MINIMUM LEVELS AND FRAMING IN PUBLIC GOOD PROVISION

Using a laboratory experiment in the field, we examine how the framing of a social dilemma, give to or take from a public good, interacts with a policy intervention that enforces a minimum contribution level to the public good. We find significantly higher cooperation in the give frame than in the take frame in our standard public goods experiment. When a minimum contribution level is introduced, contributions are crowded out in the give frame but crowded in in the take frame. Our results show the importance of choosing the frame when making policy recommendations. (JEL C91, H41)     

Contracts, livestock, and the Bernoulli process: an application of statistics to B. Traven's 'Cattle Drive'

One of the pivotal devices B. Traven employs in his short story 'The Cattle Drive' is a contract between the cattle owner and the trail boss who brings the livestock to market. By specifying a per-diem rate, the contract appears to encourage a wage-maximizing trail boss to delay the delivery of the cattle. However, a statistical model of the contract demonstrates that a rational trail boss has an incentive to maintain a rapid rate of travel. The article concludes that statistics can be applied in non-traditional ways such as to the analysis of the plot of a fictional story. The statistical model suggests plausible alternative endings to the story based on various parameter assumptions. Finally, it demonstrates that a well-crafted story can provide an excellent case study of how contracts create incentives and influence decision-making.     

ORDANOVA: Analysis of ordinal variation

In order to accelerate object evaluation, some measurement systems commonly use an ordinal scale (e.g., stick results, quality estimation). This paper presents a way to analyze ordinal data variation. As in classical ANOVA for continual data, ORDANOVA for ordinal data splits the total variation into within and between components. This decomposition has various practical applications such as classification, cluster analysis, distinguishing feature identification and so on.     

A RESPONSE TO HEIM AND SNYDER

This article comments on a recent study by Heim and Snyder (1991) which explores the interaction between marital distress and spouses' attributions in predicting depression. We suggest taht the attributional theory model may set up a reductionistic research stance that potentially separates what depressed people think from their circumstances and history, thus implying a linear relationship between thinking, depression, and, in this case, marital distress. We also question whether the authors' focus on women's attributional processes, combined with their reliance on a potentially unidimensional model of depression, might inadvertently support preexisting power imbalances in the marital relationship. Finally, we address research design issues regarding measurement, sampling, and statistical concerns.     

My student body: a high-risk drinking prevention web site for college students

The authors investigated the efficacy of an interactive Web site, MyStudentBody.com: Alcohol (MSB:Alcohol) that offers a brief, tailored intervention to help heavy drinking college students reduce their alcohol use. They conducted a randomized, controlled clinical trial to compare the intervention with an alcohol education Web site at baseline, postintervention, and 3-month follow-up. Students were assessed on various drinking measures and their readiness to change their drinking habits. The intervention was especially effective for women and persistent binge drinkers. Compared with women who used the control Web site, women who used the intervention significantly reduced their peak and total consumption during special occasions and also reported significantly fewer negative consequences related to drinking. In addition, persistent heavy binge drinkers in the experimental group experienced a more rapid decrease in average consumption and peak consumption compared with those in the control group. The authors judged MSB:Alcohol a useful intervention for reaching important subgroups of college binge drinkers.     

Theorizing theory: Invitation to a broader conversation about ‘theory’ in sociology

‘Theory’ is a seminal term in sociology. Sociologists tend to ask that articles, chapters and monographs are ‘theoretical’, ‘develop theory’ or ‘make a theoretical contribution’. Yet, as demonstrated in Gabriel Abend’s 2008 article ‘The Meaning of ‘Theory’, it is generally unclear what sociologists mean when they talk about theory. Abend distinguishes seven different meanings sociologists tend to impute to ‘theory’ and argues that no single definition can usefully capture these substantively different meanings. Counter to Abend, we propose and defend a minimal and versatile theory of theory, which does capture the important common denominators in sociologists' various uses of the term theory. The major strengths of our proposal are that it enables informed and synthetic discussion and fosters reflexivity about differences and similarities between different types of theory. Our minimal theory of theory thus serves as an invitation to a broader conversation about theory in sociology.