Heart Disease Risk Perception in College Men and Women

Abstract

The authors sought to assess the perception of risks for coronary heart disease (CHD) in college men and women. They surveyed 470 undergraduates from 2 major 4-year institutions who completed a questionnaire that measured perceived risks for heart disease. Sixty-eight percent of the respondents rated their risks as lower or much lower than those of their peers, indicating a clear optimistic bias. The research also revealed that the students who exercised regularly rated their risk of coronary disease lower than those who did not do so. In addition, women perceived a number of risk markers to be more potent or causative factors than men did. A significant number of participants did not comprehend commonly understood causal relationships associated with heart disease risk. The findings in this preliminary investigation suggest that college men and women do not accurately perceive their risks for developing heart disease.     

Generalized Utilitarianism and Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem

Harsanyi's impartial observer must consider two types of lotteries: imaginary identity lotteries (“accidents of birth”) that she faces as herself and the real outcome lotteries (“life chances”) to be faced by the individuals she imagines becoming. If we maintain a distinction between identity and outcome lotteries, then Harsanyi‐like axioms yield generalized utilitarianism, and allow us to accommodate concerns about different individuals' risk attitudes and concerns about fairness. Requiring an impartial observer to be indifferent as to which individual should face similar risks restricts her social welfare function, but still allows her to accommodate fairness. Requiring an impartial observer to be indifferent between identity and outcome lotteries, however, forces her to ignore both fairness and different risk attitudes, and yields a new axiomatization of Harsanyi's utilitarianism.     

Assessment of Inhalation Exposures and Potential Health Risks to the General Population that Resulted from the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers

In the days following the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers on September 11, 2001 (9/11), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated numerous air monitoring activities to better understand the ongoing impact of emissions from that disaster. Using these data, EPA conducted an inhalation exposure and human health risk assessment to the general population. This assessment does not address exposures and potential impacts that could have occurred to rescue workers, firefighters, and other site workers, nor does it address exposures that could have occurred in the indoor environment. Contaminants evaluated include particulate matter (PM), metals, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, asbestos, volatile organic compounds, particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, silica, and synthetic vitreous fibers (SVFs). This evaluation yielded three principal findings. (1) Persons exposed to extremely high levels of ambient PM and its components, SVFs, and other contaminants during the collapse of the WTC towers, and for several hours afterward, were likely to be at risk for acute and potentially chronic respiratory effects. (2) Available data suggest that contaminant concentrations within and near ground zero (GZ) remained significantly elevated above background levels for a few days after 9/11. Because only limited data on these critical few days were available, exposures and potential health impacts could not be evaluated with certainty for this time period. (3) Except for inhalation exposures that may have occurred on 9/11 and a few days afterward, the ambient air concentration data suggest that persons in the general population were unlikely to suffer short-term or long-term adverse health effects caused by inhalation exposures. While this analysis by EPA evaluated the potential for health impacts based on measured air concentrations, epidemiological studies conducted by organizations other than EPA have attempted to identify actual impacts. Such studies have identified respiratory effects in worker and general populations, and developmental effects in newborns whose mothers were near GZ on 9/11 or shortly thereafter. While researchers are not able to identify specific times and even exactly which contaminants are the cause of these effects, they have nonetheless concluded that exposure to WTC contaminants (and/or maternal stress, in the case of developmental effects) resulted in these effects, and have identified the time period including 9/11 itself and the days and few weeks afterward as a period of most concern based on high concentrations of key pollutants in the air and dust.     

Binge drinking in female college students: the association of physical activity, weight concern, and depressive symptoms

As an initial step in building gender-specific binge drinking intervention programs, the authors investigated the relation of potentially modifiable factors (physical activity level, weight concern, and depressive symptoms) to binge drinking while controlling for the effects of previously established correlates of binge drinking (tobacco and marijuana use, GPA, and perception of peer alcohol use). Four-hundred-twelve college women completed an in-class survey. Multivariate analyses revealed that tobacco and marijuana use, GPA, and physical activity were significantly associated with binge drinking, whereas tobacco use and perception of peers' alcohol use were associated with more frequent binge drinking. The findings suggested that the variables associated with any binge drinking and frequency of binge drinking may differ and that binge drinking can be associated with positive health behaviors (ie, greater physical activity) as well as risky health behaviors (eg, tobacco use).     

Changes in Suicide and Divorce in New Casino Jurisdictions

Using county-level data, this study examines the impact that the introduction of casino gambling has on suicide and divorce. Eight communities that adopted casino gambling between 1991 and 1994 are compared with a matched set of control counties, jurisdictions that are economically and demographically similar to the casino counties. Suicide rates are not statistically different between casino and control communities. Divorce rates are lower in three casinos counties, higher in one, and not statistically different in four. Overall, the results suggest no widespread, statistically significant increase in either suicide or divorce. Possible explanations for the results are provided.     

Factor Analysis of Barriers to Treatment for Problem Gambling

Attitudes toward problem gambling treatment were investigated in a telephone survey of 1,203 persons in Central Queensland Australia (598 women and 605 men, mean age = 45.8 years). Survey items were compiled from existing substance abuse questionnaires (Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions, 1995; Sobell et al., 1991). An exploratory factor analysis identified five potential barriers to treatment, including: availability, stigma, cost, uncertainty, and avoidance. Relative to those with few problems, respondents who had numerous gambling problems were more concerned about treatment costs, and the availability and effectiveness of treatment. In addition to the above concerns, older persons more often negatively judged the treatment seeker. In contrast, educated respondents had generally more positive attitudes towards problem gamblers and treatment seeking.     

Transform Analysis and Asset Pricing for Affine Jump‐diffusions

In the setting of ‘affine’ jump‐diffusion state processes, this paper provides an analytical treatment of a class of transforms, including various Laplace and Fourier transforms as special cases, that allow an analytical treatment of a range of valuation and econometric problems. Example applications include fixed‐income pricing models, with a role for intensity‐based models of default, as well as a wide range of option‐pricing applications. An illustrative example examines the implications of stochastic volatility and jumps for option valuation. This example highlights the impact on option ‘smirks’ of the joint distribution of jumps in volatility and jumps in the underlying asset price, through both jump amplitude as well as jump timing.