Quality care for ill children: AIDS-specialized foster family homes

Children with AIDS and related complexes present a new and serious challenge to the child welfare field's foster care system. At this stage of the world's knowledge of AIDS and treatment capacity for its victims, the children are stigmatized as plague bearers, their viability is unknown, and few, if any, will ever have a home to return to. This article describes a special foster care demonstration in behalf of AIDS infants.     

Small sample properties of the logit maximum likelihood estimator:a simulation study

This paper explores the effect of sample size, scale of parameters and size of the choice set on the maximum likelihood estimator of the parameters of the multinomial logit model. Data were generated by simulations under a three-way factorial experimental design for logit models containing three, four and five explanatory variables. Simulation data were analyzed by analysis of covariance and a regression model of the performance measure, the log root mean-squared error (LRMSE), fitted against the three factors and their interactions. Several important conclusions emerged. First, the LRMSE improves, but at a decreasing rate, with increases in the model's degrees of freedom. Second, the number of choice alternatives in the decision makers' choice sets has a significant impact on the LRMSE; however, heterogeneity in the choice sets across the sample has little or no impact. Finally, the scale of parameters and all of its two-way interactions with the other two factors significantly affect the LRMSE. Using the regression results, a family of iso-LRMSE curves are derived in the space of model degrees of freedom and scale of parameters. Their implications for researchers in choosing sample size and scale of parameters is discussed.     

Marginality and the Academic*

The question of social and psychological separation of the academic and intellectual in American society is raised. The empirical literature, although in short supply, suggests that the academic is socially isolated from the larger society and experiences attitudinal alienation. Interviews with sixty-one college and university professors tended to confirm this view, but particularly so among those respondents who identified themselves as intellectuals.     

A consistent system of conditional probabilities which is not compatible with any random field

A consistent, Markovian family of conditional densities is constructed which is not compatible with any random field.