Americans and Iraq,twelve years apart: Comparing support for the US wars in Iraq

Significant differences exist in Americans’ support for force between the 1991 Persian Gulf War and 2003 Iraq War, even when holding all demographic variables constant. Nearly every group decreased their support from 1991 to 2003, including men and women, Whites and racial minorities, people with high school degrees or higher, nearly all age categories, and Democrat and Independent affiliated individuals. When examining potential causes for decreased support in the 2003 Iraq War, the “nature of the conflict” presents the strongest argument and evidence. The Persian Gulf War aimed to force the Iraqi army from Kuwait, while the Iraq War was aimed at changing the governmental regime of Iraq. The latter conflict was less socially acceptable than the former to Americans. These differences between the conflicts are the best explanation for the change in support, while other explanations, including the changing composition of the population and a less pro-military populace, are insufficient.     

‘I was forced here’: perceptions of agency in second generation ‘return’ migration to Tonga

Migrants’ adolescent children sometimes live for periods of time in their parents’ homeland; however, little attention has been paid to this in the literature on ‘return’ migration and transnationalism. This paper explores the experiences of overseas born Tongan youth spending time in high schools in Tonga, whether by choice or because they have been taken or sent due to concerns about their behaviour. The importance of these young people’s perceptions of agency in relation to their move is considered as a factor in their responses to their experiences in Tonga. Other factors shaping those experiences include their family situation, the school they attend and the wider attitudes in Tongan society towards these young people. The paper also considers the question of agency in relation to the cultural expectations these overseas born youth must learn to meet, which entail significant restrictions on their behaviour yet are also a means of strengthening their cultural identity and sense of belonging.     

Determinants of Volunteering Within a Social Housing Community

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In general, research demonstrates that deprivation, education, health, and well-being are determinants of volunteering,...     

‘Like walking on eggshells’: service user views and expectations of the child protection system

This paper reports on a study of service users' views on Irish child protection services. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 67 service users, including young people between 13 and 23. The findings showed that despite refocusing and public service management reforms, service users still experience involvement with the services as intimidating and stressful and while they acknowledged opportunities to participate in the child protection process, they found the experience to be very difficult. Their definition of ‘needs’ was somewhat at odds with that suggested in official documentation, and they viewed the execution of a child protection plan more as a coercive requirement to comply with ‘tasks’ set by workers than a conjoint effort to enhance their children's welfare. As in previous studies, the data showed how the development of good relationships between workers and service users could compensate for the harsher aspects of involvement with child protection. In addition, this study demonstrated a high level of discernment on the part of service users, highlighting their expectation of quality standards in respect of courtesy, respect, accountability, transparency and practitioner expertise.     

Weighted Distance Weighted Discrimination and Its Asymptotic Properties

While Distance Weighted Discrimination (DWD) is an appealing approach to classification in high dimensions, it was designed for balanced datasets. In the case of unequal costs, biased sampling, or unbalanced data, there are major improvements available, using appropriately weighted versions of DWD (wDWD). A major contribution of this paper is the development of optimal weighting schemes for various nonstandard classification problems. In addition, we discuss several alternative criteria and propose an adaptive weighting scheme (awDWD) and demonstrate its advantages over nonadaptive weighting schemes under some situations. The second major contribution is a theoretical study of weighted DWD. Both high-dimensional low sample-size asymptotics and Fisher consistency of DWD are studied. The performance of weighted DWD is evaluated using simulated examples and two real data examples. The theoretical results are also confirmed by simulations.     

A Simple Demonstration of the Relationship between Classification and Canonical Variates Analysis

The purpose of this article is to provide a perspective on present technology for acquisition of information relative to the status of renewable natural resources, with particular emphasis on forest and marine resources. Commonalities and dichotomies are emphasized in the hope of achieving a synthesis that will promote shared understanding and dialogue between statisticians and natural resource discipline specialists, with the ultimate goal being improved survey methodology.