A graphical summary of disparities in health care and related summary measures

In order to assess the effectiveness of government programs designed to reduce disparities in the health care minority groups receive relative to the majority white population, a proper statistical measure should be used. This article proposes a measure of and its accompanying graph, which is readily interpretable and is not affected by the number of minority subgroups examined.     

Trait Expressiveness and Marital Satisfaction: The Role of Idealization Processes

This study examined the processes that underlie the association between trait expressiveness and marital satisfaction. A total of 168 newlywed couples participated in a four‐wave, 13‐year longitudinal study of marriage. Cross‐sectional and longitudinal path analyses suggested that expressiveness promotes satisfaction by leading spouses to engage in affectionate behavior and by leading them to idealize their partner. Expressive people formed idealized images of their partner because they brought out the best in their partner's behavior and because they interpreted their partner's behavior in a favorable light. The study extends previous research by showing that the benefits of trait expressiveness extend into the second decade of marriage and by providing a plausible explanation of the connections between trait expressiveness and marital satisfaction.     

A Bayesian Hierarchical Model for the Evaluation of a Website

Consider a website and the surfers visiting its pages. A typical issue of interest, for example while monitoring an advertising campaign, concerns whether a specific page has been designed successfully, i.e. is able to attract surfers or address them to other pages within the site. We assume that the surfing behaviour is fully described by the transition probabilities from one page to another, so that a clickstream (sequence of consecutively visited pages) can be viewed as a finite-state-space Markov chain. We then implement a variety of hierarchical prior distributions on the multivariate logits of the transition probabilities and define, for each page, a content effect and a link effect. The former measures the attractiveness of the page due to its contents, while the latter signals its ability to suggest further interesting links within the site. Moreover, we define an additional effect, representing overall page success, which incorporates both effects previously described. Using WinBUGS, we provide estimates and credible intervals for each of the above effects and rank pages accordingly.     

A “brer rabbit” case for reverse mandated benefits

Reverse mandated benefits is a government-mandated policy that requires employees to provide their employers with benefits that workers would not provide otherwise. Of course, only those benefits would be mandated that are worth more to employers than they cost, as determined by political authorities. My case for such a policy argues that it is at least as sensible as policies mandating that employers provide benefits to their employees that would not be provided otherwise.     

Applicability of a Neuroprobabilistic Integral Risk Index for the Environmental Management of Polluted Areas: A Case Study

Recently, we developed a GIS-Integrated Integral Risk Index (IRI) to assess human health risks in areas with presence of environmental pollutants. Contaminants were previously ranked by applying a self-organizing map (SOM) to their characteristics of persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity in order to obtain the Hazard Index (HI). In the present study, the original IRI was substantially improved by allowing the entrance of probabilistic data. A neuroprobabilistic HI was developed by combining SOM and Monte Carlo analysis. In general terms, the deterministic and probabilistic HIs followed a similar pattern: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and light polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were the pollutants showing the highest and lowest values of HI, respectively. However, the bioaccumulation value of heavy metals notably increased after considering a probability density function to explain the bioaccumulation factor. To check its applicability, a case study was investigated. The probabilistic integral risk was calculated in the chemical/petrochemical industrial area of Tarragona (Catalonia, Spain), where an environmental program has been carried out since 2002. The risk change between 2002 and 2005 was evaluated on the basis of probabilistic data of the levels of various pollutants in soils. The results indicated that the risk of the chemicals under study did not follow a homogeneous tendency. However, the current levels of pollution do not mean a relevant source of health risks for the local population. Moreover, the neuroprobabilistic HI seems to be an adequate tool to be taken into account in risk assessment processes.     

Adult Drug Treatment Courts: A Review

Drug treatment courts (DTCs), an alternative to traditional criminal courts, provide an innovative way to legally process some drug offenders. The origin and recent growth of the drug court system in the USA can be explained as an unintended consequence of a failing 'war on drugs'. In this article, we discuss the spread of adult DTCs throughout the USA, the main components of drug courts, controversies surrounding DTCs, and some criticisms of drug courts. We summarize the recent evaluations of adult DTCs, and highlight various DTC factors that have been found to reduce individual drug use and criminal activity. We also offer suggestions for future research on DTCs and conclude with policy recommendations.     

Effects of Category Order on Answers in Mail and Telephone Surveys1

Abstract Past research suggests that mail surveys encourage a primacy effect, which is a tendency to choose the first answers from a list, whereas telephone surveys encourage a recency effect, a tendency to choose the last answers from a list. This paper summarizes results from 82 new experiments conducted in 12 separate surveys in seven states. Only four of 33 mail survey comparisons exhibited significant primacy effects, while five of 26 experiments in telephone surveys exhibited recency effects. In addition, only three of 23 cross-method comparisons produced a significant primacy/recency effect in the expected manner. The conclusion is that the prevalence of primacy and recency effects has been over-estimated by past research and a new theoretical approach that takes into account multiple causation is needed for examining these effects.     

Problem gambling and policy advice: The mutability and relative effects of structural,associational and attitudinal variables

Research on gambling has the double mandate of public service and the advancement of science. This paper is meant to carry forward that mandate. Latent in research on the causes of problem gambling is the policy insight that these causes represent different types of phenomena and are unequally mutable to practitioners' efforts to prevent and/or treat problem gambling. By making the issue of mutability manifest in research, findings from research would have more policy relevance and practical import. Data from a 1989 Iowa survey on lottery play and problem gambling are analyzed to illustrate this point. 1,226 respondents were contacted by phone and phone interviews were completed with 1,011 of these 1,226 eligible respondents. With multiple regression, we assessed the contributions of mutable and immutable variables to the explained variance in problem gambling. The results show mutable correlates explain enough variance in problem gambling to recommend their consideration in treatment/prevention. The results also suggest a social as well as a psychological etiology to problem gambling. Future research should, however, do a more complete comparison of social and psychological causes of problem gambling.This research was partially supported by the Iowa Department of Human Services and the National Institute of Mental Health (1 R01 MH50369-01A1). The authors wish to thank Willis Goudy, anonymous readers and the editor of this journal for helpful comments.     

Colonialization and community: Implications for first nations development

First Nations' communities have been a major focus for the longhistory of colonial action in Canada. The results have beendisastrous for Native cultural, identity and pride. Four majorcommunity institutions – political, economic, religiousand educational and the family – have been devastated.This has robbed Aboriginal Nations of their identity and theirsense that they have the ability effectively to manage theirenvironments and has contributed significantly to their disadvantagedposition within Canada. If community development is to be utilized in First Nationscommunities, four objectives must be addressed: (1) strengtheningcommunity traditions and culture; (2) development of culturallyappropriate community-based organizations; (3) reflection onthe importance of land for local communities; (4) the forgingof links between local and national issues.