UNDERSTANDING THE DECISION TO PARTICIPATE IN A SURVEY

The lack of full participation in sample surveys threatens theinferential value of the survey method. We review a set of conceptualdevelopments and experimental findings that appear to be informativeabout causes of survey participation; offer an integration ofthat work with findings from the more traditional statisticaland survey methodological literature on nonresponse; and, giventhe theoretical structure, deduce potentially promising pathsof research toward the understanding of survey participation.     

TERRITORIAL RESTRICTIONS IN FRANCHISE CONTRACTS

Efficient contracts set incentives through the assignment of rights and profit shares., Although efficient contracts have been used to explain the nature of the firm, the use of contractual rights in specific business contracts is relatively unexplored. We analyze contractual rights in franchise systems, in particular the right to add franchisees. An exclusive territory assigned to an initial franchisee is not an immutable guarantee, but rather a starting point for subsequent renegotiation in the franchise relationship. Exclusivity is therefore profitable when franchisee efforts are critical to the venture. A sample of franchise contracts reveals evidence consistent with the model's prediction.     

Children's gender- and age-based categorization in similarity and induction tasks

The present studies examined children's and adults' preferences for gender- or age-based categorization using similarity and inductive inference tasks. Four-year-olds, 6-year-olds, and adults looked at pictures of people and decided which of two was more like a target (similarity condition) or which shared a novel age- or gender-related property with the target (inference condition). Age or gender-based matches were possible. The results are consistent with previous findings that gender-based classification decreases with age. However, they also demonstrate that children use gender more for judging similarity than for making inferences about novel properties. Distinct patterns emerge from the two tasks: 6-year-olds and adults in both conditions categorize more by age than gender; 4-year-olds categorize by gender more than age in the similarity task, but by age more in the induction task. Only adults differentiated by property in the inference condition. These findings suggest that the salience of gender categories cannot entirely be attributed to their inductive potential. Gender has a salience beyond what would be predicted by its power for directing novel generalizations.     

Naturally occurring play patterns in groups of latency aged children

This study examines the influence of the socialization of aggression among different gender and social class groupings and the influence of psychosocial stage on cognitive developmental play preferences among groups of school aged children. Observations of 143 play groups were coded for play preference (symbolic play, practice play, games with rules) and play performance (cooperative or competitive). Findings of the log-linear data analysis suggest a middle class and masculine bias in Piaget's cognitive model (i.e., that as age increases children prefer more games with rules). This model held only for middle class and affluent boys. Girls (both latency and prepubertal) and lower socioeconomic groups tended to prefer practice play. Girls were more likely to play cooperatively; boys more likely to play competitively. Implications for theory development and clinical practice are explored.     

Community involvement in land regularization for informal settlements in Tanzania: A strategy for enhancing security of tenure in residential neighborhoods

This paper documents and analyzes how landholders managed to uplift status of their neighborhood from hazard land as designated by the 1978 master plan to a regularized residential settlement through land regularization in Dar es Salaam city. Specifically, explores policy framework governing land regularization and how the local community explored the opportunities it offers. Documents the local community planning and land regularization processes undertaken focusing on land use planning, drainage construction, and cadastral survey and discuses how financial resources were raised, trust was built as well as factors which sustained community involvement towards meeting their interests of securing tenure. The paper also, draws challenges facing land regularization policy and recommends areas for further interventions commensurate with the human dimension challenges in securing tenure.Underlying community involvement, those aspects of community, which have been connected to the idea of social capital namely existence of committed leadership in land development matters, embracing mechanism for participatory decision making process and educational background to local leaders were particularly important in determining success for the case. Others include economic ability to contribute, high proportion of landholder settlers, land conflict task force formulation, local consensus to solve commonly felt problems, existence of strong community organization, and unwritten norms put in place to regulate individual behavior in building construction. Weak legal recognition of informal settlement, lengthy and bureaucratic procedures in planning and approval of regularization plans, weak knowledge on land management matters, short-term title deeds with low financial betterments, political popularity are identified critical challenges.Some of recommendations put forward include formalization of the grass-roots role in decision-making, decentralizing some of land development control functions to sub-ward leaders and training the same in basic land management matters. Others include definition of norms; by-laws and government facilitation of informal land parceling. Besides community support should be sought so as to create partnership in the promotion of security of tenure in informal areas. The study concludes that, unless land development activities ongoing in informal settlements are closely monitored and regulated as the settlement grow, it will be too costly socially and economically to retrofit once the settlement have identified.     

Low dose risk estimation via simultaneous statistical inferences

Summary.  The paper develops and studies simultaneous confidence bounds that are useful for making low dose inferences in quantitative risk analysis. Application is intended for risk assessment studies where human, animal or ecological data are used to set safe low dose levels of a toxic agent, but where study information is limited to high dose levels of the agent. Methods are derived for estimating simultaneous, one-sided, upper confidence limits on risk for end points measured on a continuous scale. From the simultaneous confidence bounds, lower confidence limits on the dose that is associated with a particular risk (often referred to as a bench-mark dose ) are calculated. An important feature of the simultaneous construction is that any inferences that are based on inverting the simultaneous confidence bounds apply automatically to inverse bounds on the bench-mark dose.     

Household debt and financial assets: evidence from Germany, Great Britain and the USA

Summary.  We explore the determinants of debt, financial assets and net worth at the household level by using survey data for Germany, Great Britain and the USA. To identify which households are potentially vulnerable to adverse changes in the economic environment, we also explore the determinants of a range of measures of financial pressure: the probability that a household has negative net worth; the debt-to-income ratio; mortgage income gearing; the saving-to-income ratio. Our empirical findings suggest that the poorest and the youngest households are the most vulnerable to adverse changes in their financial circumstances.     

2½‐Year‐Old Children Use Animacy and Syntax to Learn a New Noun

We examine how attention to animacy information may contribute to children's developing knowledge of language. This research extends beyond prior research in that children were shown dynamic events with novel entities, and were asked not only to comprehend sentences but to use sentence structure to infer the meaning of a new word. In a 4 × 3 design, animacy status (e.g., animate agent, inanimate patient) and labeling syntax (agent, patient, nonlabel control) were varied. Across most events, 2 1/2‐year‐old participants responded as if they expected animate entities to be named. However, in a prototypical (animate agent‐inanimate patient) event condition, children responded differentially across different syntactic structures. Thus, the clearest evidence for attention to syntactic cues was found in the prototypical event condition. These results suggest that young children attend to the animacy status of unfamiliar entities, that they have expectations about animacy relations in events, and that these expectations support emerging syntactic knowledge.