Model‐based Prediction In Ecological Surveys Including Those with Incomplete Detection

This paper explores and develops model‐based predictors for surveys of plants and wildlife including those with incomplete detection. The methodology allows for estimating a detection function to account for objects which were not detected at the time of the survey. The model‐based theory utilises generalized linear models (GLMs) and is either new or adapted from other areas of sampling. A simulation study is used to validate the estimators and comparisons are made with an integrated likelihood approach. An aerial survey of kangaroos in western New South Wales is used to illustrate the theory. The area within 50m of the aircraft is treated as a strip transect and mark‐recapture methods are used to estimate the detection function.     

Popular culture and sporting life in the rural margins of late eighteenth-century England: the world of Robert Anderson, "The Cumberland Bard"

This study sets out to extend and challenge existing historiography on late eighteenth century British popular culture, customary sports, class and cultural identity, focusing upon the rural geo-political borderland of England. It suggests that prevailing class-based and more London-biased studies need to be balanced with more regionalist-based work, and shows the importance of northern regional leisure variants. The textual and historical analysis draws largely on the published works of a neglected working-class dialect poet, Robert Anderson, living and working in Cumberland, arguing that he represented a strain of 'bardic regionalism,' a variant of Katie Trumpener’s 'bardic nationalism.'     

Note on posterior inference for the Bingham distribution

The properties of high-dimensional Bingham distributions have been studied by Kume and Walker (2014 Kume, A., and S. G. Walker. 2014. On the Bingham distribution with large dimension. Journal of Multivariate Analysis 124:345–52.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Fallaize and Kypraios (2016 Fallaize, C. J., and T. Kypraios. 2016. Exact Bayesian inference for the Bingham distribution. Statistics and Computing 26:349–60.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) propose the Bayesian inference for the Bingham distribution and they use developments in Bayesian computation for distributions with doubly intractable normalizing constants (Møller et al. 2006 Møller, J., A. N. Pettitt, R. Reeves, and K. K. Berthelsen. 2006. An efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo method for distributions with intractable normalising constants. Biometrika 93 (2):451–458.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Murray, Ghahramani, and MacKay 2006 Murray, I., Z. Ghahramani, and D. J. C. MacKay. 2006. MCMC for doubly intractable distributions. In Proceedings of the 22nd annual conference on uncertainty in artificial intelligence (UAI-06), 359–66. AUAI Press. [Google Scholar]). However, they rely heavily on two Metropolis updates that they need to tune. In this article, we propose instead a model selection with the marginal likelihood.     

Remarried Couples in Premarital Education: Does the Content Match Participant Needs?

Although premarital education has been found to reduce risk factors of divorce, the use of premarital education has primarily been examined in first marriages, or in groups combining both first and later marriages. In this qualitative study, 8 remarried couples’ perceptions of the premarital education they received were explored. The coexisting core categories of the desire to create a loving relationship yet fear of repeated marital failure emerged. The results implied that remarried couples carried an additional fear of marital dissolution, which in conjunction with the complex tasks associated with stepfamily formation, promoted attachment insecurities. Clinical applications are included.     

The Exclusiveness of the Political Field: Networks and political mobilization

This paper applies social network analysis to three case study social movement organizations based in the north of England: a local Labour Party branch, an environmental group, and a conservation group. Using a postal survey of members, we chart the extent of ties between members of these three groups, indicating how each group has its own internal social dynamics and characteristics that are related to the nature of the movement organizations themselves. We explore how the network structures interrelate with the socio-demographic structure of the membership of the three organizations, and we show there are important differences in the way that core members of the three organizations are recruited compared to those who are either peripheral or isolated. Our paper is the first to analyse the networks of whole populations of case study organizations in the UK, and can therefore be read as developing the potential of social network analysis for case study research and for understanding social movements. Analytically we argue it is important to distinguish two different types of ways that networks are important. They can be seen as offering resources for mobilization, or they can be seen as providing a means of integrating particular types of individuals into organizations. It is this latter sense that offers a more fundamental role for network analysis, and we argue that it offers an important way of developing insights from resource mobilization theory by relating them to Bourdieu's provocative arguments regarding the exclusiveness of the political field.     

The role of service users in problem formulation and technical aspects of social research

The importance of the practitioner-researcher relationship in problem formulation derives from the need for relevance to the issues faced by practitioners. This paper argues that if research is to be relevant to the issues faced by service users, they too must be involved in problem formulation. There is a substantial literature on the moral case for user involvement in research but relatively little about the technical benefits. The paper sets out some distinctions in the meaning of user involvement in different models of social research, and, drawing on examples of user-led and user-controlled research, suggests not only that problem formulation benefits from user involvement but that several other key technical aspects of social research may also be improved.     

Social mobility and social capital in contemporary Britain

This paper seeks to contribute to social capital research by linking measures of formal and informal forms of social capital to social mobility trajectories and assessing their impact on social trust. Drawing on data from a recent national survey – Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion (2003/2004 ) – we analyse formal civic engagement and informal social connections. The latter data are obtained using, for the first time in a study in Britain, Lin's (2001 ) 'Position Generator' approach as a means to identify the volume, range and position of individuals' informal social contacts. The pattern of contacts suggests that access to social ties is strongly conditioned by mobility trajectory. We also show that civic engagement in formal associations is especially high among second-generation members of the service class. It is also shown that both class trajectory and possession of two types of social capital have significant impacts on trust. Among the social groups disadvantaged in terms of bridging social ties are not only those in lower classes but also women and members of minority ethnic groups.     

Leaving the parental home in Australia over the generations: Evidence from the Household,Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) Survey

The decision to remain in or leave the parental home represents the first housing career choice of young people. In this paper, we examine the parental home leaving outcomes for Australian birth cohorts in the twentieth century using recall questions contained in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. The findings from survival analysis and hazard function modelling is that a continuous, gradual reduction in the age of first leaving the parental home in Australia is evident up to the 1947–51 birth cohort, followed by stability and then a rise in age of first leaving home for the most recent birth cohorts. Birth cohort effects remain significant even after other measured determinants of parental home leaving are taken into account. The paper confirms the strong roles that education, family background and ethnicity have on parental home leaving outcomes.