Planned and Unplanned Births and Conceptions in Italy, 1970–1995

Using FFS data on births andofficial data on abortions, focus is firstgiven to trends in planned and unplannedpregnancies during 1970–1995, comparing Italywith the USA and France. The next step is topinpoint groups where unplanned events are morecommon. Finally, the relationship betweenunplanned births and changes in contraceptivebehaviour is examined.The planned fertility decline distinguishesItaly from other Western countries. Unplannedbirths and abortions have also declinedconsiderably during the last twenty years.However, some caution is urged before it may beassumed that Italians are the masters of theirown fertility as, during the first half of1990s, 37% of conceptions were unplanned (atthe moment of the event), reaching 45% amongunder 20 and over 35 years old women.     

Tailoring the Gaussian Law for Excess Kurtosis and Skewness by Hermite Polynomials

This article aims at reshaping the normal law to account for tail-thickness and asymmetry, of which there is plenty of evidence in financial data. The inspiration to address the issue was provided by the orthogonality of Hermite polynomials with the Gaussian density as a weight function, with the Gram–Charlier expansion as background. A solution is then devised accordingly, by embodying skewness and excess-kurtosis in a normal kernel, via third- and forth-degree polynomial tune-up. Features of the densities so obtained are established in the main theorem of this article. In addition, a glance is cast at the issue of embodying between-squares correlation, and a solution is outlined.     

Various Approaches for Predicting Land Cover in Mountain Areas

Using former maps, geographers intend to study the evolution of the land cover in order to have a prospective approach on the future landscape; predictions of the future land cover, by the use of older maps and environmental variables, are usually done through the GIS (Geographic Information System). We propose here to confront this classical geographical approach with statistical approaches: a linear parametric model (polychotomous regression modeling) and a nonparametric one (multilayer perceptron). These methodologies have been tested on two real areas on which the land cover is known at various dates; this allows us to emphasize the benefit of these two statistical approaches compared to GIS and to discuss the way GIS could be improved by the use of statistical models.     

Analysis of an European union election using principal component analysis

While studying the results from one European Parliament election, the question of principal component analysis (PCA) suitability for this kind of data was raised. Since multiparty data should be seen as compositional data (CD), the application of PCA is inadvisable and may conduct to ineligible results. This work points out the limitations of PCA to CD and presents a practical application to the results from the European Parliament election in 2004. We present a comparative study between the results of PCA, Crude PCA and Logcontrast PCA (Aitchison in: Biometrika 70:57–61, 1983; Kucera, Malmgren in: Marine Micropaleontology 34:117–120, 1998). As a conclusion of this study, and concerning the mentioned data set, the approach which produced clearer results was the Logcontrast PCA. Moreover, Crude PCA conducted to misleading results since nonlinear relations were presented between variables and the linear PCA proved, once again, to be inappropriate to analyse data which can be seen as CD.     

Predictive control of posterior robustness for sample size choice in a Bernoulli model

In this article we consider the sample size determination problem in the context of robust Bayesian parameter estimation of the Bernoulli model. Following a robust approach, we consider classes of conjugate Beta prior distributions for the unknown parameter. We assume that inference is robust if posterior quantities of interest (such as point estimates and limits of credible intervals) do not change too much as the prior varies in the selected classes of priors. For the sample size problem, we consider criteria based on predictive distributions of lower bound, upper bound and range of the posterior quantity of interest. The sample size is selected so that, before observing the data, one is confident to observe a small value for the posterior range and, depending on design goals, a large (small) value of the lower (upper) bound of the quantity of interest. We also discuss relationships with and comparison to non robust and non informative Bayesian methods.     

Structured measurement error in nutritional epidemiology: applications in the Pregnancy, Infection, and Nutrition (PIN) Study

Preterm birth, defined as delivery before 37 completed weeks' gestation, is a leading cause of infant morbidity and mortality. Identifying factors related to preterm delivery is an important goal of public health professionals who wish to identify etiologic pathways to target for prevention. Validation studies are often conducted in nutritional epidemiology in order to study measurement error in instruments that are generally less invasive or less expensive than "gold standard" instruments. Data from such studies are then used in adjusting estimates based on the full study sample. However, measurement error in nutritional epidemiology has recently been shown to be complicated by correlated error structures in the study-wide and validation instruments. Investigators of a study of preterm birth and dietary intake designed a validation study to assess measurement error in a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) administered during pregnancy and with the secondary goal of assessing whether a single administration of the FFQ could be used to describe intake over the relatively short pregnancy period, in which energy intake typically increases. Here, we describe a likelihood-based method via Markov Chain Monte Carlo to estimate the regression coefficients in a generalized linear model relating preterm birth to covariates, where one of the covariates is measured with error and the multivariate measurement error model has correlated errors among contemporaneous instruments (i.e. FFQs, 24-hour recalls, and/or biomarkers). Because of constraints on the covariance parameters in our likelihood, identifiability for all the variance and covariance parameters is not guaranteed and, therefore, we derive the necessary and suficient conditions to identify the variance and covariance parameters under our measurement error model and assumptions. We investigate the sensitivity of our likelihood-based model to distributional assumptions placed on the true folate intake by employing semi-parametric Bayesian methods through the mixture of Dirichlet process priors framework. We exemplify our methods in a recent prospective cohort study of risk factors for preterm birth. We use long-term folate as our error-prone predictor of interest, the food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ) and 24-hour recall as two biased instruments, and serum folate biomarker as the unbiased instrument. We found that folate intake, as measured by the FFQ, led to a conservative estimate of the estimated odds ratio of preterm birth (0.76) when compared to the odds ratio estimate from our likelihood-based approach, which adjusts for the measurement error (0.63). We found that our parametric model led to similar conclusions to the semi-parametric Bayesian model.     

MULTIPLE STORIES

This article discusses the dynamics of ‘crossings’ across the Green Line in Cyprus from a social–psychological and reconciliation perspective. I will present individual stories of crossing the divide and meeting the Other after 30 years of mutual isolation in order to illustrate the Cypriot experience. In ethno-national conflicts and in divided societies, maintaining contact across ethnic, religious or geographical barriers is important because it helps soften stereotypes and misperceptions and gradually complicates the ‘enemy image’; however, without institutional support these contacts can reconfirm old stereotypes or misperceptions. The opportunity to cross the Green Line and establish contacts between the two communities has been given to Cypriots since April 2003 and has been welcomed by the European Union and the international community. In this article I argue that, whereas these contacts form part of the public reconciliation process and constitute an element of informal peace education and narrative, they will not suffice to bring about sustainable peace and reconciliation unless supported by the political level—symbolically as well as institutionally. I define reconciliation as the capacity to reach to the Other, feel empathy for the Other's suffering and, by engaging in shared social activities, challenge the bipolarity of ‘us and them’. The challenge remains of how to incorporate these ‘new realities and stories’ in the information that makes up the master narrative. To do this it would entail official engagement in a new dialogue about history making.     

Berufliches Handeln in Dilemmasituationen — Führungskräfte zwischen Pflichterfüllung und Eigenverantwortung

Taking decisions and acting in non-standard situations — which are not described in company guidelines and procedures — is part of a manager′s role and responsibilities. As part of an empirical study 158 managers as well as potential management candidates have been put into dilemma situations in which they have to choose between strictly following company policies or alternatively taking own initiative and choosing a self-responsible action path with more risks and conflict potential. To explain the decisions taken different background information is used such as the organizational culture, the manager′s personal goals and a scale describing self-responsibility as a part of the individual′s self-concept. The preference of organizations is described in relation to the organization′s culture: Following guidelines and ′doing one′s duty′ was the most favored solution from the organization′s point of view. Managers and management candidates choose self-responsible acting with low conflict potential when they feel in harmony with their organization. Managers only choose self-responsible acting with high conflict potential if they have a strong tendency for taking own initiative and are ready to take responsibility for their actions. The results are discussed focusing on self-responsibility levels and on consequences for organizations.     

Nonprofit association CEOs how their context shapes what,how, and why they learn

This qualitative study explored the learning experiences of twelve national nonprofit membership association CEOs using a phenomenological research design. While the professional context of an organization's chief executive is considered unique from other executive positions, the impact of this context on what and how CEOs learned was unclear. The findings describe association CEO learning as being affected in significant ways by the politically charged context in which the nonprofit association CEO operates with his or her board of directors. Power imbalances with staff and the board make learning through traditional organizational dialogue a less useful learning process for the CEOs. Furthermore, the feelings of isolation and vulnerability that are generated from the nonprofit association CEO context often cause CEOs to use private reflection and dialogue with their spouse as primary learning mechanisms. The study concludes that the association CEO context uniquely and profoundly shapes what, how, and why CEOs learn. Perhaps lacking the financial security of lucrative severance payments, which are often specified in employment contracts of for‐profit CEOs, the nonprofit association CEO will often temper his or her actions to avoid personal vulnerability with a politically charged board of directors.