Selection without (unfair) discrimination

A method is devised for performing multiple discriminant analysis subject to inequality constraints on the probabilities of misassignment of different subpopulations. This procedure is motivated by attempts to devise.fair means of selection of applicants for schools, jobs, and credit. An algorithm is developed and sample calculations are given.     

A simple procedure for testing linear hypotheses about the parameters of a nonlinear model using weighted least squares

Suppose the same nonlinear function involving k parameters is fit to each of t populations. Suppose further it is of interest to compare a specific parameter of the models across the populations. Such comparisons can be expressed as linear hypotheses about the parameters of the nonlinear models. A weighted linear least squares (WLLS) procedure is proposed to test these linear hypotheses. The advantages and disadvantages of the WLLS procedure are discussed. This procedure is also compared to a nonlinear least squares procedure for testing these hypotheses in nonlinear models.     

Priming from the pulpit: Extending regulatory focus theory to church services

The purpose of this research note is to extend a powerful cognitive psychology theory—regulatory focus theory—to a specific nonprofit organization: churches. We apply this theory to the design of church services to model how church leaders can structure services to enhance congregant experience and generate positive behavioral outcomes. We present an experiment utilizing 126 adult Americans as initial evidence for our framework. The results indicate that using appropriate regulatory focus priming strategies can increase congregant donations.     

Drivers of Corporate Social Responsibility Attitudes: The Demography of Socially Responsible Investors

Demographic characteristics of socially responsible investors (SRIs) are likely to play a significant role in shaping their perceptions and behaviour concerning corporate social responsibility (CSR). This paper identifies demographic characteristics of SRIs and explores the relationship of these characteristics with their CSR attitudes. We analyse, using generalized ordered logistic regression, the questionnaire responses of 2464 SRIs from 20 countries. The results demonstrate that younger and female SRIs are more likely to believe that a company's social and environmental performance is as important as its financial performance. Female SRIs and those with high incomes are the most likely to believe that companies should be as responsible to their shareholders as to the broader society. In addition, younger SRIs, those with high incomes and those who have attained higher education levels regard socially responsible companies as at least as profitable as other companies. The benefits which companies can derive from understanding the demographic profile of SRIs are examined, including a potentially lower cost of capital, improved CSR rankings and business policy formulation and communication consistent with CSR views held by specific groups of SRIs.     

“The most bombed nation on Earth”: Western Shoshone resistance to the Nevada National Security Site

This article explores a set of protests challenging U.S. occupation of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site as a means of understanding the deployment of bordering rhetorics in colonial expansion and indigenous resistance. The protests have used a variety of strategies that appropriate artifacts historically controlled by colonial powers such as passports and No Trespassing signs to assert their own sovereignty and demand a change to the material conditions of U.S. occupation of land recognized as belonging to the Western Shoshone in the Treaty of Ruby Valley. These protests offer a chance to complicate current scholarly understandings of decolonial protest. This article analyzes the verbal, visual, and performative elements of these protests and argues that indigenous citizenship and border protests can coopt and reappropriate traditionally hegemonic rhetorics as a means of challenging naturalized assumptions about nationhood, borders, and sovereignty.     

School environment and risk preferences: Experimental evidence

Using a field experiment with high school students, we evaluate the development of risk preferences. Examining the impact of school characteristics on preference development reveals both peer and quality effects. For the peer effect, individuals in schools with a higher percentage of students on free or reduced lunches (hence a higher proportion of low-income peers with whom to interact) are significantly more risk averse. For the quality effect, individuals in schools with smaller class sizes and a higher percentage of educators with advanced degrees have higher, more moderate levels of risk aversion. We further discuss economic, cognitive and emotional development theories of risk preferences. Data show demographic-related patterns: girls are more risk averse on average, while taller and nonwhite individuals are more risk tolerant.     

‘Some hidden purpose’? Class conflict and co-operation in Belfast’s Working Men’s Institute and Temperance Hall 1865–1900

While debates over social control and working-class culture have formed a lively part of British urban and social historiography, they have received much less attention in an Irish context. This article provides an overview of working-class associations in Belfast throughout the nineteenth century, before investigating specific working- and middle-class attitudes towards Belfast’s Working Men’s Institute and Temperance Hall during its early phase in the 1870s. The aims of the institute’s gentlemen founders – to maintain social order by providing workers with an alternative to the tavern, moralizing lectures on topics such as temperance, and evening classes – were only partially achieved. Middle-class motives, although mixed, betray a clear desire for social control. Many of the benefactors’ words and actions were met with suspicion or resistance by a group of fiercely independent working men who, while not averse to self-improvement, carved out their own agenda. A strong working-class identity, free from any sectarian character, was expressed with articulateness and vehemence. This phenomenon is particularly striking in a city not known for working-class activism.