The market for (Ir)reproducible econometrics

Context: As the volume and complexity of research have increased, the amount of time spent on Institutional Review Board (IRB) review has decreased. The complexity of research has expanded, requiring increasingly specialized knowledge to review it. Dilemma: Under the current system, increasing numbers of research studies requiring expertise in ethics, new technologies or diverse study designs place a substantial burden upon local IRBs and often result in substantial variability among their reviews. This lack of uniformity in the review process creates uneven human subjects’ protection thus undermining the intent of the Common Rule. Objectives: To outline a scenario for expert centralized IRB review via implementation of a national virtual IRB review system overseen by the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). Conclusions: The complicated ethical issues and science involved in much of current research warrant an expert review panel. Centralized review would enable expert review specific to the research at hand, ensure consistency in human subjects protection, reduce the burden on local IRBs, and may reduce time spent obtaining approval. A centralized virtual system would allow IRB members to remain at their institutions while providing unprecedented expert review through currently available technology, and make information regarding monitoring and adverse event reporting available online in real-time.     

Enforcement is the Name of the Game: An Essay on the Immigration Inspector at Work

Abstract

This article concerns the work of immigration inspectors who inspect parties entering the country to determine if they merit entry according to law. Focusing on aspects of their working environment, this paper discusses ways inspectors have sought to organize daily activities. Faced with an uncertain decision-making process, lacking adequate preparation to deal with an unpredictable public, and working within a decentralized administrative structure, inspectors are nonetheless confronted by strong bureaucratic pressures for uniformity and consistency in their actions. Attempting to reconcile these conflicting demands, personnel have utilized various strategies for reducing overall risks associated with their work. This analysis casts doubt on the applicability of such theoretical constructs as “formal” or “informal” organizational processes when examined through an action perspective.     

Social Origins and Transformations: The Changing Role of English Housing Associations

Following the suggestion of Ragin (1998, Voluntas, 9(3), 261–270), this article uses social origins theory (Salamon and Anheier, 1998, Voluntas, 9(3), 213–248) as an heuristic device to explore change in a specific field of nonprofit activity; the English housing association sector. Conventional histories of the sector in the twentieth century suggest a succession of eras with different policy drivers. These eras can be seen as consistent with shifts in welfare regime from liberal to social democratic (after 1919) and to neo-liberal/neo-corporatist (after 1980). Examples drawn from a panel study support the analysis of Esping-Anderson (1990, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Princeton University Press, Princeton) that underlying the apparent stability of welfare regimes there are constant processes of negotiation and conflict which may lead to transformations at organization, sector, or regime level. Rather than simply responding to policy drivers, some housing associations have been able to influence the environment in which policy is made and thereby to shape their own and the sector's transformations.     

On the incidence–prevalence relation and length‐biased sampling

For many diseases, logistic constraints render large incidence studies difficult to carry out. This becomes a drawback, particularly when a new study is needed each time the incidence rate is investigated in a new population. By carrying out a prevalent cohort study with follow‐up it is possible to estimate the incidence rate if it is constant. The authors derive the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of the overall incidence rate, λ, as well as age‐specific incidence rates, by exploiting the epidemiologic relationship, (prevalence odds) = (incidence rate) × (mean duration) (P/[1 ? P] = λ × µ). The authors establish the asymptotic distributions of the MLEs and provide approximate confidence intervals for the parameters. Moreover, the MLE of λ is asymptotically most efficient and is the natural estimator obtained by substituting the marginal maximum likelihood estimators for P and µ into P/[1 ? P] = λ × µ. Following‐up the subjects allows the authors to develop these widely applicable procedures. The authors apply their methods to data collected as part of the Canadian Study of Health and Ageing to estimate the incidence rate of dementia amongst elderly Canadians. The Canadian Journal of Statistics © 2009 Statistical Society of Canada     

Cycling of simple rules in the spatial model

McKelvey [4] proved that for strong simple preference aggregation rules applied to multidimensional sets of alternatives, the typical situation is that either the core is nonempty or the top-cycle set includes all available alternatives. But the requirement that the rule be strong excludes, inter alia, all supermajority rules. In this note, we show that McKelvey's theorem further implies that the typical situation for any simple rule is that either the core is nonempty or the weak top-cycle set (equivalently, the core of the transitive closure of the rule) includes all available alternatives. Moreover, it is often the case that both of these statements obtain. Received: 13 October 1997/Accepted: 24 August 1998     

Collective Self-Esteem and Coping Strategies among Vietnamese American Adolescents

This article reports on the “social empathy attitudes” results that were part of a larger study on empathy in college students at a large research university in the Southwest. Two hundred ninety-four students completed the Social Empathy Assessment Index (SEAI). The research hypothesis was that students of color would have higher levels of social empathy attitudes than Caucasian students. The statistically significant SEAI items suggested that Latino students identify as more collectivist and more optimistic and have higher levels of social empathy attitudes. Latinos may be more willing to help a stranger than either Caucasians or members of other racial groups.     

On the Rapid Rise of Social Networking Sites: New Findings and Policy Implications

Social networking sites have been rapidly adopted by children and, especially, teenagers and young people worldwide, enabling new opportunities for the presentation of the self, learning, construction of a wide circle of relationships, and the management of privacy and intimacy. On the other hand, there are also concerns that social networking increases the likelihood of new risks to the self, these centring on loss of privacy, bullying, harmful contacts and more. This article reviews recent findings regarding children and teenagers' social networking practices in order to identify implications for future research and public policy. These focus on the interdependencies between opportunities and risks, the need for digital or media literacy education, the importance of building safety considerations into the design and management of social networking sites, the imperative for greater attention to 'at risk' children in particular, and the importance of a children's rights framework in developing evidence-based policy in this area.     

Economic socialization in the kibbutz and the town in Israel

This study compared the economic understanding and attitudes of children living in the city with those living in a kibbutz, collective villages where an extreme socialist lifestyle is practised and preached. The differences in the answer patterns of the urban and kibbutz children were not very large, but the pattern was clear, and in keeping with the dominant ideology in both places: socialist in the kibbutz, middle-class capitalist in the city.