a country in which human rights feature prominently in our discourse about who we are, as well as in the South African constitutional and legal framework, so many wrongs continue to be done to children. One category of wrongs is abuse, but it is not the only one. Poverty, patriarchy and gender violence, as well as the socialised obedience, dependency and silence of women and children, create conditions in which abuse can occur, often with few consequences. South Africa has extremely high rates of both physical and sexual abuse of children. Progressive, rights‐based legislation exists to protect children, but it is not adequately supported or resourced by services to fulfil their provisions. Child abuse and neglect will not be significantly reduced in South Africa, without simultaneous improvements in the social and economic conditions in which very large numbers of children live. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.