Emotion Situation Knowledge in Elementary School: Models of Longitudinal Growth and Preschool Correlates

We examined individual differences in developmental trajectories of emotion situation knowledge (ESK), at three time points throughout elementary school in a sample of children from economically disadvantaged families. Results showed that ESK and the subscales of joy, fear, anger, shame and interest exhibited positive growth from the first to the fifth grade, whereas scores on the sad subscale declined slightly. Preschool verbal ability predicted first grade scores for joy, fear, and anger, and growth in scores for shame across time. Preschool negative emotional intensity predicted slower growth in overall ESK and the anger and shame subscales. Taken together, these results broaden our basic knowledge of how children's use of situational cues to infer others' emotions develops in middle and late childhood.     

Do Advance Letters Improve Preelection Forecast Accuracy?

The survey methodology literature has debated whether advanceletters to potential survey respondents will reduce nonresponsebias and thereby improve the accuracy of preelection forecasts.This research note analyzes the results of experiments conductedin Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania in which advance letterswere sent to a random sample of potential survey respondentsto 2002 preelection surveys. We find a significant increasein the overall response rate, although notably less than inpast studies. However, the advance letters did not improve therepresentativeness of survey respondents or the accuracy ofthe election forecasts.     

Conservative Protestantism and Tolerance toward Homosexuals: An Examination of Potential Mechanisms*

A number of studies over the years have reported that members of conservative Protestant churches tend to be less tolerant—that is, reluctant to extend civil liberties—vis‐à‐vis homosexuals. This paper explores several possible explanations for this pattern. In particular, we identify key aspects of conservative Protestant religious values and worldviews that may contribute to this pattern, and relevant hypotheses are tested using data from the 1988 General Social Survey. Results highlight the role of biblical literalism, as well as specific beliefs about the public nature of morality and the implications of perceived immoral conduct for collective well‐being. We discuss the implications of these findings for the understanding of contemporary conservative Protestantism, as well as for future research on the nexus of religion, politics, and democratic citizenship.     

Disrupted Bodies: Experiencing the Newly Limited Body in Stroke

This article explores the intersection of recovery and bodily practices among stroke survivors. Drawing on the extensive literature on the socially constructed body in general, on chronic illness, and on interactionist thought, we explore bodily experience as a mechanism that informs stroke survivors' understanding and practices of everyday life in recovery. We ask a central question: what practical mechanisms does the survivor employ to provide meaning to her or his newly disrupted body? Data gathered from in‐depth interviews with fifty‐one discharged stroke survivors show that they use three specific technologies of bodily management and meaning‐making. These are managing the body within a mind‐body dualism, testing the body in its everyday practices, and orienting to the body as a biographically informed phenomenon.     

Models for longitudinal data with censored changepoints

Summary.  In longitudinal studies of biological markers, different individuals may have different underlying patterns of response. In some applications, a subset of individuals experiences latent events, causing an instantaneous change in the level or slope of the marker trajectory. The paper presents a general mixture of hierarchical longitudinal models for serial biomarkers. Interest centres both on the time of the event and on levels of the biomarker before and after the event. In observational studies where marker series are incomplete, the latent event can be modelled by a survival distribution. Risk factors for the occurrence of the event can be investigated by including covariates in the survival distribution. A combination of Gibbs, Metropolis–Hastings and reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling is used to fit the models to serial measurements of forced expiratory volume from lung transplant recipients.     

Research with Disabled Children: How Useful is Child-centred Ethics?

The title of a collection on 'ethics and methodology of research with children' implies that research with children necessarily raises unique questions about ethics and methods. Our paper questions whether this is so, what the unique questions might be and how they arise. We consider that any extra complications in research with children are common to research with other 'minority' groups. The main complications do not arise from children's inabilities or misperceptions, but from the positions ascribed to children in late twentieth-century Western societies. Clarity about the social origins of any complications in research with children is crucial if these complications are to be addressed. Ethics, methods, theories, data and policy conclusions are inextricably interwoven, and it is important to acknowledge how initial theories inevitably shape policies. Reasons are given for preferring rights-based to child-centred ethics.     

Public expenditure in the UK: how measures matter

Summary.  Studying spending over time requires reliable data. It is not clear that such data exist in the UK, however. The two published sources of functional spending numbers—the Office for National Statistics's 'blue book' and Her Majesty's Treasury's Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (PESA)—rely on estimates of past spending, using a link year method, rather than recalculating actual spending figures when functional definitions change. We assess the various measures of spending in the UK. Specifically, we do two things. First, we present a new, third, set of spending numbers applying temporally consistent functional definitions to PESA microdata. Second, we compare the three measures. Our analyses indicate that the Office for National Statistics and PESA data differ quite markedly, especially for certain functions, i.e. in some cases the two measures imply completely different histories. The differences between the original PESA data and our new measures are less pronounced on average, though significant differences are evident, especially year by year.     

Model-free variable selection

Summary.  The importance of variable selection in regression has grown in recent years as computing power has encouraged the modelling of data sets of ever-increasing size. Data mining applications in finance, marketing and bioinformatics are obvious examples. A limitation of nearly all existing variable selection methods is the need to specify the correct model before selection. When the number of predictors is large, model formulation and validation can be difficult or even infeasible. On the basis of the theory of sufficient dimension reduction, we propose a new class of model-free variable selection approaches. The methods proposed assume no model of any form, require no nonparametric smoothing and allow for general predictor effects. The efficacy of the methods proposed is demonstrated via simulation, and an empirical example is given.     

De-Unionization and macro performance: What Freeman and Medoff didn’t do

Most, if not all, unions have monopoly power, which they can use to raise wages above competitive levels.-Freeman and Medoff (1984: 6) The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and by preventing the stabilization of competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between industries.-Preamble to the Wagner Act of 1935