Benchmark Analysis: Shopping with Proper Confidence

We discuss the issue of using benchmark doses for quantifying (excess) risk associated with exposure to environmental hazards. The paradigm of low-dose risk estimation in dose-response modeling is used as the primary application scenario. Emphasis is placed on making simultaneous inferences on benchmark doses when data are in the form of proportions, although the concepts translate easily to other forms of outcome data.     

Comparing Networks Across Space and Time, Size and Species

We describe and illustrate methodology for comparing networks from diverse settings. Our empirical base consists of 42 networks from four kinds of species (humans, nonhuman primates, nonprimate mammals, and birds) and covering distinct types of relations such as influence, grooming, and agonistic encounters. The general problem is to determine whether networks are similarly structured despite their surface differences. The methodology we propose is generally applicable to the characterization and comparison of network–level social structures across multiple settings, such as different organizations, communities, or social groups, and to the examination of sources of variability in network structure. We first fit a p^* model (Wasserman and Pattison 1996) to each network to obtain estimates for effects of six structural properties on the probability of the graph. We then calculate predicted tie probabilities for each network, using both its own parameter estimates and the estimates from every other network in the collection. Comparison is based on the similarity between sets of predicted tie probabilities. We then use correspondence analysis to represent the similarities among all 42 networks and interpret the resulting configuration using information about the species and relations involved. Results show that similarities among the networks are due more to the kind of relation than to the kind of animal.     

Social choice with analytic preferences

Arrow's axioms for social welfare functions are shown to be inconsistent when the set of alternatives is the nonnegative orthant in a multidimensional Euclidean space and preferences are assumed to be either the set of analytic classical economic preferences or the set of Euclidean spatial preferences. When either of these preference domains is combined with an agenda domain consisting of compact sets with nonempty interiors, strengthened versions of the Arrovian social choice correspondence axioms are shown to be consistent. To help establish the economic possibility theorem, an ordinal version of the Analytic Continuation Principle is developed. Received: 4 July 2000/Accepted: 2 April 2001     

Betrayal and repetition: Understanding aggression in sexually abused girls

Betrayal by a significant object is seen as primary in causing behavioral and emotional disturbances in incest victims, leading to a pervasive identification with the aggressor and disturbances in object relations development. Identification with the aggressor is understood not as a uniform defense mobilized against a specific affect but as a complex compromise formation which defends against anxiety, while also providing libidinal, aggressive and superego gratifications. Far from simply attempting to overcome the past, identifications thus preserve affects that have become pleasurable and self-defining. Two case studies of adolescent girls illustrate how treatment can help victims recognize and begin to forego the sadomasochistic pleasure derived from these identifications, a relinquishment necessary for true mastery.     

Relationship Dissolution as a Life Stage Transition: Effects on Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors

In this paper, with the use of linear regressions to investigate how relationship dissolution affects sexual attitudes and behaviors, the authors address the stereotype that newly single people seek multiple sexual partners. Although the newly single people surveyed did obtain new sexual partners, the rate at which they acquired new partners did not support the stereotype. Specifically, men with custody of their children seemed oriented toward finding a steady partner. Additionally, men and women with low incomes reported relatively high rates of partner acquisition after relationship dissolution. The high rates reported by disadvantaged groups may be more directly related to familial instability accompanying poverty than to cultural characteristics associated with income or race. We argue that a life stage model with categorical stages in a rigid, anachronistic progression provides insufficient means to gain an understanding of newly single people.