School Context and the Effect of ESL Placement on Mexican‐Origin Adolescents' Achievement*

Objectives. Immigrant adolescents' academic achievement is crucial to our future economic stability, and Mexican‐origin linguistic minority youth in U.S. schools generally demonstrate lower levels of achievement. English as a Second Language (ESL) programs provide an institutional response to these students' needs, the effect of which may vary by the proportion of immigrant students in the school. Measures. Using propensity score matching and data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study (AHAA) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we estimate the effect of ESL placement on Mexican‐origin achievement for first‐, second‐, and third‐generation adolescents separately in schools with many and few immigrant students. Results. The estimated effect of ESL placement varies by both immigrant concentration in the school and by students' generational status. Conclusions. We find that ESL enrollment may be protective for second‐generation Mexican‐origin adolescents in high immigrant concentration schools, and may prove detrimental for first‐generation adolescents in contexts with few other immigrant students.     

Attitudes Toward the Poor and Attributions for Poverty

Prior psychological research on attitudes toward the poor has focused almost exclusively on the attributions people make to explain why individuals are poor (e.g., Smith & Stone, 1989; Zucker & Weiner, 1993). The goal of the current study was to investigate the relationships among feelings about the poor and poverty, stereotypes of the poor, attributions for poverty, and sociopolitical ideologies (as assessed by the Protestant Ethic, Belief in a Just World, and Right Wing Authoritarianism Scales). In our Midwestern college sample (n = 209), attitudes toward the poor were found to be significantly more negative than attitudes toward the middle class. In addition, participants were most likely to blame poor people them-selves for their poverty. However, attitudes toward the poor and attributions for the causes of poverty were found to vary among individuals from different sociodemographic backgrounds and by degree of endorsement of Protestant ethic, just world, and authoritarianism beliefs. Few gender differences were obtained.     

Bayesian sequential inference for nonlinear multivariate diffusions

In this paper, we adapt recently developed simulation-based sequential algorithms to the problem concerning the Bayesian analysis of discretely observed diffusion processes. The estimation framework involves the introduction of m−1 latent data points between every pair of observations. Sequential MCMC methods are then used to sample the posterior distribution of the latent data and the model parameters on-line. The method is applied to the estimation of parameters in a simple stochastic volatility model (SV) of the U.S. short-term interest rate. We also provide a simulation study to validate our method, using synthetic data generated by the SV model with parameters calibrated to match weekly observations of the U.S. short-term interest rate.     

Conditional simulation from highly structured Gaussian systems, with application to blocking-MCMC for the Bayesian analysis of very large linear models

This paper examines strategies for simulating exactly from large Gaussian linear models conditional on some Gaussian observations. Local computation strategies based on the conditional independence structure of the model are developed in order to reduce costs associated with storage and computation. Application of these algorithms to simulation from nested hierarchical linear models is considered, and the construction of efficient MCMC schemes for Bayesian inference in high-dimensional linear models is outlined.     

Applying discrete choice models to predict Academy Award winners

Summary.  Every year since 1928, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recognized outstanding achievement in film with their prestigious Academy Award, or Oscar. Before the winners in various categories are announced, there is intense media and public interest in predicting who will come away from the awards ceremony with an Oscar statuette. There are no end of theories about which nominees are most likely to win, yet despite this there continue to be major surprises when the winners are announced. The paper frames the question of predicting the four major awards—picture, director, actor in a leading role and actress in a leading role—as a discrete choice problem. It is then possible to predict the winners in these four categories with a reasonable degree of success. The analysis also reveals which past results might be considered truly surprising—nominees with low estimated probability of winning who have overcome nominees who were strongly favoured to win.     

Acomparison between Northern and Southern blacks residing in the North

Differences between Southern and non-Southern blacks living in the North and West are considered for a wide variety of attributes such as employment, occupation, income, marital stability, and offspring's performance in school. Migrant blacks have generally more favorable rates than their Northern- and Western-born compatriots after standard domographic controls are applied to an unusually detailed set of cross-tabulations based on the One-Percent Sample Tapes for 1960. Perhaps the sharpest gap exists with respect to marital conditions; Southern blacks of both sexes are more likely to marry and, among those ever married, live more frequently with their spouses. Some of the results reported by earlier investigators require considerable modification; For example, the fact that Northern black men are less often at work than migrants has led to speculations about regional differences in work orientation among blacks, but a detailed analysis of labor force activity indicates this pattern does not hold for women. Likewise, the migrant income advantage is found to vary by education such that it is confined to those with low educational attainment. The use of sample tapes permits a novel analysis of differences between Northern-born blacks classified by whether they are second or at least third generation residents of the North (children of Southern- or Northern-born parents, respectively). For the attribute measured, school performance, the gap is essentially nil. Finally, an alternative is suggested to the existing causal interpretations of North-South gaps among black residents of the North. Reconsidered in particular are the higher labor force rates of migrant men and their more frequent employment in blue collar jobs;     

Past Activeness,Solidarity, and Local Development Efforts1

Abstract Actions by local groups and leaders constitute an essential but poorly understood element of many rural development strategies. Previous studies suggest that local development efforts can influence community change, but questions remain about why localities differ in mobilization to achieve development goals. Drawing upon community field theory and human ecology, this study uses data for rural school districts in Pennsylvania to examine the argument that activeness in the past and development of solidarity can contribute to a higher probability of local mobilization than would be predicted by ecological characteristics alone. Hierarchical regressions support this argument for some local actions, while canonical correlations show a generalized pattern strongly associated with past activeness and solidarity.     

Images of Disability in 19th Century British Children's Literature

The authors report on their investigation of some types of nineteenth century British children's periodical literature as a source of information regarding the social perception of disability of that time. A survey of the material in the Osborne Collection of early children's literature in the Toronto Public library suggests that the prevailing conception of disability of the time was of a fixed, divinely ordained state of being, viewed as having a global influence on the life of the disabled person. The disabled person was regarded as set apart from the rest of society by his or her disability.     

Distinctive policy diffusion patterns,processes and actors: drawing implications from the case of sport in international development

This article examines the diffusion of “Sport for Development and Peace” (SDP) across sub-Saharan Africa following global policy impetus provided by international organizations, including the United Nations, since the start of the twenty-first century. In so doing, the article centres on a geographical region that has been unconsidered in the policy diffusion literature and, particularly, responds to calls for research into the effects of policy characteristics on diffusion mechanisms and patterns. This rationale beget methods that differed from the predominant use of quantitative, dichotomous indicators of policy diffusion, instead integrating data from global, international and national policy documents, from a review of SDP literature, and from stakeholder interviews in Ghana and Tanzania. Patterns of increasing governmental engagement with, but limited implementation of, SDP policies contrasted with the significant expansion of SDP provision by diverse NGOs. In turn, these patterns represented the varying influence of different diffusion mechanisms on state and non-state actors. Compared with the diffusion of other types of policies, these findings indicated the effects of an instrumental, malleable but complex global policy model for SDP diffusion. There is, therefore, significant value in further research that examines how policy diffusion may depend on the configuration of particular policy characteristics, mechanisms and actors.     

Composable models for online Bayesian analysis of streaming data

Data is rapidly increasing in volume and velocity and the Internet of Things (IoT) is one important source of this data. The IoT is a collection of connected devices (things) which are constantly recording data from their surroundings using on-board sensors. These devices can record and stream data to the cloud at a very high rate, leading to high storage and analysis costs. In order to ameliorate these costs, the data is modelled as a stream and analysed online to learn about the underlying process, perform interpolation and smoothing and make forecasts and predictions. Conventional state space modelling tools assume the observations occur on a fixed regular time grid. However, many sensors change their sampling frequency, sometimes adaptively, or get interrupted and re-started out of sync with the previous sampling grid, or just generate event data at irregular times. It is therefore desirable to model the system as a partially and irregularly observed Markov process which evolves in continuous time. Both the process and the observation model are potentially non-linear. Particle filters therefore represent the simplest approach to online analysis. A functional Scala library of composable continuous time Markov process models has been developed in order to model the wide variety of data captured in the IoT.