The transition of Israeli men to fatherhood: a comparison between new fathers of pre-term/full-term infants

The study compared a group of 62 new Israeli fathers of pre‐term infants with a comparison group of 58 new fathers of full‐term infants with respect to parental stress, depression symptoms, mastery, self‐esteem and involvement with the child. Findings indicated that fathers of pre‐term infants had significantly greater stress and depression scores and lower involvement rate with the child compared with fathers of the matching group. No differences were found with respect to the fathers' mastery and self‐esteem. New fathers of full‐term infants, aged 30 years and more, had significantly higher self‐esteem compared with fathers aged less than 30 years. Findings are discussed with respect to practice in neonatal units.     

A Structured Expert Judgment Study for a Model of Campylobacter Transmission During Broiler-Chicken Processing

A structured expert judgment study was organized to obtain input data for a microbial risk-assessment model describing the transmission of campylobacter during broiler-chicken processing in the Netherlands. More specially, the expert study was aimed at quantifying the uncertainty on input parameters of this model and focused on the contamination of broiler-chicken carcasses with campylobacter during processing. Following the protocol for structured expert judgment studies, expert assessments were elicited individually through subjective probability distribution functions. The classical model was used to aggregate the individual experts' distributions in order to obtain a single combined distribution per variable. Three different weighting schemes were applied, including equal weighting and performance-based weighting with and without optimalization of the combined distributions. The individual experts' weights were based on their performance on the seed variables. Results of the various weighting schemes are presented in terms of performance, robustness, and combined distributions of the seed variables and some of the query variables. All three weighting schemes had adequate performance, with the optimized combined distributions significantly outperforming both the equal weight and the nonoptimized combined distributions. Hence, this weighting scheme, having adequate robustness, was chosen for further processing of the results.     

Participation in leisure activities by Arab adults with intellectual disabilities living in the community

Azaiza F, Rimmerman A, Croitoru T, Naon D. Participation in leisure activities by Arab adults with intellectual disabilities living in the community Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 97–103 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. The present research study examined factors affecting participation in leisure activities of Arab adults with intellectual disabilities living in the community, via the conceptual frame of the ICF (International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health). The research was based on a secondary analysis of data taken from a nationwide survey, thus being the first of its kind. The factors examined were bodily functions (health condition, physical functioning and cognitive functioning); activities (activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living); participation in employment; and the environmental factor of service utilisation (N= 153). The findings reveal interesting patterns regarding the roles of physical functioning and cognitive functioning in participation in leisure activities. These findings are discussed in relation to previous findings and cultural characteristics with reference to socio‐economic disparities.     

Errors in variables: consistent adjusted least squares (cals) estimation

A single equation errors-in-variables model is considered. Exact restrictions on the parameters in the model are assumed to be available such that the model is just-identified. A Consistent Adjusted Least Squares (CALS) estimator for this model is proposed and its asymptotic distribution is given. Special cases are given as illustrations. CALS is identical to the Method of Moments (MM), and to Maximum Likelihood (ML) under the structural interpretation. Under the functional interpretation it is identical to ML in cases where the latter method is consistent.     

Sharp Identification Regions in Models With Convex Moment Predictions

We provide a tractable characterization of the sharp identification region of the parameter vector θ in a broad class of incomplete econometric models. Models in this class have set‐valued predictions that yield a convex set of conditional or unconditional moments for the observable model variables. In short, we call these models with convex moment predictions. Examples include static, simultaneous‐move finite games of complete and incomplete information in the presence of multiple equilibria; best linear predictors with interval outcome and covariate data; and random utility models of multinomial choice in the presence of interval regressors data. Given a candidate value for θ, we establish that the convex set of moments yielded by the model predictions can be represented as the Aumann expectation of a properly defined random set. The sharp identification region of θ, denoted Θ_I, can then be obtained as the set of minimizers of the distance from a properly specified vector of moments of random variables to this Aumann expectation. Algorithms in convex programming can be exploited to efficiently verify whether a candidate θ is in Θ_I. We use examples analyzed in the literature to illustrate the gains in identification and computational tractability afforded by our method.     

The individual welfare function : A rejoinder

The Individual Welfare Function (IWF), introduced by Van Praag (1968), is a cardinal utility function. It can be measured by means of survey questions. Since its introduction, the IWF has been used extensively in both theoretical and empirical research. This research is reviewed, with an emphasis on policy applications.     

Cross-Contamination During Food Preparation: A Mechanistic Model Applied to Chicken-Borne Campylobacter

We develop a model for bacterial cross-contamination during food preparation in the domestic kitchen and apply this to the case of Campylobacter-contaminated chicken breast. Building blocks of the model are the routines performed during food preparation, with their associated probabilities of bacterial transfer between food items and kitchen utensils. The model is used in a quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA) of Campylobacter in the Netherlands. Using parameter values from the literature and performing elementary sensitivity analyses, we show that cross-contamination can contribute significantly to the risk of Campylobacter infection and find that cleaning frequency of kitchen utensils and thoroughness of rinsing of raw food items after preparation has more impact on cross-contamination than previously emphasized. Furthermore, we argue that especially more behavioral data on hygiene during food preparation is needed for a comprehensive Campylobacter risk assessment.     

Automatic Generation of Symbolic Multiattribute Ordinal Knowledge-Based DSSs: Methodology and Applications*

A learning-by-example algorithm, the ordinal learning model (OLM), that automatically generates symbolic rule-bases from examples was applied to four real-world multiattribute ordinal problem domains. The model automatically generates consistent and irredundant symbolic classification rules that mimic, in many aspects, the behavior of human subjects who solved similar problems during empirical studies. The OLM's performance is compared with those of regression analysis and with C4, a well-known symbolic learning-by-example decision tree building algorithm. The OLM uses mainly comparison operations and does not attempt to optimize the rule-bases it generates. Yet, the results show that the OLM's predictions are very accurate and the resulting rule-bases are relatively compact. The time required for constructing the rule-bases via the OLM was very competitive as well.