LOCUS OF CONTROL,TRUST, AND DECISION MAKING*

A theoretical connection was proposed between certain social personality variables, namely locus of control (Internal or External) and trust (High and Low) and the formal decision-making model of Subjective Expected Utility (SEU). Rather than adopting the traditional definition of these variables as “generalized expectancies” for behavior of self and others, locus of control and trust were reconceptualized as intrapersonal tendencies to favor, prefer, or otherwise bias the subjective probabilities entering into a decision computation. S's high in external control orientation did not differ from internals overall, but external males were more risk averse under certain choice conditions (female-sex-role appropriate dilemma, probability-estimate form). Low-trust S's were also more risk averse than high-trust S's, overall. Low-trust males generated maximally risk-averse choice solutions under the choice condition of feminine role problem appropriateness and probability estimation. In general, female S's made choices that were more consistent with SEU-predicted solutions than males.     

Crossing the finish line? A review of college completion inequality in the United States by race and class

Although most students graduate from high school and enroll in college the following fall, rates of entry into higher education and completion of a bachelor's degree continue to be stratified by race and class. Because of the potential returns that accrue to individuals and society overall when students complete their 4‐year degree, these disparate trends should motivate more policy‐relevant research in this area. In this review, I show how a longitudinal perspective of the path to a BA degree helps to reconcile competing theories of college completion by race and class across disciplinary boundaries. Both human capital theory and status attainment theory largely examine college completion as the long‐term process of BA attainment, although they differ in their focal stages and mechanisms. In contrast, the theory of categorical inequality, as applied in this review, focuses on the years in higher education and describes the ways in which colleges and universities as organizations create, legitimate, and reinforce categorical distinctions in postsecondary schooling and how these processes independently shape college completion inequality. As public interest grows in holding colleges accountable for their graduation rates, more research is needed on how the formal and informal organizational policies and practices of colleges produce inequality.     

Military service and marital dissolution: a trajectory analysis

Military service adds additional challenges for married couples. Previous literature on service and marital stability is comprised of mixed results and has often ignored the timing of these effects. This timing is important as it helps disclose the nature of causality and has implications for both military and social security policies. Using a trajectory specification, I estimate the effect of military service on the likelihood of divorce during the volunteer’s period of service and the years following. Two veteran cohorts are examined, those who served during the early twenty-first century wars and those who served during the early 1980s. Among my results, the former cohort is shown to have had their divorce probability increased in the first 2 years post-service, while the opposite effect is found for the latter cohort. Unlike many previous studies of military service and marital stability, I find that effects are not overly dissimilar across racial groups.     

Personal Network Correlates and Predictors of Homelessness for Injection Drug Users in Baltimore,Maryland

Injection drug users are at high risk for homelessness and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. This study sought to examine incidence rates and the social and economic antecedents of homelessness of impoverished inner-city injection drug users. Of the 569 participants, from a nontreatment sample who participated HW prevention study, intelViewed at baseline, 324 (57%) were reintelViewed 5.2 months late!: At baseline 48% of the participants reported that they had been homeless in the past 10 years. Of the 324, 18% reported that at both intelViews they had been homeless within the prior 6 months, 12% reported homelessness at baseline but not at follow-up, and 8% reported homelessness at follow-up but not at baseline. At baseline personal social support network characteristic of size of material aid and size of sex network was found to be associated with self-reports of homelessness. Baseline reports ofpresence of mother in personal network, size of material aid network, and network density were found to be associated with reports of homelessness at follow-up. These result suggest the need for alternative approaches to addressing issues of homelessness injection drug users.     

Carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in the U.S.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship of the carbon Kuznets curve. We discuss two potential flaws in past carbon Kuznets curve studies: one, the potential misspecification of energy consumption as a control variable; and, two, the use of vector error correction models as an empirical specification. Given these potential flaws we estimate a dynamic ordinary least squares model of monthly carbon dioxide emissions, personal income, and energy production in the U.S. from 1981 to 2003. Our results suggest that economic growth drives emissions intensities, not absolute emissions as is often implied in past studies.     

The Healthy Young Men's Study: Sampling Methods to Recruit a Random Cohort of Young Men Who Have Sex With Men

Recruiting a scientifically sound cohort of young men who have sex with men (YMSM) is an enduring research challenge. The few cohort studies that have been conducted to date on YMSM have relied on nonprobability sampling methods to construct their cohorts. While these studies have provided valuable information about HIV risk behaviors among YMSM, their generalizability to broader YMSM populations is limited. In this article, the authors describe a venue-based sampling methodology used to recruit a large and diverse cohort of YMSM from public venues in Los Angeles County, California. Venue-based sampling is a multistage probability sampling design that uses standard outreach techniques and standard survey methods to systematically enumerate, sample, and survey hard-to-reach populations. The study design allowed the authors to estimate individual, familial, and interpersonal psychosocial factors associated with HIV risk and health-seeking behaviors for a cohort of YMSM with known properties. Study participants completed an extensive baseline survey and over a 2-year period completed four follow-up surveys at 6-month intervals. The baseline survey was administered in both English and Spanish.     

Predictive comparison of joint longitudinal-survival modeling: a case study illustrating competing approaches

The joint modeling of longitudinal and survival data has received extraordinary attention in the statistics literature recently, with models and methods becoming increasingly more complex. Most of these approaches pair a proportional hazards survival with longitudinal trajectory modeling through parametric or nonparametric specifications. In this paper we closely examine one data set previously analyzed using a two parameter parametric model for Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly) egg-laying trajectories paired with accelerated failure time and proportional hazards survival models. We consider parametric and nonparametric versions of these two models, as well as a proportional odds rate model paired with a wide variety of longitudinal trajectory assumptions reflecting the types of analyses seen in the literature. In addition to developing novel nonparametric Bayesian methods for joint models, we emphasize the importance of model selection from among joint and non joint models. The default in the literature is to omit at the outset non joint models from consideration. For the medfly data, a predictive diagnostic criterion suggests that both the choice of survival model and longitudinal assumptions can grossly affect model adequacy and prediction. Specifically for these data, the simple joint model used in by Tseng et al. (Biometrika 92:587–603, 2005) and models with much more flexibility in their longitudinal components are predictively outperformed by simpler analyses. This case study underscores the need for data analysts to compare on the basis of predictive performance different joint models and to include non joint models in the pool of candidates under consideration.