What’s happening to the family? Interactions between demographic and institutional change

As soon as men and women … acquire the habit of weighing the individual advantages and disadvantages of any prospective course of action … they cannot fail to become aware of the heavy personal sacrifices that family ties and especially parenthood entail under modern conditions. (Schumpeter 1988/1942, pp. 501–502)     

A Psychometric Analysis of Field Evaluation Instruments Designed to Measure Students’ Generalist-Level Social Work Competencies

ABSTRACT

There is a dearth of research on the evaluation of the psychometric performance of instruments designed to measure students’ generalist-level social work competencies. There is also uncertainty on the performance of various response option formats used to measure students’ competencies in assessment instruments. Using a sample of 198 master of social work students and 198 field instructors, the current study employs confirmatory factor analysis to assess the psychometric performance of a field evaluation instrument designed to measure students’ generalist-level social work competencies. The results provide evidence to support the validity and reliability of the instrument. The results also highlight nuances associated with a 5-point response option format for items used to measure competency indicators. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Subjective Probabilities on Subjectively Unambiguous Events

This paper suggests a behavioral definition of (subjective) ambiguity in an abstract setting where objects of choice are Savage‐style acts. Then axioms are described that deliver probabilistic sophistication of preference on the set of unambiguous acts. In particular, both the domain and the values of the decision‐maker's probability measure are derived from preference. It is argued that the noted result also provides a decision‐theoretic foundation for the Knightian distinction between risk and ambiguity.     

Planning for a university,using interactive forecasting

The benefits of programme review, forward planning and control have been demonstrated at the university-wide level. Within a faculty or department, there is also a clear need for developing and using planning methods which are rationally based and forward looking if appropriate responses to changing social and academic trends are to be made. This paper delineates a number of planning and control variables encountered at the faculty or departmental level, describes the development and use of a computer-based interactive forecasting model, and discusses the advantages and limitations of such models in planning a faculty's progress toward its goals.     

A simulation tool for modeling the influence of anatomy on information flow using discrete integrate and fire neurons

There are theories on brain functionality that can only be tested in very large models. In this work, a simulation model appropriate for working with large number of neurons was developed, and Information Theory measuring tools were designed to monitor the flow of information in such large networks. The model’s simulator can handle up to one million neurons in its current implementation by using a discretized version of the Lapicque integrate and fire neuron instead of interacting differential equations. A modular structure facilitates the setting of parameters of the neurons, networks, time and most importantly, architectural changes. Applications of this research are demonstrated by testing architectures in terms of mutual information. We present some preliminary architectural results showing that adding a virtual analogue to white matter called “jumps” to a simple representation of cortex results in: (1) an increase in the rate of mutual information flow, corresponding to the “bias” or “priming” hypothesis; thereby giving a possible explanation of the high speed response to stimuli in complex networks. (2) An increase in the stability of response of the network; i.e. a system with “jumps” is a more reliable machine. This also has an effect on the potential speed of response.     

Unmarried Motherhood: Recent Trends,Composition, and Black-White Differences

The National Survey of Family Growth (1982) is used to examine the extent to which racial differences in premarital birth rates can be explained by differences in parents' socioeconomic status, family structure, and residential characteristics. The findings document a large diversity in premarital births within both populations. Black women from high-risk backgrounds are three times more likely to have a premarital birth than black women from low-risk backgrounds. Racial differences in premarital births arise because (1) black women are more likely to come from high-risk backgrounds and (2) black women from low-risk backgrounds are more likely to have a premarital birth than white women with similar characteristics. There are similar rates of premarital births by race among persons from high-risk backgrounds.     

The impact of Indian gaming on crime in New Mexico: A research note

The complexity of the relationship between gambling and crime make empirical establishment of a relationship between the two difficult. Focusing on one state, we examine the impact of Indian gaming on crime in New Mexico. Specific crime rates in New Mexico counties with tribal gaming are discussed. Comparisons of the rates of specific crimes are made between New Mexico counties with tribal gaming and those without.     

An R2criterion based on optimal predictors

The predictor that minimizes mean-squared prediction error is used to derive a goodness-of-fit measure that offers an asymptotically valid model selection criterion for a wide variety of regression models. In particular, a new goodness-of-fit criterion (cr²) is proposed for censored or otherwise limited dependent variables. The new goodness-of-fit measure is then applied to the analysis of duration.