Informal mentoring and young adult employment

This study explores the role of informal mentoring (i.e., developing an important relationship with a non-parental adult) in the transition to full time employment among young adults (age 23–28). Multivariate analysis of the Add Health data reveals that mentoring is positively related to the likelihood of full time employment, and the relationship involves both selection and causation processes. Entrance into the world of work facilitates the development of mentoring relationships, especially among youth who identify work-related mentors after adolescence. These relationships have the potential for promoting attachment to the labor force. Mentoring relationships that develop outside of work settings and during adolescence have a positive impact on the odds of full time employment. The receipt of guidance and advice from mentors, as well as access to weak-tied mentoring relationships, teacher mentors, and friend mentors all contribute to the increased odds of employment in young adulthood. However, adolescent mentoring may be less effective among young women than it is among young men.     

Hypotheses Testing as a Fuzzy Set Estimation Problem

For many scientific experiments computing a p-value is the standard method for reporting the outcome. It is a simple way of summarizing the information in the data. One theoretical justification for p-values is the Neyman-Pearson theory of hypotheses testing. However, the decision making focus of this theory does not correspond well with the desire, in most scientific experiments, for a simple and easily interpretable summary of the data. Fuzzy set theory with its notion of a membership function gives a non-probabilistic way to talk about uncertainty. Here, we argue that for some situations, where a p-value is computed, it may make more sense to formulate the question as one of estimating a membership function of the subset of special parameter points which are of particular interest for the experiment. Choosing the appropriate membership function can be more difficult than specifying the null and alternative hypotheses but the resulting payoff is greater. This is because a membership function can better represent the shades of desirability among the parameter points than the sharp division of the parameter space into the null and alternative hypotheses. This approach yields an estimate which is easy to interpret and more flexible and informative than the cruder p-value.     

The use of small scale prototypes in image reconstruction from projections

We introduce a class of small scale simulation models—‘prototypes'—which reproduce many of the known properties of maximum likelihood and related reconstruction methods used in emission tomography, and greatly simplify the development of new methods. We introduce an iterative Fisher-scoring algorithm and demonstrate, by use of the prototype models, its superior speed of convergence when compared with the standard EM algorithm.     

Economic determinants of fertility: Results from cross sectional aggregate data

Census data for areal units, SMSA’s in 1960 and cities in 1940, are used to test hypotheses and estimate parameters concerning the influence of a variety of socioeconomic variables on fertility rates of ever married white and nonwhite women aged 25–29, 30–34, 35–44, and 45–49. An economic model of the demand for children is adopted as the theoretical framework. The principal findings are that the market earnings opportunities for wives have an important negative effect on the fertility rate and that male income, representing the income of husbands, has a small but positive effect on fertility. The implication of these results is that changes in economic variables, for example, improvements in the employment opportunities and wages for wives or the establishment of a children’s allowance program, may be expected to affect fertility.     

Admissible estimators in finite population sampling employing various types of prior information

We consider some estimators of the total and variance of a finite population from Bayesian and pseudo-Bayesian perspectives. Recently, Meeden and Ghosh (1982a, 1982b) have provided quite simple but powerful tools for proving admissibility of estimators and estimator-design pairs is finite population sampling problems. We consider what these techniques yield in the way of admissibility results for the estimators discussed.     

Extending monetary values to broader performance and impact measures: Transportation applications and lessons for other fields

This article examines recent progress at assigning monetary values to what are normally considered “hard to quantify” benefits of transportation projects. It focuses on three types of impacts – environmental quality, health and wider economic impacts – to examine how transportation project evaluation methods have evolved in recent years and how they compare to methods used for evaluation of non-transportation programs. Examples of recent practice are provided to show how transport agencies are continuing to refine performance measures to include broader impacts in project evaluation. A classification is provided to distinguish direct traveler effects from indirect effects on non-travelers, a step important to maximize coverage and minimize double-counting of impacts. For each type of impact, the paper discusses the range of variation in monetized values and shows that the variation is due less to imprecision in measurement than to fundamental issues about whether to use damage compensation, impact avoidance costs, stated preferences or behavioral valuation perspectives to define those values. Case studies as diverse as Australian roads, Wisconsin energy programs and Appalachian economic development programs are used to show how common methods are evolving among transport and non-transport agencies to improve impact measurement and its use in project evaluation.     

The elephant in the room is awake and takes things personally: The North Korean nuclear threat and the general public's estimation of American diplomacy

The general audience for a global crisis can become a grassroots force in the ultimate fate of policy decisions. Focusing on the North Korean nuclear crisis case, certain contingent factors (dominant coalition characteristics, external threat, and external public characteristics) were overall strong predictors for public estimation about the government stance. Further, perception of situational factors (external threat and external public characteristics) was a stronger predictor for the participants’ stance estimation than perception of predisposing factors (dominant coalition characteristics). Implications for international diplomacy were discussed.     

An Empirical Approach to the Study of Well-being Among Rural Men and Women in Ghana

The paper indicates using community development and sustainable livelihood theories as lenses that well-being indicators vary among societies, especially in developing countries due cultural differences. The study which was carried in three rural communities in Ho Municipality in the Ghana was to show the extent to which men’s and women’s sense of well-being were determined by their local economic, religious, social, and education indicators; all of which were driven by their cultural values. Since men and women placed different values on religious, social, economic, education indicators, the paper discusses that their importance to overall well-being also differs between men and women.