Product-limit Estimators and Cox Regression with Missing Censoring Information

The Kaplan–Meier estimator of a survival function requires that the censoring indicator is always observed. A method of survival function estimation is developed when the censoring indicators are missing completely at random (MCAR). The resulting estimator is a smooth functional of the Nelson–Aalen estimators of certain cumulative transition intensities. The asymptotic properties of this estimator are derived. A simulation study shows that the proposed estimator has greater efficiency than competing MCAR-based estimators. The approach is extended to the Cox model setting for the estimation of a conditional survival function given a covariate.     

Complaining Our Way to Quality: Complaints, Contracts and the Voluntary Sector

The research on which this paper is based is part of a wider study of quality assurance and the voluntary sector. The focus of this paper is on complaints procedures, as part of quality assurance mechanisms, where voluntary agencies are the contracted service providers. The authors argue that, with the introduction of contracting and particularly with its further development, the way in which complaints mechanisms currently operate will need to be revised if they are to be an effective part of the quality assurance process.     

Effects of neuroticism,extraversion, circadian type and age on reported driver stress

Studies have examined effects of various personality variables, including extraversion and neuroticism, as well as age, on driver stress. However, the effect of the morningness-eveningness dimension (circadian type) on reported driver stress among commuters has not been investigated. This study aimed to assess the influence of circadian type as well as extraversion, neuroticism and age on driver stress. Participants were 101 Australian university administrative staff who completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised, the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, and also morning and evening driving diaries as a state measure of driver stress each weekday for one week. Two standard multiple regressions assessed whether neuroticism, extraversion, circadian type and age predicted reported driver stress for morning and evening drives. Neuroticism, circadian type, and age predicted reported driver stress in the mornings but age mainly predicted driver stress in the evenings. A repeated measures ANOVA isolated differences between circadian types for weekday mornings and evenings. Reported driver stress differed for day of week and time of day according to circadian type. The three-way interaction suggested that driver stress is influenced by circadian type and that factors influence driver stress differentially between mornings and evenings. Circadian type appears to influence when driver stress affects individuals.     

Modeling Endogenous Mobility in Earnings Determination

ABSTRACT

We evaluate the bias from endogenous job mobility in fixed-effects estimates of worker- and firm-specific earnings heterogeneity using longitudinally linked employer–employee data from the LEHD infrastructure file system of the U.S. Census Bureau. First, we propose two new residual diagnostic tests of the assumption that mobility is exogenous to unmodeled determinants of earnings. Both tests reject exogenous mobility. We relax exogenous mobility by modeling the matched data as an evolving bipartite graph using a Bayesian latent-type framework. Our results suggest that allowing endogenous mobility increases the variation in earnings explained by individual heterogeneity and reduces the proportion due to employer and match effects. To assess external validity, we match our estimates of the wage components to out-of-sample estimates of revenue per worker. The mobility-bias-corrected estimates attribute much more of the variation in revenue per worker to variation in match quality and worker quality than the uncorrected estimates. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Corporate planning and control systems in Williams & Glyn's Bank

The paper describes the planning procedures presently existing in Williams & Glyn's Bank. Emphasis is placed on the link between the Corporate Plan and the shorter-term budgets; the Corporate Plan provides the framework within which the budget is compiled and the budget is then used as a means of implementing the plan and monitoring progress. Emphasis is also given to the dissemination of the Corporate Plan both to all staff at Branch Manager, or equivalent level, and above and to members of the National Union of Bank Employees Joint Consultative Committee.Lectures based on this paper have been given to the Organization and Use of the Corporate Planning Process Study Group and to the Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Group; both Groups belong to the Society for Long Range Planning.     

Accountability and the Camera Perspective Bias in Videotaped Confessions

Prior research indicates that altering the perspective from which a videotaped confession is recorded influences assessments of the confession's voluntariness. The present study examined whether increasing decision makers' sense of accountability attenuates this biasing effect of camera perspective. Participants in a high-accountability (but not a low-accountability) condition were told that they would have to justify their judgments concerning the voluntary status of a video-taped confession to a trial judge. Although supplementary measures indicated that high-accountability participants processed information contained in the video-taped confession more carefully and thoroughly, the camera perspective bias persisted. This result adds to a growing body of work indicating that the criminal justice system needs to be seriously concerned with how it acquires and utilizes videotaped confession evidence.     

Toward a History of Psychological Expertise

In honor of the 60th anniversary of SPSSI's founding, this issue examines the ascendence of psychological expertise in American society. After World War II, psychology grew as the public accepted the illuminating power and social benefits of psychologists' expert knowledge. In that period, four problems confronted psychological experts as their numbers and influence grew. First, they needed ideas and methods that were new and superior to common sense. Second, experts needed to appear both relevant and objective. Third, psychologists needed to forge alliances with those who held social power in the settings in which they wished to operate. Finally, experts needed to balance the roles of social critic and social engineer.     

Sexuality and gender identity: from a discursive to a relational analysis

This paper concentrates on the recent controversy over the division between sex and gender and the troubling of the binary distinctions between gender identities and sexualities, such as man and woman, heterosexual and homosexual. While supporting the troubling of such categories, I argue against the approach of Judith Butler which claims that these dualities are primarily discursive constructions that can be regarded as fictions. Instead, I trace the emergence of such categories to changing forms of power relations in a more sociological reading of Foucault's conceptualization of power, and argue that the social formation of identity has to be understood as emergent within socio-historical relations. I then consider what implications this has for a politics based in notions of identity centred on questions of sexuality and gender.