Transition from playing with simulated gambling games to gambling with real money: a longitudinal study in adolescence

Digital technology advances have supported an expansion of gambling activities, which is notable via the advent of simulated gambling games. Simulated gambling reproduces ‘real’ gambling activities, which enables the users to gamble without investing money. According to research evidence, a certain number of adolescents are playing with these games, but until now little has been known about how they could facilitate the migration to gambling with real money. Using a longitudinal design with a one-year interval period, the goal of this study was to assess the potential transition between playing with simulated gambling and the initiation to gambling with real money. The final sample was constituted of 1220 adolescents (age range = 14 to 18 y.o.) who had never played with real money at the first measurement time. At the second measurement time, 28.8% of the participants had gambled for the first time with real money. Logistic regressions revealed that the predictive association between simulated gambling and gambling with real money only holds for adolescents who transitioned from simulated poker to poker with real money. These findings highlight the need for regulation and monitoring on Internet gambling poker sites, as well as further research to assess the mechanisms at work.     

Factors associated with long-term benzodiazepine use among elderly women and men in Quebec

The goal of this study was to compare factors associated with long-term benzodiazepine use by elderly women and men (n = 1701) who participated in the Quebec Health Survey (QHS). Data from the 1998 QHS were linked with data from the administrative files of the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec. Results showed that elderly women were more at risk than men for long-term benzodiazepine use. Results of the multivariate logistic regression did not show a significant difference between women and men on any of the risk factors studied. Other factors such as elderly and physician attitudes deserve further study to explain differences in long-term benzodiazepine use between elderly women and men.     

Divergences and duality for estimation and test under moment condition models

We introduce estimation and test procedures through divergence minimization for models satisfying linear constraints with unknown parameter. These procedures extend the empirical likelihood (EL) method and share common features with generalized empirical likelihood approach. We treat the problems of existence and characterization of the divergence projections of probability distributions on sets of signed finite measures. We give a precise characterization of duality, for the proposed class of estimates and test statistics, which is used to derive their limiting distributions (including the EL estimate and the EL ratio statistic) both under the null hypotheses and under alternatives or misspecification. An approximation to the power function is deduced as well as the sample size which ensures a desired power for a given alternative.     

Trends,Age Patterns and Differentials in Childhood Mortality in Haiti (1960–1987)

This paper examines the trends, patterns and differentials in childhood mortality in Haiti between 1960 and 1987 with data from three surveys and one census. Data comparability is maximized by a series of adjustments, and both direct and indirect techniques are applied. The results indicate that a slow decline in childhood mortality has occurred since 1960 for the country as a whole. Neonatal survival has shown impressive gains, especially in rural Haiti. Post-neonatal mortality has not, however, declined at the same rate. Mortality between the ages of one and five years has declined at about the same pace as infant mortality, maintaining consistency with model patterns of mortality change. The overall national decline in child mortality appears to have consisted of two phases. The first occurred in rural Haiti during the late 1960s and early 1970s and was due largely to a fall in neonatal mortality. The second phase of the decline was concentrated in Port-au-Prince, and seems to have affected all ages of childhood.     

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND VOLUNTEERING AFTER A NATURAL DISASTER: THE CASE OF HURRICANE KATRINA

This study examines prosocial behavior and volunteerism in the context of Hurricane Katrina. Using interviews from East Baton Rouge Parish residents, results demonstrate that self-efficacy, education, religious attendance, and organizational membership exert significant, positive effects on feeling personally responsible for helping victims. Education, presence of children in the home, organizational membership, and the interaction between religious attendance and personal responsibility exert significant, positive effects on total hours spent volunteering at shelters for victims. These findings suggest that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the characteristics of the typical volunteer and those who volunteer in a natural disaster.     

Contextualizing Arab female entrepreneurship in the United Arab Emirates

ABSTRACT

Cultural and structural challenges within the Arab context are found to constrain women’s opportunities towards entrepreneurial development and activity. In addressing the call for feminist theorizing in entrepreneurship research, we bring together gender, identity and networking into the subjective experiences of Emirati female entrepreneurs. Through antenarrative perspectives, we demonstrate that developing cooperation with men is a viable and complementary means to addressing contextual challenges and achieving empowerment. Our contribution illustrates that Emirati female entrepreneurs’ multi-layered identity work manifests in a relational manner via efforts to strategically construct opportunity by means of engaging in discursive relationships with men.     

K–Player Additive Extension of Two-Player games with an Application to the Borda Electoral Competition Game

In this note we introduce the notion of K–player additive extension of a symmetric two-player game and prove a result relating the equilibria in mixed strategies in the two games. Then we apply the result to the Borda electoral competition game.     

A general concept of scoring rules: general definitions,statistical inference,and empirical illustrations

We develop the general conceptual, mathematical and statistical foundations of behavioral social choice for scoring rules. Traditional scoring rules are difficult to assess empirically because one rarely observes the deterministic complete linear orders that they require as input. We provide a general concept of scoring rules in terms of a broad range of mathematical representations of preference or utility, namely arbitrary finite binary relations, probability distributions over such relations, real valued multi-criteria utility vectors and real valued random utility representations. We extend Regenwetter et al.’s (Behavioral social choice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006) statistical framework to a more general setting. We illustrate the general modeling and statistical tools by applying them to four well known sets of survey data. We illustrate two potential problems that have previously received little attention and that deserve systematic study in the future: (1) Scoring rule outcomes can suffer from model dependence in that the social welfare functions computed from ballot, survey, or hypothetical data may depend on implicit or explicit modeling assumptions. (2) Scoring rule outcomes may suffer from low statistical confidence in that the correct assessment of social orders from empirical data can be far from certain. We also illustrate the empirical congruence among conceptually competing social choice methods.     

Authoritarianism and pathological hatred: A social psychological profile of the middle eastern terrorist

Grounded on the analysis of MMPI tests administered to 90 jailed Middle Eastern terrorists, and semi-structured interviews with 57 Middle Eastern terrorists released from jail, this paper suggests that, regardless of their ethnicity, religiosity, political affiliations, or gender, Middle Eastern terrorists share common social-psychological tendencies. Organizing these tendencies under the labels of “authoritarianism” and “pathological hatred,” we suggest that contemporary terrorists are significantly different from their respective ethnic control groups and their predecessors. Briefly stated, rather than using violence against innocent civilians as a means to accomplish rational political ends, we suggest that today’s terrorists use rational political goals as a convenient means to inflict violence against innocent civilians.     

Maternal mortality in South Africa: an update from the 2007 Community Survey

The 2007 Community Survey conducted in South Africa included questions on maternal deaths in the previous 12 months (pregnancy-related deaths). The Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) was estimated at 702 per 100,000 live births, some 30% more than at the 2001 census. This high level occurred despite a low proportion of maternal deaths (4.3%) among deaths of women aged 15–49 years, which is even lower than the proportion of time spent in the maternal risk period (7.6%). The high level of MMR was due to the astonishingly high level of adult mortality, which increased by 46% since 2001. The main reasons for these excessive levels were HIV/AIDS and external causes of death (accidents and violence). Differentials in MMR were very marked, and similar to those found in 2001 with respect to urban residence, race, province, education, income, and wealth. Provincial levels of MMR correlated primarily with HIV/AIDS prevalence. Maternal mortality defined as ‘pregnancy-related death’ appears no longer as a proper indicator of ‘safe motherhood’ in this situation.