Participatory Partnerships: Engaging and Empowering to Enhance Environmental Management and Quality of Life?

It is generally believed that, when partnerships with civil society are created, members of the public become engaged in defining and solving problems, and as a result become empowered through enhanced understanding of substantive problems, and of the processes used by society to deal with them. In this context, two fundamental assumptions related to a partnership approach deserve examination. First, partnerships assume a shared vision among partners, and a willingness to work together in a spirit of collaboration and cooperation. However, humans often are competitive, protective and defensive, attributes unlikely to lead to collaboration and cooperation. Second, advocates of a participatory approach advocate, or assume, that citizens will become empowered through being part of a partnership process. If partnerships are to be encouraged, we need to know if such a transformation actually occurs. Two experiences in Canada, one dealing with shared decision making during a resource and land use management process in British Columbia, and the other focused on an environmental impact assessment process in Manitoba, provide evidence that challenges whether these assumptions are easily satisfied.     

The Value of Seeking Financial Advice

Retirement planning data gathered from an online survey at a large university in October 2009 are used to examine differences in a variety of retirement planning measures between people who have and have not met with a financial advisor. Problems of self-selection and endogeneity are addressed through the use of propensity scores. The study’s major finding is that working with an advisor is related to several important financial planning activities, including goal setting, calculation of retirement needs, retirement account diversification, use of supplemental retirement accounts, accumulation of emergency funds, positive behavioral responses to the recent economic crisis, and retirement confidence. Use of a financial advisor was not related to self-reported retirement savings or short-term growth in retirement account asset values.     

Ethnocultural Reproduction and Attitudes towards Cohabiting Relationships*

Se fondant sur des notions d'interculturalité et de changement social, cet article fournit une explication des différences ethnoculturelles dans les attitudes à l'endroit des relations de cohabitation hétérosexuelle chez les jeunes adultes canadiens. L'accent est mis sur la mise au jour des mécanismes clés par lesquels les groupes ethniques « reproduisent » des orientations teintées de traditionalisme ou de libéralisme à l'endroit de ces conditions de logement. L'ensemble de données utilisé dans cette recherche est tiré d'un sous‐ensemble de 1 907 jeunes adultes choisis au hasard dans la Culture and Coresidence Study de 1999–2000. Les analyses à deux variables montrent de fortes différences ethnocuturelles dans la propension à déclarer que la cohabitation est acceptable, les Britanniques étant les plus favorables, suivis des Européens du Sud, des Chinois et enfin des Indo‐Canadiens. Les réultats de l'analyse de régression logistique révèlent qu'une constellation de facteurs ethnocul‐turels concourent à ces différences, par exemple la religiosité des jeunes adultes, le traditionalisme dans la famille et le rôle assignéà chacun des sexes, ainsi que l'usage quotidien d'une langue ethnique avec son entourage. From a cross‐cultural and social change perspective, this paper explicates ethnocultural differences in attitudes towards heterosexual cohabiting relationships among Canadian young adults. The focus is on uncovering the key mechanisms by which ethnic groups “reproduce” traditional or liberal value orientations towards this living arrangement. The data set used in this research is drawn from a sub‐set of 1,907 randomly‐selected young adults from the 1999–2000 Culture and Coresidence Study. Bivariate analyses show strong ethnocultural differences in the propensity to report that cohabitation is acceptable, with the British group the most favourable, followed by Southern Europeans, Chinese, and finally, Indo‐Canadians. Results from the logistic regression analysis reveal that a constellation of ethnocultural factors contribute to these differences. These include: young adult's religiosity, familism and gender‐role traditionalism, and routine use of ethnic language with peers.     

Estimation and interpretation of models of absolute risk from epidemiologic data,including family-based studies

Absolute risk is the chance that a person with given risk factors and free of the disease of interest at age a will be diagnosed with that disease in the interval (a, a + τ]. Absolute risk is sometimes called cumulative incidence. Absolute risk is a “crude” risk because it is reduced by the chance that the person will die of competing causes of death before developing the disease of interest. Cohort studies admit flexibility in modeling absolute risk, either by allowing covariates to affect the cause-specific relative hazards or to affect the absolute risk itself. An advantage of cause-specific relative risk models is that various data sources can be used to fit the required components. For example, case–control data can be used to estimate relative risk and attributable risk, and these can be combined with registry data on age-specific composite hazard rates for the disease of interest and with national data on competing hazards of mortality to estimate absolute risk. Family-based designs, such as the kin-cohort design and collections of pedigrees with multiple affected individuals can be used to estimate the genotype-specific hazard of disease. Such analyses must be adjusted for ascertainment, and failure to take into account residual familial risk, such as might be induced by unmeasured genetic variants or by unmeasured behavioral or environmental exposures that are correlated within families, can lead to overestimates of mutation-specific absolute risk in the general population.     

AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF SOCIAL POWER IN TERMS OF DECISION THEORY1

The paper presents an extension of decision theory to the analysis of social power. The power of a person, A, over another person, B, is viewed in terms of the effect A has on B's decision. The analysis is based on the idea that B's decision regarding the performance of alternative behaviors is a function of 1) B's utility for the consequences of the behaviors and 2) B's subjective probabilities that the behaviors will lead to these consequences. In these terms, A's power over B lies in A's ability to mediate various consequences for B, contingent upon B's compliance or noncompliance. Subjects were asked to consider eight situations in which hypothetical individuals had to make a choice between two courses of action. In each situation another person (A) was attempting to induce the hypothetical individual (B) to choose one of the alternatives, while various situational factors were influencing B to choose the other alternative. The subjects were asked to consider B's utilities and subjective probabilities in each situation and to indicate whether or not B should comply with A and to make ratings of A's power. The decision theory analysis did well in predicting whether or not subjects would indicate that B should comply with A. Also, subjects generally were able to correctly specify whether A or the situational factors had more influence over B's decision. Finally, the subjects' ratings of A's power in the eight situations were highly related to the decision theoretic measure of power.     

Improving Weight of Evidence Approaches to Chemical Evaluations

Federal and other regulatory agencies often use or claim to use a weight of evidence (WoE) approach in chemical evaluation. Their approaches to the use of WoE, however, differ significantly, rely heavily on subjective professional judgment, and merit improvement. We review uses of WoE approaches in key articles in the peer‐reviewed scientific literature, and find significant variations. We find that a hypothesis‐based WoE approach, developed by Lorenz Rhomberg et al., can provide a stronger scientific basis for chemical assessment while improving transparency and preserving the appropriate scope of professional judgment. Their approach, while still evolving, relies on the explicit specification of the hypothesized basis for using the information at hand to infer the ability of an agent to cause human health impacts or, more broadly, affect other endpoints of concern. We describe and endorse such a hypothesis‐based WoE approach to chemical evaluation.     

Lung Cancer Risk from Radon in Marcellus Shale Gas in Northeast U.S. Homes

The amount of radon in natural gas varies with its source. Little has been published about the radon from shale gas to date, making estimates of its impact on radon‐induced lung cancer speculative. We measured radon in natural gas pipelines carrying gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Radon concentrations ranged from 1,520 to 2,750 Bq/m³ (41–74 pCi/L), and the throughput‐weighted average was 1,983 Bq/m³ (54 pCi/L). Potential radon exposure due to the use of Marcellus Shale gas for cooking and space heating using vent‐free heaters or gas ranges in northeastern U.S. homes and apartments was assessed. Though the measured radon concentrations are higher than what has been previously reported, it is unlikely that exposure from natural gas cooking would exceed 1.2 Bq/m³ (<1% of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's action level). Using worst‐case assumptions, we estimate the excess lifetime (70 years) lung cancer risk associated with cooking to be 1.8×10^?4 (interval spanning 95% of simulation results: 8.5×10^?5, 3.4×10^?4). The risk profile for supplemental heating with unvented gas appliances is similar. Individuals using unvented gas appliances to provide primary heating may face lifetime risks as high as 3.9×10^?3. Under current housing stock and gas consumption assumptions, expected levels of residential radon exposure due to unvented combustion of Marcellus Shale natural gas in the Northeast United States do not result in a detectable change in the lung cancer death rates.     

Quantifying the Hurricane Catastrophe Risk to Offshore Wind Power

The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that over 50 GW of offshore wind power will be required for the United States to generate 20% of its electricity from wind. Developers are actively planning offshore wind farms along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts and several leases have been signed for offshore sites. These planned projects are in areas that are sometimes struck by hurricanes. We present a method to estimate the catastrophe risk to offshore wind power using simulated hurricanes. Using this method, we estimate the fraction of offshore wind power simultaneously offline and the cumulative damage in a region. In Texas, the most vulnerable region we studied, 10% of offshore wind power could be offline simultaneously because of hurricane damage with a 100‐year return period and 6% could be destroyed in any 10‐year period. We also estimate the risks to single wind farms in four representative locations; we find the risks are significant but lower than those estimated in previously published results. Much of the hurricane risk to offshore wind turbines can be mitigated by designing turbines for higher maximum wind speeds, ensuring that turbine nacelles can turn quickly to track the wind direction even when grid power is lost, and building in areas with lower risk.     

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Risk-Reduction Strategies for Consumer Chemical Products

Communication about risks offers a voluntary approach to reducing exposure to pollutants. Its adequacy depends on its impact on behavior. Estimating those impacts first requires characterizing current activities and their associated risk levels, and then predicting the effectiveness of risk-reduction strategies. Characterizing the risks from chemical consumer products requires knowledge of both the physical and the behavioral processes that influence exposures. This article presents an integrated approach that combines consumer interviews, users' beliefs and behaviors, and quantitative exposure modeling. This model was demonstrated in the context of consumer exposure to a methylene chloride-based paint stripper, showing how it could be used to evaluate current levels of risk and predict the effectiveness of proposed voluntary risk-reduction strategies.