BUILDING A PROBABLE ELECTORATE FROM PREELECTION POLLS: A TWO-STAGE APPROACH

Prominent among sources of nonsampling error in preelectionpolls are different methods of screening likely voters. Buildingon past research, we use National Election Studies data to constructa simple, practical, two-stage model of voter turnout. We comparethe performance of this model to alternative estimators, usingdata from the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections. By allowingfor truncated interviews with up to 20 percent of respondents,our two-stage model provides turnout estimates that are slightlymore accurate and significantly less expensive than traditionalmethods for screening likely voters.     

THE SCREENING HYPOTHESIS: AN APPLICATION OF THE WILES TEST

According to Wiles (1974) the screening and human capital theories of the return to education may be discriminated between by determining whether qualified individuals earn more by working in areas where their skills are relevant, than they earn in other areas. Failure to do so is presumed to constitute evidence against human capital theory. This paper applies the Wiles' test to a census of recent Economics and Science graduates from Australian Universities. Only for male science graduates is any evidence found in favour of human capital theory.     

Male hegemony and the English Canadian novel*

D'après un examen des romans canadiens-anglais couvrant une période de 200 ans, il est clair que le roman canadien-anglais est un véhicule servant à perpétuer l'hégémonie masculine. Au cours de la période en question, la grande majorité des romans exprimait une acceptation de la subordination de la femme. Seuls quelques-uns ont soit jeté un doute sur cette position, soit rejeté entièrement la position inférieure de la femme, mais ce sentiment s'est manifesté seulement au cours des dernieres années. Il est étonnant qu'au xxe siècle, le fait de douter ou de rejeter la subordination féminine ne soit pas associé au doute ou au rejet de la structure des classes.
From an examination of English Canadian novels over a 200-year period, it is clear that the English Canadian novel is a vehicle for the perpetuation of male hegemony. Over the time period in question, the vast majority of novels embodied an acceptance of women's subordination. Only a few have either questioned or rejected women's inferior position. Moreover, the latter sentiment has only become manifest in recent years. Surprisingly, however, in the twentieth century, a questioning or rejection of women's subordination is not associated with a questioning or rejection of the class structure.     

Ethnicity-of-Interviewer Effects on Ethnic Respondents

Considerable research has been reported on race-of-interviewereffects in white/black dichotomies. Little is known, however,about interviewer effects on respondents representing otherethnic groups. This article reports on a 1975 study of ethnicity-of-interviewereffects among four ethnic minorities (Cubans, Chicanos, NativeAmericans, and Chinese) and suggests that the findings for blacksand whites are generalizable to other ethnic groups as well.     

Proof by Certainty Equivalents That Diversification-Across-Time Does Worse,Risk Corrected,Than Diversification-Throughout-Time

For those with constant relative-risk-aversion, one can calculate an easy and exact measurement of their risk-corrected total return per period by use of an appropriate "power mean". For them, this approach can dramatize the inefficiency of being (say) half the time in each of two independent and identically distributed securities; 100% is then lost of the benefit from being all the time 50-50 in each; actually, being half the time in each is as bad as being all the time in either one, which is equivalent to being completely undiversified. More generally, there is proved here that, for any risk-averse U(W) and time-independent probabilities, optimal diversification within each time period outperforms generically any and all patterns of across-time diversification. The variety of proposed risk-corrected returns can give useful approximations for different classes of investors–widows and orphans, pension fiduciaries, high-flying plungers, and so forth–to replace or extend Markowitz, Sharpe, Treynor, or Modigliani-Modigliani measures of corrected performance.     

The Impact of "No Opinion" Response Options on Data Quality: Non-Attitude Reduction or an Invitation to Satisfice?

According to many seasoned survey researchers, offering a no-opinionoption should reduce the pressure to give substantive responsesfelt by respondents who have no true opinions. By contrast,the survey satisficing perspective suggests that no-opinionoptions may discourage some respondents from doing the cognitivework necessary to report the true opinions they do have. Weaddress these arguments using data from nine experiments carriedout in three household surveys. Attraction to no-opinion optionswas found to be greatest among respondents lowest in cognitiveskills (as measured by educational attainment), among respondentsanswering secretly instead of orally, for questions asked laterin a survey, and among respondents who devoted little effortto the reporting process. The quality of attitude reports obtained(as measured by over-time consistency and responsiveness toa question manipulation) was not compromised by the omissionof no-opinion options. These results suggest that inclusionof no-opinion options in attitude measures may not enhance dataquality and instead may preclude measurement of some meaningfulopinions.