Ignoring a Covariate: An Example of Simpson's Paradox

The possibility that the apparent direction of an association will be reversed when covariates are taken into account is well known, but many examples of this effect are rather contrived. A real example from an epidemiological survey is presented.     

A‐Way Express Courier

This article examines the social return on investment (SROI) of A‐Way Express Courier for the major stakeholder group of the organization, its employees. Specifically, it explores the mental health, employment, and standard of living outcomes that A‐Way provides for the employees who are consumer/survivors of the mental health system. Overall, the impacts of the organization contributed significantly to improvements in the health and quality of life of the employees. They also translate into economic benefits for the employees and the community. Because of A‐Way's roots in the consumer/survivor movement of the 1970s, the article suggests that positive psychology could be a valuable framework with which to explain A‐Way's impact.     

Smoking initiation and smoking patterns among US college students.

The ages at which 18- to 24-year-old college students started smoking and its relationship to subsequent smoking were explored, using data from the 1995 National College Health Risk Behavior Survey. Most students (70%) had tried smoking; among those who had tried, 42% were current smokers, 19% were current frequent smokers, and 13% were current daily smokers. The majority (81%) who had ever smoked daily began doing so at age 18 years or younger, and 19% began smoking daily at age 19 years or older. Women were as likely as men to report ever having smoked a whole cigarette or ever having smoked daily. Most students (82%) who had ever smoked daily had tried to quit, but 3 in 4 were still smokers. Policies and programs designed to prevent the initiation of smoking and to help smokers quit are needed at both the high school and the college levels to reduce the proportion of young adults who smoke cigarettes.     

Have family income mobility patterns changed?

We examine the mobility of individuals in the United States based on equivalent family income-that is, total income of all family members adjusted for family size according to the equivalence scale implicit in the U.S. poverty line. Our analysis, which tracks movements across quintiles, centers on four questions: How much movement is there across the family income distribution? How has this mobility changed over time? To what extent are the movements attributable to factors related to changes in family composition versus events in the labor markets? In light of major socioeconomic changes occurring in the quarter-century under study, have the determinants of mobility changed over time? Our findings indicate that mobility rates in the 1980s differed little from those in the 1970s. However, individuals in families headed by a young person or a person without a college education were less likely to experience upward mobility in the 1980s than in the 1970s.     

A note on occupation statistics in British censuses

The census occupation statistics are the most complete source of information on the employment of the population during the past century. The Official Guide to the Census Reports¹ traces the development of the occupation inquiries and gives details of the major classification changes (pp. 27-43). These changes are considered in relation to each census year, but little attempt has been made to examine their effect on the comparability of the data. In addition, certain points which are of interest to research workers in this field have been omitted from the Guide.     

Rurality and Social Inclusion: A Case of Preschool Education

This paper begins by reviewing several of the ways in which social inclusion has been conceptualized in the literature. The paper then explores these approaches in the context of the provision of preschool education in rural Scotland. Preschool education is viewed by government as a powerful weapon in the fight against social exclusion, but higher per capita costs in rural areas as well as the availability and cost of transport are major problems, raising questions in turn about inclusive models of provision. Moreover, many parents are sceptical about their ability to access preschool education for their children while also continuing their own engagement in the labour market (a central pillar of social inclusion policy). Issues of choice, quality and governance arise and these are discussed in depth. The paper concludes with some reflections on the concept of social inclusion in the light of this case study.     

THE EFFECT OF MATERNAL DRUG USE ON BIRTH WEIGHT: MEASUREMENT ERROR IN BINARY VARIABLES

We develop a method to correct for non-random measurement error in a binary indicator of illicit drugs. Our results suggest that estimates of the effect of self-reported prenatal drug use on birth weight are biased upwards by measurement error—a finding contrary to predictions of a model of random measurement error. More accurate estimates of the true effect of drug use on birth weight can be obtained by using the predicted probability of falsely reporting drug use. Thus out-of-sample information on drug use may improve estimates of the effect of reported drug use in other settings.     

Student-faculty sexual relationships: An empirical test of two explanatory models

Media reports, stereotypes in popular literature, and a limited number of research studies describe student-faculty sexual relationships as either an exchange of sex for grades (initiated either by a lascivious professor or a self-serving student) and/or as the result of the psychological process of transference. Results from in-depth interviews with 11 students and 14 faculty members who had had student-teacher sexual affairs show only minimal support for either the exchange or transference models. We present two case histories that are typical of the student-faculty sexual liaisons we studied; they illustrate that these relationships are in many ways like other sexual relationships insofar as they are based on mutual attraction, as well as sex-related, power-discrepant roles. Student-faculty relationships are problematic (i.e., unethical) not so much because of the power discrepancy between a (usually male) professor and a (usually female) student, but because there is a confounding of public and private roles. This study contributes to this largely unresearched subject area in that it seriously questions the validity of negative sex stereotypes explicit in the exchange model and examines student-faculty relationships in sociological terms.     

Family cap provisions and changes in births and abortions

As part of welfare reform efforts in the 1990s, 23 states implemented family caps, provisions that deny or reduce cash assistance to welfare recipients who have additional births. We use birth and abortion records from 24 states to estimate effects of family caps on birth and abortion rates. We use age, marital status, and completed schooling to identify women at high risk for use of public assistance, and parity (number of previous live births) to identify those most directly affected by the family cap. In family cap states, birth rates fell more and abortion rates rose more among high-risk women with at least one previous live birth compared to similar childless women, consistent with an effect of the family cap. However, this parity-specific pattern of births and abortions also occurred in states that implemented welfare reform with no family cap. Thus, the effects of welfare reform may have differed between mothers and childless women, but there is little evidence of an independent effect of the family cap.