The Correspondence Between Fertility Intentions and Behavior in the United States

Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we describe the correspondence between intended family size and observed fertility for US men and women in the 1957–64 birth cohorts. Mean fertility intentions calculated from reports given in the mid‐20s modestly overstate completed fertility. But discrepancies between stated intent and actual fertility are common—the stated intent at age 24 (for both women and men) is more likely to miss than to match completed fertility. We focus on factors that predict which women and men will have fewer or more children than intended. Consistent with life‐course arguments, those unmarried, childless, or (for women) still in school at approximately age 24 were most likely to underachieve their intended parity (i.e., had fewer children than intended at age 24). We discuss how such discrepancies between intentions and behavior may cumulate to produce sizable cross‐group fertility differences.     

The Interpretation of Line of Regard by Prelingually Deaf Children

The ability of 5- to 12-year-old deaf children to utilise and interpret another person's visual line of regard (where the eyes are looking) was studied in four experiments using cartoon faces. The children had little difficulty in determining whether or not a face was looking directly at them. They had more difficulty, however, with more complex tasks requiring them to infer mental states of desire and intention from line of regard and to ignore line of regard when it was inappropriate to attend to this cue. Deaf children raised in a hearing environment appear to have more difficulty with these more complex tasks than hearing children. The results are discussed in terms of the special difficulties facing some deaf children in the development of skills involving utilisation of line of regard and the implications for the development of joint attentional behaviour, theory of mind and dyadic social interaction in deaf and hearing children.     

On trends and constants in periodic autoregressions

Periodic autoregressions are characterised by autoregressive structures that vary with the season. If a time series is periodically integrated, one needs a seasonally varying differencing filter to remove the stochastic trend. When the periodic regression model contains constants and trends with unrestricted parameters, the data can show diverging seasonal deterministic trends. In this paper we derive explicit expressions for parameter restrictions that result in common deterministic trends under periodic trend stationarity and periodic integration.     

Street Youth Labour Market Experiences and Crime*

Dans le cadre de notre recherche, nous étudions la façon dont les expériences dans le marché du travail des jeunes sans‐abri et l'inter‐prétation qu'ils font du chômage sont liées à leur comportement criminel. À partir d'entretiens réalisés auprès d'un échantillon de 200 jeunes homines vivant dans la rue, les données recueillies indiquent que ces jeunes se sentent exclus du marché du travail du fait des expériences négatives qu'ils ont vécues. Ce phénomène est exacerbé par le chômage à long terme, qui détruit la motivation et conduit les jeunes à rechercher d'autres exutoires matériels. En outre, les jeunes en viennent à considérer le système social comme injuste et se sen‐tent inaptes à l'emploi, ce qui augmente le risque qu'ils participent à des activités criminelles. Les jeunes qui restent lies à la société tradi‐tionnelle et continuent de croire à l'idéologie dominante du mérite réagissent par la dépression ou la culpabilité menant à une fuite passive et favorisant le comportement criminel. En revanche, les jeunes qui refusent l'idéologie font étant d'un affect négatif minimal et met‐tent en valeur la supérioritý matérielle et sociale qu'ils accordent aux activités criminelles par rapport à l'emploi qu'ils ont pu occuper avant et qui leur était offert. Les conclusions de cet article s'appuient sur les théories de la contrainte, du contrôle et de la sous‐culture. The research explores how homeless street youths' labour market experiences and interpretations of unemployment are linked to criminal behavior. Using interviews with a sample of 200 male street youth, the data suggest that these youths become alienated from the labour market because of negative experiences in their jobs. This is exacerbated by long‐term unemployment that destroys motivation and leaves the youths looking for other material opportunities. Further, the youths come to see the social system as unfair and themselves as unemployable, making it more likely they will become involved in criminal activities. Those youths who remain bonded to the conventional society and continue to believe in the dominant meritocratic ideology respond with depression and guilt, which lead to a passive withdrawal and inhibit criminal behavior. In contrast, those youth who dismiss the ideology display minimal negative affect and reveal that criminal activities are superior both materially and socially to previous and available employment. Findings are discussed in terms of strain, control and subcultural theories.     

THE STRENGTH OF WEAK INDICATORS: A Response to Gilles, Brown, Geletta, and Dalecki

This article responds to Gilles, Brown, Geletta, and Dalecki's (1990) claim that the Legitimate Violence Index (LVX) is invalid because of problems with eight of its twelve indicators and because it is confounded with region and population density.     

EMPIRICALLY ACCELERATED CONVERGENCE OF THE SPACINGS STATISTICS TO NORMALITY

If the asymptotic normality of a statistic is inadequate for approximating its distribution in practice, then the statistic may be transformed in order to improve the approximation by accelerating the convergence to normality. We treat a goodness-of-fit statistic, the sum of the logarithms of generalized uniform spacings introduced by Cressie (1976, 1978), in this spirit. Specifically, we apply the method of maximum likelihood to simulations of the statistic in order to estimate a power transformation, as in Box & Cox (1964), and hence develop a small sample normal approximation. This approximation provides a more versatile method of applying the statistic than currently available tables of percentiles.     

Evaluating Application Service Provisioning Using System Dynamics Methodology

Despite the hype surrounding the value‐added potential of e‐business for contemporary firms, the recent technology downturn was marked by poor customer satisfaction from investment in e‐business initiatives. An apparent mismatch between customer expectations and vendor offerings suggested a lack of appropriate methods and techniques for evaluating e‐business. This article draws from a longitudinal research study on the deployment, hosting and integration of application service provisioning (ASP), an e‐business model targeted mainly at small and medium‐sized businesses (SMBs). Using system dynamics as a methodology that addresses the inherent complexity of the ASP model, the article demonstrates how a series of complex inter‐relationships between key performance indicators (KPIs) will impact the business value for customers from ASP vendor products and services. The lessons from this research will be particularly relevant for existing and future ASP vendors and customers.