Gambling and Problem Gambling Among Young Adolescents in Great Britain

International evidence suggests that problem gambling tends to be 2–4?times higher among adolescents as among adults and this proves to be true of Great Britain according to the latest adolescent prevalence survey. 8,958 British children (11–15) were surveyed in 201 schools during late 2008 and 2009. The questionnaire included a standard screen, DSM-IV-MR-J, to test for problem gambling. Our regression models explore influences of demographic, home and school characteristics on probabilities (both unconditional and conditional on being a gambler) of a child testing positive for problem gambling. More than 20% of children participated in gambling and, of these, nearly 8% tested positive. Age-group prevalence of problem gambling was 1.9%, compared with 0.6–0.9% in the most recent official adult surveys. Boys were much more likely than girls to gamble and to exhibit symptoms of problem gambling if they did. Generally, home characteristics, particularly parental attitude and example, dominated school characteristics in accounting for risks. Unanticipated findings included significantly elevated probabilities of problem gambling among Asian children and among children who live in a home without siblings. Child income was also a potent predictor of gambling and problem gambling.     

Power indices expressed in terms of minimal winning coalitions

A voting situation is given by a set of voters and the rules of legislation that determine minimal requirements for a group of voters to pass a motion. A priori measures of voting power, such as the Shapley–Shubik index and the Banzhaf value, show the influence of the individual players in a voting situation and are calculated by looking at marginal contributions in a simple game consisting of winning and losing coalitions derived from the legislative rules. We introduce a new way to calculate these measures directly from the set of minimal winning coalitions and derive explicit formulae for the Shapley–Shubik and Banzhaf values. This new approach logically appealing as it writes measures as functions of the rules of the legislation. For certain classes of games that arise naturally in applications the logical shortcut drastically simplifies the numerical calculations to obtain the indices. The technique generalises directly to all semivalues.     

Book review

Abstract

Corporate Assessment, By A. Furnham and B. Gunter, Routledge, London, 1993. £19.99 (hbk). ISBN 0-425-08118-1 [xiii + 293 pp].     

Entrepreneurial Cognition,Entrepreneurial Orientation and Firm Capability in the Creative Industries

Creative industries are firms which are characterized largely by the labour inputs of creative individuals, and surrounded by a degree of rhetoric as to their significance, but are a comparatively under‐researched sector. In this study we developed a research framework which integrated entrepreneurial cognition, entrepreneurial orientation and firm capabilities and explored the relationships between these variables, market conditions and the performance of small creative industry enterprises. The data suggest that high growth small firms are characterized by well‐developed internal capabilities allied to an entrepreneurial orientation and that the combination of the various sub‐attributes associated with each of these appear to be especially salient under conditions of intense competition. The policies, managerial and educational implications of the findings are discussed.     

Perception,Preference, and Patriotism: An Exploratory Analysis of the 1980 Winter Olympics

This article analyzes scores given by judges of figure skating at the 1980 Winter Olympics. Judges' scores are found to be highly correlated, with little evidence of scoring along political lines. However, an analysis of variance shows a small but consistent “patriotic” bias; judges tend to give higher scores to contestants from their own country. The influence of such effects on final placings is estimated.     

Necessary and Sufficient Condition for Nonsingular Fisher Information Matrix in ARMA and Fractional ARIMA Models

It is demonstrated that a necessary and sufficient condition for the Fisher information matrix of a causal and invertible ARMA to be nonsingular is that the model not be redundant; that is, the autoregressive and moving-average polynomials have no roots in common. This result is also extended to fractional ARIMA models.     

Optimal One-Way Random Effects Designs for the Intraclass Correlation Based on Confidence Intervals

ABSTRACT

Confidence intervals for the intraclass correlation coefficient (ρ) are used to determine the optimal allocation of experimental material in one-way random effects models. Designs that produce narrow intervals are preferred since they provide greater precision to estimate ρ. Assuming the total cost and the relative cost of the two stages of sampling are fixed, the authors investigate the number of classes and the number of individuals per class required to minimize the expected length of confidence intervals. We obtain results using asymptotic theory and compare these results to those obtained using exact calculations. The best design depends on the unknown value of ρ. Minimizing the maximum expected length of confidence intervals guards against worst-case scenarios. A good overall recommendation based on asymptotic results is to choose a design having classes of size 2 + √4 + 3r, where r is the relative cost of sampling at the class-level compared to the individual-level. If r = 0, then the overall cost is the sample size and the recommendation reduces to a design having classes of size 4.     

The Minimaxity of the Mid P-value under Linear and Squared Loss Functions

The mid-p is defined as the sum of the probabilities of all outcomes more extreme than an observed value, plus half of the probabilities of all outcomes exactly as extreme. On the one hand, it offers greater power than the standard p-value, but on the other, tests based on the mid-p statistic may have greater Type I error than their nominal level. This article investigates the mid p-value's properties under the estimated truth paradigm, which views p-values as estimators of the truth. The mid-p is shown to minimize the maximum risk for one-sided and two-sided tests.     

Lagged Regression Residuals and Serial-Correlation Tests

A new family of statistics is proposed to test for the presence of serial correlation in linear regression models. The tests are based on partial sums of lagged cross-products of regression residuals that define a class of interesting Gaussian processes. These processes are characterized in terms of regressor functions, the serial-correlation structure, the distribution of the noise process, and the order of the lag of the cross-products of residuals. It is shown that these four factors affect the lagged residual processes independently. Large-sample distributional results are presented for test statistics under the null hypothesis of no serial correlation or for alternatives from a range of interesting hypotheses. Some indication of the circumstances to which the asymptotic results apply in finite-sample situations and of those to which they should be applied with some caution are obtained through a simulation study. Tables of selected quantiles of the proposed tests are also given. The tests are illustrated with two examples taken from the empirical literature. It is also proposed that plots of lagged residual processes be used as diagnostic tools to gain insight into the correlation structure of residuals derived from regression fits.