The determinants of union membership growth in Taiwan

This paper examines the determinants of intertemporal variation in the growth rate of trade union membership in Taiwan during 1960–1987. The empirical results indicate that the widely used empirical model of growth in trade union membership based largely on cyclical variables applies to the case of a newly industrialized Asian country—Taiwan.     

The Environmental Geochemistry and Bioaccessibility of Mercury in Soils and Sediments: A Review

There have been many studies of mercury geochemistry in the environment and its bioconcentration/bioaccumulation through the aquatic food chain. However, there is a dearth of information regarding the bioaccessibility of mercury in human receptors exposed primarily by soil ingestion. This paper reviews the current state of knowledge of mercury bioaccessibility and speciation in soils, and the utility of speciation methods to estimate mercury bioaccessibility. We conclude that additional research is necessary to determine: (1) whether analytical measurements can adequately determine the bioaccessibility of mercury in sediments and soils; (2) the accuracy of in vitro analyses in assessing mercury bioaccessibility; (3) the ability of mercury to cross tissue membranes of the mouth, esophagus, stomach, and the small and large intestines; (4) the speciation and distribution of mercury in biological fluids; and (5) mercury bioavailability using an in vivo animal model relevant to human gastrointestinal tract conditions.     

On Hacking's fiducial theory of inference

Fisher's theory of fiducial inference is known to lead to mathematical inconsistencies. Hacking (1965) puts forward a new basis for fiducial inference. In this paper we have presented Hacking's theory retaining his original terminology but replacing his notation by more usual mathematical notation. His condition of irrelevance is derived in an explicit mathematical form, making it more comprehensible to statisticians. Further an example is constructed to show that Hacking's theory also leads to mathematical inconsistencies.     

Effect of Interviewer Experience on Interview Pace and Interviewer Attitudes

Traditional statistical analyses of interviewer effects on surveydata do not examine whether these effects change over a fieldperiod. However, the nature of the survey interview is dynamic.Interviewers’ behaviors and perceptions may evolve asthey gain experience, thus potentially affecting data quality.This paper looks at how interview length and interviewer evaluationsof respondents change over interviewers’ workloads. Multilevelmodels with random interviewer effects are used to account forthe clustering of cases within interviewers and individual interviewercharacteristics in the 1984, 1988, and 2000 National ElectionStudies. The 1984 and 1988 NES released sample in four replicates,minimizing the confound between order in an interviewers’workload and sample composition. We find that over the courseof the studies, both measures change significantly. Interviewerprior survey experience also was significantly negatively relatedto the length of the interview. These findings have implicationsfor interviewer training prior to and during studies, as wellas suggesting future research to reveal why these behaviorsand perceptions change.     

Reducing attrition in physical activity programs for older adults

This study investigated attrition in a 6-month physical activity intervention for older adults. The program was based on the social-cognitive theory incorporating self-efficacy factors. Two hundred forty-eight insufficiently active 65- to 74-year-olds were recruited from the Australian federal electoral roll. The intervention comprised walking and strength and flexibility exercises and was conducted in 30 local neighborhoods where the participants resided. Characteristics of individuals lost to attrition (n = 86, 35%) were compared with those of program completers (n = 162, 65%). Logistic-regression analysis showed that those lost to attrition came from areas of lower socioeconomic status, were overweight and less physically active, and had lower walking self-efficacy scores and higher loneliness scores. The results suggest that early assessment of these characteristics should be undertaken to identify individuals at risk of attrition, to improve retention, and to avoid potential bias.     

The Brazilianisation of Youth Transitions in Australia and the UK?

A central theme of Beck's argument in The Brave New World of Work (2000) is that labour markets in the developed world are taking on some of the core characteristics that have been associated with less developed labour markets such as employment insecurity, informality and precarity. A process he refers to as Brazilianisation. In this paper we consider whether Beck's thesis can help us understand changes in youth transitions in Australia and the UK by developing a comparative analysis of processes of casualisation in the youth labour markets of the two countries. We assess the extent to which precarious labour market biographies have become entrenched and represent modern forms of engagement with the labour market. While evidence is presented to suggest that young people's labour market experiences have been affected by a trend towards greater casualisation, we argue that the changes are having the greatest impact on those in the weakest positions: in both countries women are more likely to be affected than men and casualisation is most evident in the lowest skilled occupations.     

“a Difficult Life”: The Perceptions and Experience of Poverty in South Africa

The purpose of this article is to provide a fuller and more integrated understanding of poverty based on the results of a nation wide participatory study recently completed in South Africa. A surprisingly consistent view of poverty emerges from the study which includes social isolation, malnourished children, crowded homes, the use of basic energy sources, no employment, and fragmented households. A clear image of what results from extreme poverty also emerges comprising continuous ill health, arduous and often hazardous work for virtually no income, no power to influence change, and high levels of anxiety and stress. The article concludes that conventional definitions of poverty do not fully describe the experience of poverty as analysed by the poor themselves. Instead, the multidimensional nature of poverty suggests that three basic concepts would be useful in any analysis of extent, nature and persistence of poverty. These are sufficiency, access and vulnerability.     

Exponentiated Teissier distribution with increasing,decreasing and bathtub hazard functions

This article introduces a two-parameter exponentiated Teissier distribution. It is the main advantage of the distribution to have increasing, decreasing and bathtub shapes for its hazard rate function. The expressions of the ordinary moments, identifiability, quantiles, moments of order statistics, mean residual life function and entropy measure are derived. The skewness and kurtosis of the distribution are explored using the quantiles. In order to study two independent random variables, stress–strength reliability and stochastic orderings are discussed. Estimators based on likelihood, least squares, weighted least squares and product spacings are constructed for estimating the unknown parameters of the distribution. An algorithm is presented for random sample generation from the distribution. Simulation experiments are conducted to compare the performances of the considered estimators of the parameters and percentiles. Three sets of real data are fitted by using the proposed distribution over the competing distributions.