An evaluation of retail outlets as part of a community prevention trial to reduce sales of harmful legal products to youth

Communities across the nation have become increasingly concerned about inhalant use and use of harmful legal products among youth because of increasing prevalence rates and deleterious health consequences from abusing these products. The increasing concern of communities about inhaling and ingesting legal products has been coupled with increasing awareness and concern about ability of youth to access and abuse a variety of other legal retail products. There are few examples of scientifically designed community prevention projects that seek to reduce youth abuse of such legal products. This article describes a community prevention trial that is designed to reduce sales of inhalants and other harmful legal products to youth and demonstrates how the retailer component of the trial can be rigorously evaluated. It also shows how data from youth purchase attempts can complement survey data from retailers.     

Quasi-binomial zero-inflated regression model suitable for variables with bounded support

In recent years, a variety of regression models, including zero-inflated and hurdle versions, have been proposed to explain the case of a dependent variable with respect to exogenous covariates. Apart from the classical Poisson, negative binomial and generalised Poisson distributions, many proposals have appeared in the statistical literature, perhaps in response to the new possibilities offered by advanced software that now enables researchers to implement numerous special functions in a relatively simple way. However, we believe that a significant research gap remains, since very little attention has been paid to the quasi-binomial distribution, which was first proposed over fifty years ago. We believe this distribution might constitute a valid alternative to existing regression models, in situations in which the variable has bounded support. Therefore, in this paper we present a zero-inflated regression model based on the quasi-binomial distribution, taking into account the moments and maximum likelihood estimators, and perform a score test to compare the zero-inflated quasi-binomial distribution with the zero-inflated binomial distribution, and the zero-inflated model with the homogeneous model (the model in which covariates are not considered). This analysis is illustrated with two data sets that are well known in the statistical literature and which contain a large number of zeros.     

Applications and Implementation DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT FOR DECISION MAKING

A laboratory experiment examined the effects of applying decision support system (DSS) technology to decision making in ill-structured problem environments under varying information conditions. Marketing executives participated in the experiment which investigated the effects of DSS availability, DSS training, and data availability on dependent variables that included: (1) the number of alternatives considered by a subject during decision making, (2) the period of time spent by a subject to complete the decision-making process, (3) the subject's perceived confidence in the decisions he or she had made, (4) the amount of data considered by a subject's during decision making, (5) the individual subject's decision processing, and (6) the subject's performance overall. Our results indicate that all three factors significantly affect the number of alternatives considered by subjects during the decision-making process. We therefore suggest that DSS training be coordinated with decision training in order to realize the potential of DSSs as described in the DSS literature.     

AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF COMPUTER-ASSISTED DECISION ANALYSIS*

Decision analysis tools often are used in semistructured and ill-structured situations. While some researchers have argued that computerized decision analysis programs may improve decision quality in such situations, research support for this assertion is weak. In this laboratory study, business students used a computerized decision-analysis program with short strategic-management cases to prepare decision reports. Independent raters' perceptions of aided and unaided decision performance were contrasted, attitudes of students toward the program were assessed, individual differences were correlated with attitudes, and the program's impact on students' perceptions of their decision processes and performance was examined. Student attitudes toward the computerized aid were favorable, and individual differences in reactions generally were as predicted. However, the program did not improve the independent ratings of students' decision reports and recommendations. These findings suggest that computerized decision aids should be adopted cautiously. If such aids result in positive user affect and heightened decision confidence without corresponding improvements in decision quality, they may be dysfunctional. Rigorous research methodologies which incorporate independent evaluations of analyses and decisions are recommended for use in future research on computerized decision-analysis programs.