Strategies for inference robustness in focused modelling

Advances in computation mean that it is now possible to fit a wide range of complex models to data, but there remains the problem of selecting a model on which to base reported inferences. Following an early suggestion of Box & Tiao, it seems reasonable to seek 'inference robustness' in reported models, so that alternative assumptions that are reasonably well supported would not lead to substantially different conclusions. We propose a four-stage modelling strategy in which we iteratively assess and elaborate an initial model, measure the support for each of the resulting family of models, assess the influence of adopting alternative models on the conclusions of primary interest, and identify whether an approximate model can be reported. The influence-support plot is then introduced as a tool to aid model comparison. The strategy is semi-formal, in that it could be embedded in a decision-theoretic framework but requires substantive input for any specific application. The one restriction of the strategy is that the quantity of interest, or 'focus', must retain its interpretation across all candidate models. It is, therefore, applicable to analyses whose goal is prediction, or where a set of common model parameters are of interest and candidate models make alternative distributional assumptions. The ideas are illustrated by two examples. Technical issues include the calibration of the Kullback-Leibler divergence between marginal distributions, and the use of alternative measures of support for the range of models fitted.     

A pooled time-series analysis of abortion demand

This study estimates the demand for abortion in the United States using state data pooled over years 1992 and 1982. The empirical results showed that the price elasticity of abortion demand ranged from -0.70 to -0.99 and an income elasticity between 0.27 and 0.35. The demand for abortion was found (1) not to be statistically related to a woman's educational level; (2) to be higher the greater a state's taste for abortion; (3) coincident with the business cycle; and (4) not to be related to the level of a state's welfare payment.     

Making Career Theories More Culturally Sensitive: Implications for Counseling

The primary question addressed in this article is whether and how career theories can be more culturally sensitive without losing value as conceptual explanations or their usefulness for counselors. Contextual action theory is identified as a means to develop culturally sensitive explanations. Six steps are proposed and illustrated, including using the naive observations and subjective reports and recognizing ongoing processes. The use of these steps in counseling is also addressed.     

Effects of Social Anxiety on Nonverbal Accuracy and Response Time I: Facial Expressions

Cognitive models of social anxiety provide a basis for predicting that the ability to process nonverbal information accurately and quickly should be impaired during the experience of state anxiety. To test this hypothesis, we assigned participants to threatening and non-threatening conditions and asked them to label the emotions expressed in a series of faces. It was predicted that social anxiety would be positively associated with errors and response times in threatening conditions, but not in a non-threatening condition. It was also predicted that high social anxiety would be associated with more errors and longer response times when identifying similar expressions such as sadness, anger, and fear. The results indicate that social anxiety was not associated with errors in identifying facial expressions of emotion, regardless of the level of state anxiety experienced. However, social anxiety scores were found to be significantly related to response times to identify facial expressions, but the relationship varied depending on the level of state anxiety experienced. Methodological and theoretical implications of using response time data when assessing nonverbal ability are discussed.     

Infants' Use of Constraints to Speed Information Processing and to Anticipate Events

Two experiments were conducted with 28‐week‐old infants using a modification of the Visual Expectation Paradigm. The first sought to determine whether speed of information processing (SIP) could be assessed in infants using a reaction time (RT) measure and approach that is widely used to measure SIP in adults. Infants saw a center fixation cue followed by a peripheral target that could appear in 1, 2, or 4 locations. There was a linear increase in RT of eye movements as the number of locations increased from 1 to 2 and to 4 targets, suggesting that the paradigm does measure SIP. The second experiment asked whether varying the number of cue‐target pairings would augment or impair infant's SIP in the trade‐off between the benefit of additional information and the liability of additional memory load. The findings showed that the presence of cue information can eliminate the difference in RT between the 1‐ and 2‐location conditions, whereas no benefit of cue was obtained for the 4‐location condition.     

Presidential Success in the Realm of Foreign Affairs: Institutional Reform and the Role of House Committees*

Objective This analysis focuses on institutional reform and the House foreign policy committees to assess the resurgent‐Congress explanation of presidential success in international affairs between 1953–1998. Method Logit models are used to determine the changing effects on presidential success resulting from the support of chairmen and the president's co‐partisans on the foreign policy committees due to the 1970s congressional reforms. Results The analysis illustrates differences in the effects of committee leaders and committee co‐partisans on roll‐call success before and after the reforms. Also, contrasts are found in the effects of the foreign policy panels that differentially influence presidential success. Conclusion The article offers evidence that the institutional reforms that changed the House policy process from one dominated by committee chairs to one responsive to political parties significantly altered presidential success. These findings emphasize the importance of the changing congressional environment in explaining presidential success in foreign policy.     

Reluctant entrepreneurs: musicians and entrepreneurship in the ‘new’ music industry

Changing labour conditions in the creative industries – with celebrations of autonomy and entrepreneurialism intertwined with increasing job insecurity, portfolio careers and short‐term, project‐based contracts – are often interpreted as heralding changes to employment relations more broadly. The position of musicians’ labour in relation to these changes is unclear, however, given that these kinds of conditions have defined musicians’ working practices over much longer periods of time (though they may have intensified due to well‐documented changes to the music industry brought about by digitization and disintermediation). Musicians may thus be something of a barometer of current trends, as implied in the way that the musically derived label ‘gig economy’ is being used to describe the spread of precarious working conditions to broader sections of the population. This article, drawing on original qualitative research that investigated the working practices of musicians, explores one specific aspect of these conditions: whether musicians are self‐consciously entrepreneurial towards their work and audience. We found that, while the musicians in our study are routinely involved in activities that could be construed as entrepreneurial, generally they were reluctant to label themselves as entrepreneurs. In part this reflected understandings of entrepreneurialism as driven by profit‐seeking but it also reflected awareness that being a popular musician has always involved business and commercial dimensions. Drawing on theoretical conceptions of entrepreneurship developed by Joseph Schumpeter we highlight how the figure of the entrepreneur and the artist/musician share much in common and reflect various aspects of romantic individualism. Despite this, there are also some notable differences and we conclude that framing musicians’ labour as entrepreneurial misrepresents their activities through an overemphasis on the economic dimensions of their work at the expense of the cultural.