Relative Cohort Size,Relative Income,and Married Women's Labor Force Participation: United States, 1968–2010

Relative cohort size—the ratio of young adults to prime‐age adults—and relative income—the income of young adults relative to their material aspirations—have experienced substantial changes over the past 40 years. Results here show that changes in relative cohort size explain about 60 percent of the declines in women's starting wage—both relative and absolute—in 1968–82, and 97 percent of its increase in 1982–2001. Relative income is hypothesized to affect a number of behavioral choices by young adults, including marriage, childbearing, and female labor force participation, as young people strive to achieve their desired standard of living. Older family income—the denominator in a relative income variable—increased by 59 percent between 1968 and 2000, and then declined by 9 percent. Its changes explain 47 percent of the increase in the labor force participation of white married women in their first 15 years out of school between 1970 and 1990, and 38 percent of the increase in hours worked in the same period. The study makes use of individual‐level measures of labor force participation and employs the lagged income of older families in a woman's year‐state‐race‐education group to instrument parental income and hence material aspirations.     

Carry‐over in cross‐over trials in bioequivalence: theoretical concerns and empirical evidence

There is now general agreement that pre‐testing for carry‐over in the AB/BA design is harmful and that efficient analysis of this design must proceed on the assumption that carry‐over has not affected the results to any appreciable degree. A general consensus has not been achieved in the case of higher‐order designs. Since particular forms of carry‐over can be estimated on a within‐patient basis and unbiased within‐patient treatment estimators are possible, some statisticians favour pre‐testing and some favour automatic adjustment for carry‐over. We present theoretical arguments that show that, just as in the AB/BA case, the strategy of pre‐testing is biased as a whole and also that the loss in terms of efficiency in adjusting is not negligible. We also present data from two large series of bioequivalence studies to provide empirical evidence that in this context carry‐over is either absent or rare. We conclude that adjusting or testing for carry‐over in bioequivalence studies is at worst harmful and at best pointless, and that this may also apply to other kinds of study. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

R-squared and prediction in regression with ordered quantitative response

This paper is concerned with the use of regression methods to predict values of a response variable when that variable is naturally ordered. An application to the prediction of student examination performance is provided and it is argued that, although individual scores are unlikely to be well predicted at the extremes of the range using the conditional mean, conditional on covariates, it is possible to usefully predict where an individual is likely to feature in the rank order of performance.     

Survival Distributions Satisfying Benford's Law

Hill stated that “An interesting open problem is to determine which common distributions (or mixtures thereof) satisfy Benford's law …”. This article quantifies compliance with Benford's law for several popular survival distributions. The traditional analysis of Benford's law considers its applicability to datasets. This article switches the emphasis to probability distributions that obey Benford's law.     

Social Bookmarking–Repository–Networking: Possibilities for Support of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Abstract

Social bookmarking, repositories, networking, and other Web 2.0 technologies have the capacity to engage enormous numbers of ordinary people in networking, sharing, and working with digital resources. The Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong has been pioneering new educational applications. Through grants from the University we have developed a social bookmarking and repository system based on Web 2.0 ideas. RISAL—Repository of Interactive Social Assets for Learning has an unrealized potential to support teaching and learning at the University level. It is designed to facilitate and encourage sharing and collaboration of teachers and students with similar interests or learning foci across levels and programs. This form of learning support builds on and encourages the Web 2.0 culture of social networking and contribution of the individual to the community. In addition, the system is designed to incorporate compliance with Hong Kong's Copyright Ordinance (Creative Commons). The authors discuss the RISAL and describe its features and benefits that this system can offer to teaching and learning.     

Working to learn and learning to work: A profile of service-learning courses in university public relations programs

The purpose of this study was to use quantitative survey methodology triangulated with qualitative interviews to explore faculty perceptions in four key areas of service-learning in public relations programs: (1) conceptualization, (2) outcomes, (3) institutional support, and (4) instructional techniques. Results support findings in other disciplines. Public relations course goals reflect four different types of stated learning outcomes: (1) application to real-world settings, (2) teamwork, (3) interactions with PR clients, and (4) civic responsibility, but most educators include reflection opportunities only on public relations concepts and not on community engagement.     

Re‐invigorating democracy?: White middle class identities and comprehensive schooling

Recent research on social class and whiteness points to disquieting and exclusive aspects of white middle class identities. This paper focuses on whether ‘alternative’ middle class identities might work against, and disrupt, normative views of what it means to be ‘middle class’ at the beginning of the 21^st Century. Drawing on data from those middle classes who choose to send their children to urban comprehensives, we examine processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’ in order to uncover some of the commitments and investments that might make for a renewed and reinvigorated democratic citizenry. The difficulties of turning these commitments and investments into more equitable ways of interacting with class and ethnic others which emerge as real challenges for this left leaning, pro‐welfare segment of the middle classes. Within a contemporary era of neo‐liberalism that valorises competition, individualism and the market even these white middle classes who express a strong commitment to community and social mixing struggle to convert inclinations into actions.     

Interethnic Relationships: The Role of Social Network Diversity

We examine the degree to which ethnic diversity in social networks relates to the frequency of interethnic romantic relationships for 318 college students. In a multinomial logit, we find that the odds of having an interethnic relationship once or twice, versus never, increase significantly if the respondent has a relatively ethnically diverse friendship network, is male, and supports interethnic dating. The odds of having an interethnic relationship often, versus once or twice, are significantly higher for persons of color and when the friends of the respondent's parents are relatively diverse ethnically. Findings from open‐ended data also provide support for a social network perspective, and point to the processes by which networks, gender, and ethnicity shape interethnic courtship.     

Majority Rules? The Effects of School Ethnic Composition on Substance Use by Mexican Heritage Adolescents

This article examines key aspects of the school environment - its composition by ethnicity and acculturation - as important social contexts for understanding Mexican immigrant and Mexican American adolescents' drug use norms and behaviors. Results are presented based on surveys completed by Mexican-background students from 35 Phoenix. Arizona middle schools, whose enrollment ranged from a numerical minority to an overwhelming majority. Multivariate mixed models tested for the influence of school ethnic composition measures on substance use outcomes, while accounting for individual level predictors and for the nesting of data at the school level. The proportional representation of Latinos in the school was not a factor in an individual's drug use norms or drug use for the sample overall. Once students were broken down by acculturation status, however, ethnic composition had an effect. Less acculturated Mexican heritage students in schools with higher proportions of Latino students reported less substance use and less adherence to pro-drug norms. Further investigation using other measures of ethnic composition suggested that these effects were attributable to the larger presence of less acculturated Latinos in the school rather than more acculturated Latino students. These school-level effects support the individual-level results indicating that less acculturated Mexican American students face less daunting substance use risks. The results suggest that ethnic group size, but not necessarily numerical predominance, matters and that within-group differences influence the effect of a particular ethnic group's presence in the school. In other words, the majority does not always rule. These findings are interpreted using the concepts of segmented assimilation and school level social capital.