The Philippine Population Program: an overview

Since 1970 the Philippine population program has made considerable achievements in its effort to curb the country's high fertility rate. The program presently aims to attain a population growth rate of 2.0% in 1992 and eventually achieve replacement fertility for the country by the year 2000. To achieve these rates, the program has set into motion the so-called "high scenario" targets of greatly increasing the overall rates of use-effectiveness of program methods of contraception. The program continues to be guided by policies implemented since its start, as well as by new ones in resonse to recent developments. Though the program continues to receive funds from international donors, the Philippine government's share in the funding has steadily increased.     

Efforts to improve international migration statistics: a historical perspective

During the past decade, the international statistical community has made several efforts to develop standards for the definition, collection and publication of statistics on international migration. This article surveys the history of official initiatives to standardize international migration statistics by reviewing the recommendations of the International Statistical Institute, International Labor Organization, and the UN, and reports a recently proposed agenda for moving toward comparability among national statistical systems. Heightening awareness of the benefits of exchange and creating motivation to implement international standards requires a 3-pronged effort from the international statistical community. 1st, it is essential to continue discussion about the significance of improvement, specifically standardization, of international migration statistics. The move from theory to practice in this area requires ongoing focus by migration statisticians so that conformity to international standards itself becomes a criterion by which national statistical practices are examined and assessed. 2nd, the countries should be provided with technical documentation to support and facilitate the implementation of the recommended statistical systems. Documentation should be developed with an understanding that conformity to international standards for migration and travel statistics must be achieved within existing national statistical programs. 3rd, the call for statistical research in this area requires more efforts by the community of migration statisticians, beginning with the mobilization of bilateral and multilateral resources to undertake the preceding list of activities.     

Voting cycles and the structure of individual preferences

Empirical studies have shown that cyclical preferences are infrequent, but they have been less clear about why. Using thermometer ratings from nationally-representative samples of the U.S., we examine preferences for presidential candidates in order to determine what it is about them that leads to few cycles. Single-peaked preferences as usually construed (meaning that all of a set of preferences satisfy single-peakedness criteria) are, of course, rare. Yet we find a high degree of unidimensionality in the sense that for any given set of preferences, a relatively high proportion of the preference orders are consistent with single-peakedness. We also find that the highest amounts of unidimensionality often do not occur along partisan or left/right lines. Strong feelings for or against candidates, often not derived from an issue base, form the basis for the dimensionality discovered.We would like to thank Daniel Severance for programming the random model calculations and three anonymous referees, whose comments were very helpful in clarifying the presentation in this paper.     

WHY THE DEMOCRAT-REPUBLICAN PARTISANSHIP GAP VARIES FROM POLL TO POLL

Polls taken in late 1980 and 1984 varied by up to 20 pointsin the spread they reported between Democratic and Republicanidentifiers. We found three systematic and sizable differencesacross polls: polls that sample only voters, polls that emphasize"today" or the present in their question wording, and pollsthat are taken close to election day (at least in circumstanceslike those of 1984) tend to favor the party currently advantagedin the presidential race.     

Therapy for male couples experiencing relationship problems and sexual problems

This article examines four issues that need to be explored by the therapist as possible causes of stress for a male couple: stereotypic male roles, stereotypic sexual roles, homophobia, which includes the "coming out" process, and sexual dysfunctions. These issues can cause anxiety and stress, which may in turn cause relationship problems for a male couple. The role of the therapist is clarified and suggestions for treatment are given.     

Poisson regression with misclassified counts: application to cervical cancer

"Errors in disease classification can give misleading inferences for covariate effects when the probability of error is itself related to the covariates. More accurate inferences are possible using supplemental data on both true and fallible disease counts at various covariate levels. We present a method for incorporating such supplemental data into disease rate regression and use it to show that, although observed intercountry differences in European cervical cancer mortality rates are exaggerated by errors in death certification, they are not completely explained by such errors." The data concern Belgium, England and Wales, France, and Italy.