CALIBRATING MEASURES OF FAMILY ACTIVITIES BETWEEN LARGE- AND SMALL-SCALE DATA SETS

Two studies of working families are combined to demonstrate a strategy for producing reliable estimates from the combination of self-reported (large N) and observational (small N) data. Both studies examine where and how dual-career families spend time at home. The 500 Family Study is sociological and uses self-reported time diary data from a national sample; the CELF study is anthropological and uses observational scan sampling data from a regional sample of 32 families. The data are combined as if they constitute one sample, and an analytic solution for establishing the reliability of the resulting composite estimates of time use is provided. Merging the data sets provides validation for each study, neither of which is without potential methodological weaknesses. The advantages of combining data from the independent data collection methods are discussed, and selected substantive findings on families' activities are highlighted, illustrating similarities and differences between findings in the independent and combined data sets. Results show that working families spend significant time in a small spectrum of home spaces, particularly kitchens and living rooms, with leisure activities prevailing, but mothers, fathers, and children differ in where and how they spend their time. Overall, a template for merging data from different disciplines and methods is provided.     

Sending States’ Transnational Interventions in Politics,Culture, and Economics: The Historical Example of Italy1

This article uses archival evidence to study in depth the historical policies of Italy as a classic sending state. Most of the mass migrations of a century ago came from multinational empires, but Italy was a recently formed independent state. Ambitious to benefit from emigration while assisting and protecting emigrants, Italy reached out to “Italians abroad” in several ways. For example, the state opened a low‐cost channel for remittances through a nonprofit bank; promoted Italian language education among Italian families abroad; supported Italian Chambers of Commerce abroad; and subsidized religious missionary work among emigrants. Italy's historical example of political innovation and diplomatic negotiation provides context, comparisons, and possibilities for rapidly changing sending‐state policies in the twenty‐first century.     

Sektion Wissenssoziologie

Ohne Zusammenfassung unter Mithilfe von Jule Lorenzen, Sabine Petschke, Lisa-Marian Schmidt und René Tuma     

Mathematische Voraussetzungen sozialwissenschaftlicher und psychologischer Studiengänge

In a survey of professors and lectureres at German and Swiss universities we asked for mathematical skills that are prerequisites for successful studies in the social sciences and in psychology. Basic contents of lower secondary education (Sekundarstufe I) were reported as most important. Nevertheless in a hypothetical preparatory mathematics class respondents would like an equal amount of stochastics to be included. Respondents differ especially with repect to their perceived importance of stochastics knowledge prior to immatriculation. While some respondents underline its outstanding importance others consider it completely unnecessary to have stochastic knowledge in advance. There is consent about the level of importance of all other disciplines, calculus and linear algebra being of medium importance, geometry and game theory being less important. Psychologists differ from social scientists in putting even less emphasis on calculus. Aside from differences with respect to stochastics the study indicates the existence of standard requirements shared by all professors and lectureres irrespective of their discipline. This finding facilitates construction of preparatory courses for students across subjects.     

On Integer Programming Approaches for Morphological Template Decomposition Problems in Computer Vision

In morphological image processing and analysis, a template or structuringelement is applied to an image. Often savings in computation time and abetter fit to the given computer architecture can be achieved by using thetechnique of template decomposition. Researchers have written a multitude ofpapers on finding such decompositions for special classes of templates.Justifying recent integer programming approaches to the morphologicaltemplate decomposition problem in its general form, this paper proves theNP-completeness of this problem.     

Principal component and correspondence analysis of compositional data: some similarities

Principal component and correspondence analysis can both be used as exploratory methods for representing multivariate data in two dimensions. Circumstances under which the, possibly inappropriate, application of principal components to untransformed compositional data approximates to a correspondence analysis of the raw data are noted. Aitchison (1986) has proposed a method for the principal component analysis of compositional data involving transformation of the raw data. It is shown how this can be approximated by a correspondence analysis of appropriately transformed data. The latter approach may be preferable when there are zeroes in the data.     

Regularities and irregularities in a random 0,1 sequence

A few properties of the random 0,1 sequences are studied. These properties can be utilized to test the randomness of a 0,1 sequence produced by a computer (random generator). This test seems to be appropriate for discovering the periodicity (or the length of the period) of a pseudorandom sequence. A possible application of the presented results in regression analysis is also discussed.