PATHS OF COMMUNITY INTEGRATION

This article raises new questions about the process of migration integration into a new community. What are the paths of integration?And what makes a difference in the paths that are taken?The major findings—that three major paths can be distinguished and that life cycle variables make the most diference in path taken—are interpreted in light of various theoretical explanations of the integration process. The predictions of other theoretical perspectives—related to the social statuses of migrants, social networks, and previous contact with the community—have only weak and sporadic support in understanding the paths of integration.     

Bulgaria's non-profit sector: the search for form,purpose, and legitimacy

Bulgaria, like other East European nations since the collapse of communism, has moved rapidly to form private, self-directed non-profit and voluntary organisations. Like those nations too, Bulgaria faces a number of challenges in its pursuit of forming a strong non-profit sector. Chief among those challenges are establishing a sound legal foundation, defining the social purposes and functions of the non-profit sector, and establishing the legitimacy of these organisations in the minds of the Bulgarian people. These three challenges are analysed in the essay, following an overview of the current make-up and characteristics of the emerging non-profit sector.     

Actual and perceived emotional sending and personality correlates

To ascertain whether actual and perceived emotional sending are distinct constructs, the present study investigated the relationship between subjects' ability to facially express six basic emotions and their perceived success at expressing these emotions. Sixty-eight subjects completed a number of standardized personality scales and were videotaped while attempting to portray six basic emotions. Immediately following the videotaping subjects were asked to rate their perceived success in the emotional-sending task. Observers then judged the emotional-sending videotapes to determine subjects' actual sending abilities. A confirmatory factor analytic model indicated that actual and perceived emotional-sending were distinct factors. Zero-order correlations between the traditional personality measures and the actual and perceived sending factors also supported this distinction. These findings have important implications for the construction of standardized measures of individual differences in nonverbal communication skills.This research was supported by a UCR intramural research grant and a UCR NIH Biomedical Support Equipment grant. The authors would like to thank Richard Lippa and Louise Prince.     

Multiple imputation of a randomly censored covariate improves logistic regression analysis

Randomly censored covariates arise frequently in epidemiologic studies. The most commonly used methods, including complete case and single imputation or substitution, suffer from inefficiency and bias. They make strong parametric assumptions or they consider limit of detection censoring only. We employ multiple imputation, in conjunction with semi-parametric modeling of the censored covariate, to overcome these shortcomings and to facilitate robust estimation. We develop a multiple imputation approach for randomly censored covariates within the framework of a logistic regression model. We use the non-parametric estimate of the covariate distribution or the semi-parametric Cox model estimate in the presence of additional covariates in the model. We evaluate this procedure in simulations, and compare its operating characteristics to those from the complete case analysis and a survival regression approach. We apply the procedures to an Alzheimer's study of the association between amyloid positivity and maternal age of onset of dementia. Multiple imputation achieves lower standard errors and higher power than the complete case approach under heavy and moderate censoring and is comparable under light censoring. The survival regression approach achieves the highest power among all procedures, but does not produce interpretable estimates of association. Multiple imputation offers a favorable alternative to complete case analysis and ad hoc substitution methods in the presence of randomly censored covariates within the framework of logistic regression.     

Appraising financial performance for financial institutions

The author is an investment analyst whose area of specialization is financial shares, especially in banking. The prime responsibility of the investment analyst is to the investment institutions. However, the information available to the analyst is no more than that available to shareholders in the institution being monitored. The expertise of the analyst is in seeking out the information and interpreting it for the client. There has been a considerable improvement in investor relations in the U.K. in the past few years. The author suggests that more information could be provided by the U.K. Clearing Banks—information which is readily available within the banks—which would enable the investment analyst to make important comparisons from data which is not at present available to him.     

Frequent Card Playing and Pathological Gambling: The Utility of the Georgia Gambling Task and Iowa Gambling Task for Predicting Pathology

The current investigation examined performance on two laboratory-based gambling tasks, the Georgia Gambling Task (GGT; Goodie, 2003. The effects of control on betting: Paradoxical betting on items of high confidence with low value. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 598–610) and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994. Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50, 7–15), as well as self-reported markers of gambling pathology using the Diagnostic Interview for Gambling Severity (DIGS; Winters, Specker, & Stinchfield, 2002. The downside: Problem and pathological gambling (pp. 143–148). Reno, NV: University of Nevada, Reno) among a sample of undergraduate students who are frequent card players. Two hundred twenty-one participants (55 female and 166 male; mean age 19.21 years) who self-classified as playing cards at least once per month completed these measures. Performance on GGT and IGT systematically related to gambling-related pathology in several ways. Overconfidence and bet acceptance on the GGT, and myopic focus on reward on the IGT, predicted gambling related pathology. GGT and IGT performance correlated with each other, but both contributed independently to predicting gambling pathology. Card playing frequency predicted gambling pathology but not GGT or IGT performance. Discussion focuses on the role of biases of judgment and risky decision making in pathological gambling.     

Measuring and evaluating school performance: an investigation of status and growth-based achievement indicators

Several school performance indices were evaluated using achievement data from multiple longitudinally matched middle school student cohorts in a large district in the southwestern United States. Measures designed to index the within-cohort achievement status and growth of students as well as the status and growth-based changes that occur over years between different student cohorts were studied. Within- and between-cohort status and growth-based estimates of school performance were generated by applying simple and relatively complex statistical models to the longitudinal time-series data obtained on students. Results indicated that within-cohort status-based estimates were closely related to student demographics and between-cohort estimates were associated with cohort enrollment size and initial performance level. These results suggest that schools may often be rewarded and penalized on the basis of factors over which school personnel have limited or no control. Implications for the measurement and evaluation of school performance are discussed.     

Does housework matter anymore? The shifting impact of housework on economic inequality

In recent years, American women’s housework time has declined while American men’s housework time has risen. We examine how these changes have affected economic inequality in the United States. Using time-diary data from the Time Use in Economic and Social Accounts, 1975–1976 (N = 1,484) and the American Time Use Survey, 2003 (N = 5,534), we value adults’ housework using two alternative methodologies and assess its influence on households’ real access to goods and services in both years. Results suggest that housework reduces economic inequality in both years. But, between 1975–1976 and 2002–2003, overall economic inequality rose largely because of the growing wage inequality and also, in part, because of growth in housework inequality. Socio-demographic change partially inhibited the overall growth in economic inequality.