UNEQUAL RISK: COMBAT OCCUPATIONS IN THE VOLUNTEER MILITARY

This study evaluates the characteristics of the men who served in the volunteer military in combat occupations. It examines whether these characteristics stem from supply-side or demand-side decisions, or reflect class bias. The findings suggest that, on the supply side, men who had greater academic abilities were more likely to go to college, thereby avoiding military service and the possibility of serving in a combat occupation. On the demand side, the armed forces were more likely to exclude men with lower academic abilities but were more likely to assign such men in the military to combat occupations. Net of the impacts of these supply-side and demand-side decisions, men who served in combat occupations still differed from those who did not in terms of their family background. The impact of family background was stronger on entering the military than on being assigned to combat occupations once in the military.     

A methodology for identifying married couples in medicare data: Mortality, morbidity, and health care use among the married elderly

Wedescribe a method for the development of cohorts of up to three quarters of the 14 million married couples aged 65 and over in the United States. The health care experiences, illness histories, and mortality of these identified couples can be assessed longitudinally using Medicare data. We summarize strengths and limitations of using data from Medicare administrative records for the study of marriage, health, and aging. We illustrate the method by demonstrating substantial differences in survival in a cohort of hospice patients as a function of not only the patient's own diagnosis and illness burden but also the patient's spouse's illness burden.     

Much ado about nothing: A comparison of missing data methods and software to fit incomplete data regression models

Missing data are a recurring problem that can cause bias or lead to inefficient analyses. Development of statistical methods to address missingness have been actively pursued in recent years, including imputation, likelihood and weighting approaches. Each approach is more complicated when there are many patterns of missing values, or when both categorical and continuous random variables are involved. Implementations of routines to incorporate observations with incomplete variables in regression models are now widely available. We review these routines in the context of a motivating example from a large health services research dataset. While there are still limitations to the current implementations, and additional efforts are required of the analyst, it is feasible to incorporate partially observed values, and these methods should be utilized in practice.     

The Effects of Family Structure of Origin on Offspring Cohabitation Duration

This study uses data from both waves of the National Survey of Families and Households to examine the effects of family structure of origin on offspring's cohabiting unions. Parental divorce substantially decreases the likelihood that these relationships end in marriage, but this effect is almost completely ameliorated by parental remarriage. Parental divorce also increases the chances that a cohabiting relationship will break up, but the effect is much smaller than the impact of parental divorce on marital stability. I explain this discrepancy by showing that cohabitation is inherently unstable compared to marriage. In a context of instability, family structure of origin makes less difference than it does in marriage.     

Infant‐Directed Speech Is Modulated by Infant Feedback

When mothers engage in infant‐directed (ID) speech, their voices change in a number of characteristic ways, including adopting a higher overall pitch. Studies have examined these acoustical cues and have tested infants' preferences for ID speech. However, little is known about how these cues change with maternal sensitivity to infant feedback in the context of interaction. In this study, each mother watched her infant (located in an adjacent sound booth) on a video screen and talked to him or her through a microphone. The mother believed that her infant could hear her voice and she attempted to make her infant happy through her vocalizations. In reality, the infant could not hear her voice. The mother's ID speech was analyzed in real time for changes in mean pitch. For half of the infant–mother dyads an experimenter surreptitiously positively engaged the infant when the voice analysis revealed a rise in pitch, thereby producing positive reinforcement to the mother for natural higher pitched ID speech. The other half were reinforced for lower pitched ID speech. Mothers raised their pitch significantly more in the former than the latter condition, illustrating that the pitch of ID speech is dynamically affected by feedback from the infant.     

EMPHASES OF THE MAJOR FAMILY THERAPY MODELS: A FAMILY FIRO ANALYSIS

This paper analyzes 13 models of family therapy according to their special emphases on the Family FIRO model's dimensions of inclusion, control and intimacy. We first examined chapters on each model in Gurman and Kniskern's Handbook of Family Therapy; we then sent our preliminary ratings to the authors of the chapters for comment. The final conceptual analysis of the models indicated that 4 family therapy models emphasize inclusion as a primary focus, 4 emphasize control, and 5 emphasize intimacy. We also rated the secondary and tertiary emphases of the models. This analysis provides a possible guide for therapists who wish to be eclectic or integrative in their work, specifically, by suggesting a way to match therapy techniques from different family therapy models to the presenting family issues that each model emphasizes most strongly.