An empirical application of multidimensional scaling to advertising pretesting

One of the least-managed aspects of advertising management may well be that of effectiveness measurement. The problem of obtaining satisfactory indications of advertising effectiveness is particularly critical in pretesting since the rationale for pretesting is to evaluate advertisements before their release for broadscale media distribution. Therefore, the primary purpose of the research reported here is to provide empirical evidence of the value of multidimensional scaling methods to pretesting advertising. The article demonstrates how nonmetric methodology obviates the disadvantages of such methods as consumer jury tests and rating scales. A secondary purpose of the research project is to demonstrate the value of pretesting itself by comparing the perceptions of target market consumers with those of selected group of advertising professionals.     

Loan performance and race

Recent studies find evidence of racial discrimination in mortgage markets. Although these studies explore loan approval rates for whites versus minorities, they do not specifically consider loan performance, either in the form of default rates or loan administration costs. This study considers discrimination in the used car credit market, where the collateral is not subject to location externalities, collateral value and quality do not vary as much as in real estate, and the loan terms are shorter. We find administration costs and default rates are higher for minorities than for whites, controlling for age, income, home ownership, wealth, occupation, loan terms, and geographic location.     

“Did You See What I Saw?” Gender Differences in Perceptions of Avenues to Prestige among Adolescents

We use data from 1,796 college students to explore gender differences in perceptions of avenues to prestige during adolescence. Students attending seven large universities during the 1997–98 academic year provided information on the ways in which adolescents in their high schools had gained prestige with peers. The analysis reveals substantial gender differences in perceptions regarding the most common avenues to prestige. Most important, men were less likely than women to report that female students in their high schools accrued prestige through sports and grades, and more likely than women to report that male students accrued prestige through engaging in deviant behaviors, such as sexual activity, drug and alcohol use, and fighting. We discuss the findings in the context of gender differences in social perception and gender-role attitudes.     

Status Roles and Recall of Nonverbal Cues

In two experiments, interpersonal status was experimentally manipulated by assigning one dyad member to be the owner of a mock art gallery and the other to be the owner's assistant. Without forewarning, participants were asked immediately following the interaction to recall their partner's hand gestures, self-touch, gazing, smiling, and nodding. Accuracy of recall was determined by comparing these ratings to their partners' behavior as coded from the videotape. In both experiments, assistants were more accurate at recalling the amount of owners' self-touch than vice versa, but there was little evidence of an accuracy difference in recall of the other nonverbal cues. When accuracy was defined as the correlation between a participant's ratings of the partner's behaviors and the partner's actual behaviors, there was evidence that assistants were more accurate than owners when a combined p-value was calculated across both studies.     

Disaggregation in population forecasting: do we need it? And how to do it simply

"We have described a method for reducing the dimensionality of the forecasting problem by parsimoniously modeling the evolution over time of the age schedules of vital rates. This method steers a middle course between forecasting aggregates and forecasting individual age specific rates: we reduce the problem to forecasting a single parameter for fertility and another one for mortality. We have described a number of refinements and extensions of those basic methods, which preserve their underlying structure and simplicity. In particular, we show how one can fit the model more simply, incorporate lower bounds to the forecasts of rates, disaggregate by sex or race, and prepare integrated forecasts of rates for a collection of regions. We also discuss alternate approaches to forecasting the estimated indices of fertility and mortality, including state-space methods. These many versions of the basic method have yielded remarkably similar results." (SUMMARY IN FRE)     

Methods of evaluating child welfare in Indian country: an illustration

The poor quality and quantity of data collected in tribal communities today reflects a lack of true community participation and commitment. This is especially problematic for evaluation studies, in which the needs and desires of the community should be the central focus. This challenge can be met by emphasizing indigenous methods and voice. The authors provide an illustration of how to do this.     

Urban American Indian/Alaskan Natives compared to non-Indians in out-of-home care

Historically, American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) children have been disproportionately represented in the foster care system. In this study, nationally representative child welfare data from October 1999 was used to compare urban AI/AN children to non-Indian children placed into out-of-home care. Compared to non-Indian children, urban AI/AN children were older, were more often male, came from poorer homes, and were more frequently placed into group homes/ residential placements. Urban AI/AN caregivers had a greater prevalence of alcohol abuse and mental health problems compared with non-Indian caregivers.