Bayesian methods for generalized linear models with covariates missing at random

The authors propose methods for Bayesian inference for generalized linear models with missing covariate data. They specify a parametric distribution for the covariates that is written as a sequence of one‐dimensional conditional distributions. They propose an informative class of joint prior distributions for the regression coefficients and the parameters arising from the covariate distributions. They examine the properties of the proposed prior and resulting posterior distributions. They also present a Bayesian criterion for comparing various models, and a calibration is derived for it. A detailed simulation is conducted and two real data sets are examined to demonstrate the methodology.     

Using the EM-algorithm for survival data with incomplete categorical covariates

Incomplete covariate data is a common occurrence in many studies in which the outcome is survival time. With generalized linear models, when the missing covariates are categorical, a useful technique for obtaining parameter estimates is the EM by the method of weights proposed in Ibrahim (1990). In this article, we extend the EM by the method of weights to survival outcomes whose distributions may not fall in the class of generalized linear models. This method requires the estimation of the parameters of the distribution of the covariates. We present a clinical trials example with five covariates, four of which have some missing values.     

War in Iraq: Environment of Insecurity and International Migration

LA GUERRE EN IRAK : CONTEXTE D'INSÉCURITÉ ET MIGRATION INTERNATIONALE
Cet article porte sur les éventuels rapports entre conflit et migration internationale, tout particulièrement dans le contexte de la plus récente guerre en Irak. Les tendances de la migration internationale irakienne sont analysées afin d'établir une éventuelle influence de la guerre sur la migration. Les situations de conflit sont répandues en Irak depuis plus de deux décennies, les racines de ces conflits remontant à 1979, année où Saddam Hussein est devenu le président de ce pays. Pendant le dernier quart de siècle, l'histoire irakienne a été marquée par des guerres et des crises d'aprèsguerre qui ont déclenché des tensions entre ethnies. D'après nous, ce sont ces tensions ethniques qui ont contribuéà la migration internationale à partir de l'Irak. C'est l'instabilité générale associée aux conflits qui engendre souvent des tensions plus vives entre différents groupes ethniques, à savoir les Kurdes, les Turkmènes, les chiites et les sunnites. Les situations de conflit ethnique peuvent mener à un contexte général d'insécurité, lequel sera une « occasion >> pour les personnes qui ont déjà des « projets >> individuels de migration. Les pays d'Europe occidentale seront particulièrement concernés par ces mouvement migratoires potentiels. Pendant les périodes de conflit, les Irakiens ont établi des réseaux de migration et formé en Occident des communautés d'immigrants assez vastes. Ces réseaux serviront également de facteurs facilitants pour la migration ethnique potentielle de certains Irakiens.     

The re-aestheticisation of poverty: blogging hunger in the age of austerity

This paper examines the re-aestheticisation of hunger and poverty with the emergence of austerity blogs. These blogs, which chronicle personal narratives while re-directing gaze in creating food through limited budgets and in sharing the intimate brutalities of hunger, bring a renewed focus and interest to poverty through daily lived experiences of hunger. Beyond personalising hunger in a climate of austerity, blogs as a symbol of articulation of the laypeople for the general public become interstitial spaces between government rhetoric and media representations, making poverty an intimate, personal and present proposition. Blogs as peoples’ archives of social history are hybrid spaces of personal iterations amenable to public consumption and media scrutiny. In the process these can re-mediate and disrupt the social reality of first-world hunger, inviting a gaze through first-hand narratives. Poverty becomes a contested entity online where blogs perform both resistance and reiteration of the neo-liberal stereotypes about the unemployed and those on benefits.     

Real‐Time Delay Estimation Based on Delay History in Many‐Server Service Systems with Time‐Varying Arrivals

Motivated by interest in making delay announcements in service systems, we study real‐time delay estimators in many‐server service systems, both with and without customer abandonment. Our main contribution here is to consider the realistic feature of time‐varying arrival rates. We focus especially on delay estimators exploiting recent customer delay history. We show that time‐varying arrival rates can introduce significant estimation bias in delay‐history‐based delay estimators when the system experiences alternating periods of overload and underload. We then introduce refined delay‐history estimators that effectively cope with time‐varying arrival rates together with non‐exponential service‐time and abandonment‐time distributions, which are often observed in practice. We use computer simulation to verify that our proposed estimators outperform several natural alternatives.     

Is program structure related to stigma and community acceptance of justice-involved adolescents?

Objective

The aim of the study is to examine the impact of diversion program characteristics on social stigma of delinquent adolescents in Jordan.

Method

A street survey of adults was conducted in Amman, Jordan. Respondents were randomly assigned to read one of four vignettes involving a delinquent adolescent who participated successfully in one of four types of juvenile justice interventions: detention center placement; diversion with counseling; diversion with counseling plus victim apology and restitution; and diversion with counseling plus family-based apology and restitution. Respondents reported their willingness to accept the adolescent as a member of their child's school, as a friend of their child, as a spouse for their child, and as a future employee. Seventy seven percent of adults approached participated (N = 137).

Results

Respondents reported greater willingness to accept the adolescent when he participated in any of the three diversion programs compared to the detention center condition (β = .80, p < .05). However, there were no differences among the diversion program types (i.e., counseling only, counseling plus individual restorative justice, counseling plus tribal restorative justice) in acceptance levels. Regardless of intervention type, the perception that the adolescent had ‘learned his lesson’ was associated with greater acceptance and with heightened expectations of future success.

Conclusion

Intervention characteristics can influence public stigma in the Middle East. For justice involved youths, interventions that increase perceptions that youth have learned their lesson is a crucial ingredient to stigma reduction efforts. Social work interventions with delinquent adolescents and their families need to incorporate stigma management strategies that convey lesson-learning as a key intervention outcome.     

Quality of Life of Residents Living near Industrial Estates in Singapore

Quality of life (QOL) studies are increasinglygaining the attention of urban planners due toits usefulness in assessing and monitoringpublic policies. With this in mind, an attemptwas made in this study to assess the quality oflife of residents staying near industrialestates in Jurong, Singapore using 18subjective life indicators to measure theoverall life satisfaction.Based on a 5-point Likert scale, health (4.48),family life (4.37) and public safety (4.13)emerged as the more important aspects, whileself-development (3.90), religion (3.60) andpolitics (2.74) were named by the respondentsto be among the least important. On thesatisfaction level, public safety (3.92),family life (3.88), and public utilities (3.78)were deemed to be among the most satisfiedaspects, while consumer goods (2.92), politics(2.91) and environment (2.89) were consideredto be among the least satisfied aspects. Therelationship between the different demographicvariables with overall life satisfaction werealso determined and five variables, namely,marital status, education level, occupation,household income and household size were foundto contribute significantly to the overall lifesatisfaction scores.Overall, the residents in Jurong were found tobe generally satisfied with their life, scoringa mean satisfaction rating of 3.687. It ishoped that the data gathered from this studycan be used by planners in formulating andimplementing future policies.     

Socio-economic Development and International Migration: A Turkish Study

The root causes of international migration have been the subject of many studies, a vast majority of which are based on development theories dominated by economy-oriented perspectives. An underlying assumption is that poverty breeds migration. The results, and the conclusions drawn from these studies, differ widely. For instance, whether emigration increases when poverty becomes more extreme, or less extreme, or why it reaches certain levels, are issues on which research still offers a mixed answer.
This article investigates the relationship between economic development and migration by taking into consideration the degrees of economic development that form thresholds for migration. It focuses on recent evidence on the development-emigration relationship in Turkey which reflects a dimension of the dynamics and mechanisms facilitating or restricting migratory flows from the country.
Using data from the 1995 District-level Socio-economic Development Index of Turkey (DSDI) and the 1990 Census, the principal aim of the article is to provide an analytical base which identifies degrees of local level of development in Turkey, relate these to international migration flows, and examine patterns of the development-migration relationship.