Residential Building Codes,Affordability, and Health Protection: A Risk-Tradeoff Approach

Residential building codes intended to promote health and safety may produce unintended countervailing risks by adding to the cost of construction. Higher construction costs increase the price of new homes and may increase health and safety risks through income and stock effects. The income effect arises because households that purchase a new home have less income remaining for spending on other goods that contribute to health and safety. The stock effect arises because suppression of new-home construction leads to slower replacement of less safe housing units. These countervailing risks are not presently considered in code debates. We demonstrate the feasibility of estimating the approximate magnitude of countervailing risks by combining the income effect with three relatively well understood and significant home-health risks. We estimate that a code change that increases the nationwide cost of constructing and maintaining homes by $150 (0.1% of the average cost to build a single-family home) would induce offsetting risks yielding between 2 and 60 premature fatalities or, including morbidity effects, between 20 and 800 lost quality-adjusted life years (both discounted at 3%) each year the code provision remains in effect. To provide a net health benefit, the code change would need to reduce risk by at least this amount. Future research should refine these estimates, incorporate quantitative uncertainty analysis, and apply a full risk-tradeoff approach to real-world case studies of proposed code changes.     

Treatment of noncustodial fathers: Gender issues and clinical dilemmas

This article addresses issues involved in the treatment of fathers who do not have custody of their children. It reviews literature on demographic trends and discusses fathers' reactions to loss of child custody. Assessment and treatment guidelines are offered so that clinical practice may become more responsive to the needs of the population. Gender concerns, particularly as they relate to transference and countertransference, are also discussed.     

On the multivariate structure of wellbeing

A mapping sentence is provided for defining the universe of observations of wellbeing. According to this, assessment of wellbeing is attitudinal. Data from several studies verify that the First Law of Attitude holds for wellbeing. These data also show the structure of the interrelationships among the variables to be that of intermeshing cylindrexes, in an SSA space of four dimensions. Areas of life play the role of polarizing facets, while self-versus-community and situation-versus-treatment serve as axial facets. Modulating facets include primary-to-secondary interaction, and generality-to-specificity.     

Testing for lack of fit in linear multiresponse models based on exact or near replicates

Three procedures for testing the adequacy of a proposed linear multiresponse regression model against unspecified general alternatives are considered. The model has an error structure with a matrix normal distribution which allows the vector of responses for a particular run to have an unknown covariance matrix while the responses for different runs are uncorrelated. Furthermore, each response variable may be modeled by a separate design matrix. Multivariate statistics corresponding to the classical univariate lack of fit and pure error sums of squares are defined and used to determine the multivariate lack of fit tests. A simulation study was performed to compare the power functions of the test procedures in the case of replication. Generalizations of the tests for the case in which there are no independent replicates on all responses are also presented.     

Partial order analysis of crime indicators

A frequent variety of typological system is that which results when a given population is classified simultaneously by several social indicators. When the categories of each indicator are ordered, and in a sense common to all the indicators, a partial order is automatically defined for the system. The empirical problem is to ascertain the dimensionality and the substantive meaning of the partly ordered system. This will be illustrated here by the case of the characterization of American cities by their crime rates, the data analysis employing the technique of Partial Order Structuple (Scalogram) Analysis.     

Hurricane Katrina's Impact on African Americans' and European Americans' Endorsement of the Protestant Work Ethic

The Protestant work ethic (PWE), the belief that hard work leads to success, is a quintessentially American belief. The present research addresses a critical gap in psychological research on PWE: can a single, large-scale sociopolitical event (government's response to Hurricane Katrina) produce changes in PWE? We review evidence showing that the salience of Katrina led to a reduction in African Americans' (not European Americans') endorsement of PWE and that this result appears explained by African Americans' greater belief in the government's inadequate response to Katrina victims, who were predominately African American. The implications of differential endorsement of PWE for future expectations of societal treatment, motivation to pursue important goals, and willingness to endorse structural corrections of inequality are discussed.     

Absolute and relative risk aversion: An experimental study

Kenneth Arrow posed the hypotheses that investors reveal decreasing absolute risk aversion (DARA) and increasing relative risk aversion (IRRA). It is very difficult to empirically test these two hypotheses since one needs to analyze an investor's investment decisions at various points in his/her economic life cycle as the investor's wealth varies. An experimental study is conducted to test these two hypotheses when the subject's wealth varies depending on his/her investment performance. The experiment involves an actual money gain or loss which is indexed to the individual's investment performance. It is found that DARA is indeed strongly supported, but IRRA is rejected.     

Overconfident investors and probability misjudgments

This paper explores systematic distortions of subjective probabilities by overconfident investors. In agreement with many non-expected utility theories, our devised setup acknowledges nonlinear weighting of physical probabilities by both rational and overconfident investors. Overconfidence – assumed to be higher after a history of gains and lower after a history of losses – changes these probability transformations. Using US asset price data, overconfident investors are found to be more optimistic than rational investors about future prospects.     

Introduction Are We Ready to Translate Research Into Programs?

There is enough basic research on social cognition, developmental psychology,and peer relations as they relate to prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping to address program development and evaluation. At the same time, there are enough race relations programs being developed and implemented to inform basic research on prejudice. This issue brings together articles on the interface between basic research and programs on prejudice. The articles focus onspecific programs such as affirmative action, multicultural and bilingual education, cooperative learning, social-cognitive skills training, and bystander interventions. This introductory article provides an overview of the goals and implications of the issue.     

The market for (Ir)reproducible econometrics

Context: As the volume and complexity of research have increased, the amount of time spent on Institutional Review Board (IRB) review has decreased. The complexity of research has expanded, requiring increasingly specialized knowledge to review it. Dilemma: Under the current system, increasing numbers of research studies requiring expertise in ethics, new technologies or diverse study designs place a substantial burden upon local IRBs and often result in substantial variability among their reviews. This lack of uniformity in the review process creates uneven human subjects’ protection thus undermining the intent of the Common Rule. Objectives: To outline a scenario for expert centralized IRB review via implementation of a national virtual IRB review system overseen by the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). Conclusions: The complicated ethical issues and science involved in much of current research warrant an expert review panel. Centralized review would enable expert review specific to the research at hand, ensure consistency in human subjects protection, reduce the burden on local IRBs, and may reduce time spent obtaining approval. A centralized virtual system would allow IRB members to remain at their institutions while providing unprecedented expert review through currently available technology, and make information regarding monitoring and adverse event reporting available online in real-time.