The influence of sexual orientation on career decision-making: a research note

This study investigates differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals of both sexes with regard to several variables in the career decision-making process: anxiety about making a career choice, indecisiveness about the choice, need to acquire information about the career of choice, uncertainty about the choice, and career choice dissatisfaction. Significant interactions are found on choice uncertainty (gay men having the highest level of uncertainty and lesbian women the lowest) and choice dissatisfaction (heterosexual women and gay men showing more dissatisfaction than the other two groups).     

Drugs, delinquency and "nerds": are loners deviant?

Many studies have focused on the influence of peers on delinquency and drug use. But what about adolescents who are not part of the peer culture--the loners, or nerds? This study focuses on drug use, delinquency and lifestyle correlates of LONERS and SOCIALS. Data for a nine-year period (1976 through 1984) from the Monitoring the Future data set of high school seniors across the United States are analyzed. The lack of peer influence on the LONERS seems to contribute to less delinquency and drug use and more conventional lifestyle activities than is found among SOCIALS.     

Inference problems in life testing under multivariate normality

Modified maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters of a multivariate normal distribution are developed when the smallest or largest observations on one of the components are censored. These estimators are used to construct tests for means and correlation coefficients. The robustness of these tests to deviations from normality is investigated.     

Are Individuals’ Desired Family Sizes Stable? Evidence from West German Panel Data

Using West German panel data constructed from the 1988 and 1994/1995 wave of the DJI Familiensurvey, we analyze the stability and determinants of individuals’ total desired fertility. We find considerable variation of total desired fertility across respondents and across interviews. In particular, up to 50% of individuals report a different total desired fertility across survey waves. Multivariate analysis confirms the importance of background factors including growing up with both parents, having more siblings, and being Catholic for preference formation. Consistent with the idea that life course experiences provide new information regarding the expected costs and benefits of different family sizes, the influence of background factors on total desired fertility is strong early in life and weakens as subsequent life course experiences, including childbearing, take effect. Accounting for unobserved individual heterogeneity, we estimate that an additional child may increase the total desired fertility of women with children by 0.14 children, less than what conventional estimates from cross-sectional data would have suggested.     

WHO'S PUBLISHING IN JMFT? AN EXAMINATION OF AUTHOR CHARACTERISTICS

This article examines the gender, setting, and degree of the first authors of published articles in JMFT from 1990 to 1995. Findings reveal that men are the first authors of 67% of the articles and women, 33%. PhDs are first authors on 58% of the articles, and authors in university settings write 53% of the published articles. Thirty-nine percent of the articles published during this period were research; 26%, clinical; 16%, theory; and 14%, training. Surprising findings were that MSW authors had a higher acceptance rate than PhDs, and authors in training institutes had a higher acceptance rate than those in university settings.     

DISTRIBUTION-FREE TESTS BASED ON SUB-SAMPLE EXTREMA FOR TESTING AGAINST POSITIVE DEPENDENCE

A class of distribution-free tests based on U-statistics has been proposed for testing the null hypothesis of independence against positive quadrant dependence. The tests are based on U-statistics and the Kendall's-tau test belongs to this class.     

The Evolution of Organizations: Suggestions from Complexity Theory About the Interplay Between Natural Selection and Adaptation

There has been much debate in the managementliterature between neo-Darwinists (who believe in thenatural selection of populations of organizations) andadaptationists (who contend that changes in organization structure and behavior occur in response to theenvironment). The general thesis of neo-Darwinism isthat species are blindly selected for survival by theenvironment. The latest empirical support for the dominant neo-Darwinism perspective adopted bymost biologists is based primarily on the experimentsconducted by Salvador Luria who claims to haveconclusively demonstrated that genes mutate randomly.Recently, however, biologists have re-examined Luria sresearch methods and, after replications of hisexperiments, now question some aspects of the validityof his results. Moreover, there is now new researchwhich provides support for the earlier adaptationistposition, namely, the existence of evolutionary driversand directors existing within self-organizing systems.Of particular importance to the present study is the experimental indication thatself-organizing systems play a conscious role in theirown evolution. We propose that similar mechanisms orprocesses operate in organizational adaptation, thuspointing toward a theoretical modification ofneo-Darwinism that embraces both adaptation and naturalselection in a general, unified theory.