Examining the Antecedents of U.S. Nonmarital Fatherhood

Despite the dramatic rise in U.S. nonmarital childbearing in recent decades, limited attention has been paid to factors affecting nonmarital fatherhood (beyond studies of young fathers). In this article, we use data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort to examine the antecedents of nonmarital fatherhood, as compared to marital fatherhood. Overall, we find the strongest support across both data sets for education and race/ethnicity as key predictors of having a nonmarital first birth, consistent with prior literature about women’s nonmarital childbearing and about men’s early/teenage fatherhood. Education is inversely related to the risk of nonmarital fatherhood, and minority (especially black) men are much more likely to have a child outside of marriage than white men. We find little evidence that employment predicts nonmarital fertility, although it does strongly (and positively) predict marital fertility. High predicted earnings are also associated with a greater likelihood of marital childbearing but with a lower likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Given the socioeconomic disadvantage associated with nonmarital fatherhood, this research suggests that nonmarital fatherhood may be an important aspect of growing U.S. inequality and stratification both within and across generations.     

Personal networks of prisoners prior to incarceration: A comparison with the general Dutch population

This study examines inmates’ core discussion network prior to their incarceration. The core discussion network consists of the immediate social circle of relatively strong ties. The aims of the study are twofold: (1) to describe inmates’ core discussion network prior to their incarceration in terms of network structure, relationship quality and embedded socioeconomic resources; (2) to compare inmates’ core discussion network with the core discussion network of the general Dutch population. Data are analyzed from the Prison Project (n = 1909) and the Survey of the Social Networks of the Dutch (n = 394). Compared with the general Dutch population, prior to incarceration, prisoners generally have a core discussion network that is similar to or even better with respect to network structure and relationship quality. However, prisoners’ core discussion network members seem to lack socioeconomic resources.     

Predicting social influence with faction sizes and relative status

Building on a recent theoretical development in the field of sociological social psychology, we develop a formal mathematical model of social influence processes. The extant theoretical literature implies that factions and status should have non-linear effects on social influence, and yet these theories have been evaluated using standard linear statistical models. Our formal model of influence includes these non-linearities, as specified by the theories. We evaluate the fit of the formal model using experimental data. Our results indicate that a one-parameter mathematical model fits the experimental data. We conclude with the implications of our research and a discussion of how it may be used as an impetus for further work on social influence processes.     

Time-varying coefficients in a multivariate frailty model: Application to breast cancer recurrences of several types and death

During their follow-up, patients with cancer can experience several types of recurrent events and can also die. Over the last decades, several joint models have been proposed to deal with recurrent events with dependent terminal event. Most of them require the proportional hazard assumption. In the case of long follow-up, this assumption could be violated. We propose a joint frailty model for two types of recurrent events and a dependent terminal event to account for potential dependencies between events with potentially time-varying coefficients. For that, regression splines are used to model the time-varying coefficients. Baseline hazard functions (BHF) are estimated with piecewise constant functions or with cubic M-Splines functions. The maximum likelihood estimation method provides parameter estimates. Likelihood ratio tests are performed to test the time dependency and the statistical association of the covariates. This model was driven by breast cancer data where the maximum follow-up was close to 20 years.     

Integration of project management,human resource development,and business teams: a partnership,planning model for organizational training and development initiatives

The changing business environment has challenged organizations to explore unique ways to ensure the success of online training initiatives. Thus, project teams, including training managers, should not only support organizational training and development initiatives; but, they also need to use project-focused, planning models for implementation. This paper proposes a model that is an extension of the model for business and training partnership developed by Price. The proposed model includes the integration of project management, human resource development (HRD), and business teams in order to enhance the success of training implementations through a sequential, planned framework. The model includes phases, best practices, and supporting tools to assist in managing and administering training and development projects. The approach developed in this research includes an account of the activities associated with initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing processes for an online training initiative conducted in an oil and gas organization. This research also discusses implications of the proposed model for HRD professionals, because they are typically the champion of training and development initiatives within organizations today.     

Foreign Location Choice: Review and Extensions

International Business (IB) research on foreign‐location choice has experienced a revival in recent years, yet a comprehensive review has been sorely lacking. The purpose of this review is to synthesize the findings of recently published articles on the topic of foreign‐location choice and offer fruitful directions for future research. This review consists of three sections: first, the authors provide a historical overview of this research stream by tracing its origins and analyzing the general trend that has shaped research on foreign‐location choice. Next, the authors conduct a review of 137 recent articles published in leading IB and business/management journals. These articles are categorized according to common topics, and the main findings of each category are synthesized in order to bring some cohesion to this fragmented field. Lastly, the authors identify issues that remain under‐researched or require re‐thinking some taken‐for‐granted assumptions. Through this effort, they are able to connect the past, present and future of research on foreign‐location choice and to shed some new light on the IB literature.     

A Common Situation Conducive to Bizarre Distribution Shapes

Conditions conducive to bizarre-shaped distributions are fairly common in certain areas of research where, for perfectly valid reasons, an important causal variable is left uncontrolled. Theoretical rationale and actual examples are given to show how such distributions are generated, to exemplify their shapes, and to indicate their prevalence in practice. An L-shaped type tends to occur when time scores are recorded for a task subject to infrequent but time-consuming errors; other types occur when measuring behavior influenced by social conformity, or under other circumstances. The L shape appears to be far more conducive to nonrobustness than are previously investigated shapes.     

We Must Preach what Should Be Practiced

There is some merit in what a majority does in statistics, but this is not enough for statistical science, which is developed by individuals.     

Skew binary regression with measurement errors

In this paper, we extend the structural probit measurement error model by considering that the unobserved covariate follows a skew-normal distribution. The new model is termed the structural skew-normal probit model. As in the normal case, the likelihood function is obtained analytically which can be maximized by using existing statistical software. A Bayesian approach using Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques to generate from the posterior distributions is also developed. A simulation study demonstrates the usefulness of the approach in avoiding attenuation which is the case with the naive procedure and it seems to be more efficient than using the structural probit model when the distribution of the covariate (predictor) is skew.     

Uniformly implementable small sample integrated likelihood ratio test for one-way and two-way ANOVA under heteroscedasticity and normality

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - ANOVA under normally distributed response and heteroscedastic variances is commonly encountered in biological, behavioral, educational and agricultural...