Who Is the Residential Parent? Understanding Discrepancies in Unmarried Parents' Reports

Research examining parental reports of children's living arrangements has often relied on information about legally ordered custody agreements following divorce. This analysis used data from matched pairs of parents (N = 1,156) in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study who live apart to compare mother and father reports of their child's residence 5 years after a nonmarital birth. The authors found that over one third of unmarried parents disagreed about who their child lived with and that conflicting reports were much more likely when fathers spent nights with the mother (an indicator of part‐time cohabitation) and had overnights with the child on their own. The results further suggest that discrepancies in unmarried parents' reports were more closely associated with the complexity and ambiguity of their living situations than with the quality of their relationships with each other. Implications for measuring children's living arrangements in families formed outside of marriage are discussed.     

Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Detainee Rights at Guantanamo Bay: A Community Structure Approach

A community structure analysis compared community characteristics and coverage of detainee rights and Guantanamo Bay in leading newspapers in 28 major cities nationwide, sampling all relevant 250+ word articles from September 12, 2001, to September 11, 2012. The resulting 359 articles were coded for “prominence” and “direction,” then combined into a “Media Vector” score for each newspaper (range = .6034 to ?.2500). About four out of five (82%) newspapers supported detainee rights. Stakeholder and buffer clusters were important. Pearson correlations revealed that stakeholders (the proportions and concerns of which are expected to be reflected in media coverage) were significant, with percentage of Mainline Protestant (r = .550, p = .001) linked to favorable media coverage of detainee rights and percentage of age 65 and older (r = ?.321, p = .048) linked to unfavorable coverage. The buffer hypothesis (associating higher proportions of privileged groups with coverage receptive to human rights claims) was also confirmed, with percentage of college educated correlating with favorable coverage (r = .409, p = .015). Regression analysis yielded two significant variables—percentage Mainline Protestant, 33%, and percentage professional/technical occupational status (another “buffer” measure), 27%, totaling 59.9%, both linked to favorable coverage. Unexpectedly, the Midwest displayed more media support for detainee rights than any other region of the United States.     

Doubling up when times are tough: A study of obligations to share a home in response to economic hardship

This study uses a factorial vignette design embedded in an Internet survey to investigate attitudes toward an adult child and parent living together in response to economic hardship. Over half of Americans said the desirability of intergenerational co-residence depends on particularistic aspects of the family, notably the quality of family relationships. Support for co-residence is greatest when the adult child is single rather than partnered. Support is weaker if the adult child is cohabiting rather than married to the partner, although groups with greater exposure to cohabitation make less of a distinction between cohabitation and marriage. Presence of a grandchild does not affect views about co-residence. There is more support for sharing a home when a mother needs a place to live than when the adult child does. Responses to open-ended questions show that individuals invoke both universalistic family obligations and particularistic qualities of family relationships to explain their attitudes.     

Assessing the Tongzhi Label: Self-Identification and Public Opinion

Tongzhi is one of several Chinese terms that refer to individuals who are attracted to the same sex. Using data from two different surveys in Hong Kong, this research note examines how the term tongzhi coexists with other terms. We investigate the prevalence of self-identification as tongzhi, and we explore the extent to which using the term tongzhi influences public attitudes toward gay people and gay rights. Activists began popularizing the term tongzhi in the late 1980s, but less than one third of the participants in our 2008 survey of sexual orientation minorities (n = 728) described themselves as tongzhi. Using a split-ballot experiment in a 2013 public opinion poll (n = 831), we found that attitudes toward gay people and gay rights were not significantly impacted by whether questions were phrased in terms of tongzhi or the main alternative term tongxinglianzhe. We discuss how our findings can enrich understandings of earlier research and illuminate avenues for future study.     

ON ESTIMATING PARAMETERS FOR BETA DISTRIBUTIONS

The purpose of this paper is to comment on and give historical perspective to two methdologies for estimating parameters of beta distributions. Fielitz and Myers [3] [4] developed and advocated a methodology using the method of moments, while Romesburg [20] advocated a methodology usingthe method of maximum likelihood. However, what Fielitz and Myers presented as new research and suggested as an area needing further study is ground already trampled. The authors have prepared a graph to underline the superiority of the maximum likelihood method in fitting beta distributions.     

The complementarity of internal integration and product modularity: An empirical study of their interaction effect on competitive capabilities

Modular product design and internal integration are commonly adopted by manufacturers to improve operational performance. A number of studies argue that the adoption of product modularity significantly alters organization design, which affects the impact of internal integration on competitive capabilities. This paper thus aims to empirically explore the individual effects as well as interaction effects of product modularity and internal integration on competitive capabilities. The competitive capabilities studied in this paper include product innovativeness, low price, product quality, delivery, flexibility and customer services. After analysing the data from 251 Hong Kong manufacturers through moderated multiple regression analysis, the study found that better internal integration can significantly improve product innovativeness, product quality, delivery, flexibility and customer services, while a high level of product modularity enhances product innovativeness, flexibility and customer services. More importantly, the study shows that internal integration and product modularity can interact to improve product innovativeness and product quality. These results enhance our understanding of the interaction of product design and organizational coordination.     

Robust empirical likelihood for linear models under median constraints

In this paper, we consider the application of the empirical likelihood for

linear models under median constraints in view of robustness. For two simple median constraints, it is shown that conditions to ensure the consistency of the empirical likelihood confidence regions can be surprisingly relaxed compared with the normal approach under L norm. However, the coverage accuracy of the empirical likelihood confidence regions based on simple median constrains cannot be improved because of the discontinuity of the constraints. Therefore, a smoothed version of median constraint is proposed and a general theory is established to ensure its validity.