A Framework and Case Study for Exposure Assessment in the Voluntary Children''s Chemical Evaluation Program

A conceptual framework is presented for conducting exposure assessments under the U.S. EPA's Voluntary Children's Chemical Evaluation Program (VCCEP). The VCCEP is a voluntary program whereby companies that manufacture chemicals of potential concern are asked to conduct hazard, exposure, and risk assessments for the chemicals. The VCCEP is unique in its risk-based, tiered approach, and because it focuses on children and requires a comprehensive consideration of all reasonably foreseeable exposure pathways for a particular chemical. The consideration of all potential exposure pathways for some commonly used chemicals presents a daunting challenge for the exposure assessor. This article presents a framework for managing this complicated process, and illustrates the application of the framework with a hypothetical case study. The framework provides guidance for interpreting multiple sources of exposure information and developing a plausible list of exposure pathways for a chemical. Furthermore, the framework provides a means to process all the available information to eliminate pathways of negligible concern from consideration. Finally, the framework provides guidance for utilizing the tiered approach of VCCEP to efficiently conduct an assessment by first using simple, screening-level approaches and then, if necessary, using more complex, refined exposure assessment methods. The case study provides an illustration of the major concepts.     

Discrepancy as a cue to actual and perceived deception

Discrepancy between information emitted by face and speech was examined in three modes of communication: truth, concealment, and deception. It was found that communications designed either to conceal or distort the truth (concealment and deception modes) appeared more discrepant than communications that revealed the truth, particularly when full speech rather than filtered speech was presented. In addition, there were weak but consistently positive correlations between discrepancy and judgment of concealment and deception. That is, senders who appeared more discrepant were more likely to be judged as concealing or distorting information, regardless of the mode in which they had actually communicated.     

Cooperation or conniving: How public sector rules shape the decision

To what extent will decision makers in the economy use their time, energy, and imagination to cooperate in production and productive exchange? To what extent will they instead devote their efforts toward simply redividing the economic pie to arrange bigger slices for themselves at the expense of others, and ultimately at the expense of the size of the pie? This paper explains the case to be made that added collectivization since 1960, embodied in the growth industries of regulation and tax collection, have significantly shifted entrepreneurial efforts nationally toward pie redividing and away from pie enlarging activities. Empirical evidence is provided to support this assertion.     

Fertility, labor force participation, and tastes: An economic psychology perspective

Economic and economic psychology models of wife's labor force participation and family size decisions are examined within the context of a marriage cohort. Among other results, it was found that tastes influence the demand for work and number of children, along with traditional economic determinants such as opportunity costs and income. Tastes have an especially strong impact when modeled as unobservables, in order to correct for measurement error. Further, the often observed empirical association between labor force participation and fertility is found to be spurious and not necessarily causal in nature. That is, labor force participation and fertility negatively covary largely as a consequence of common economic and taste antecedents and not due to reciprocal interactions. Hypotheses were tested using a new structural equation methodology.     

A network simulation for budgeting

One problem with budgeting is the deterministic nature of the tool, even for flexible budgets, that is being used to provide forecasts of a stochastic process. Budget simulation provides not only expected values but anticipated dispersion of budget data as well. The network model may provide the best framework for such a simulation.     

An isotonic regression algorithm

A ‘pooling sets’ type of algorithm is developed and shown to be valid for computing an isotonic regression function for a general quasi-order. The method is direct and intuitive. The algorithm works best when the quasi-order is complex and the objective function is nearly isotonic. An example is worked out in detail.     

Theoretical Trends in the Sociology of Occupations*

In order to determine the directions which the field of sociology of occupations has taken in recent years, a content analysis of articles on work and occupations in four general sociological journals and two specialized journals was completed for the years of 1976 to early 1982. Not surprisingly, there has been a rapid increase in the number of papers dealing with status and income attainment. Very surprisingly, there has been a near demise of papers en the professions. Another dominant trust has been the large number of articles on women and sex roles. Satisfaction and alienation at work and attempts at job redesign have also received increasing attention. Papers on other topics have received less concentrated attention. Moving beyond the results of the content analysis, the present work discusses unresolved theoretical issues and potential new directions for the content areas. It is suggested that even for sociologists who do not identify themselves as specialists in occupations, the occupational variable remains a dominant one in sociological analyses.     

Trajectories of Prosocial Behavior and Physical Aggression in Middle Childhood: Links to Adolescent School Dropout and Physical Violence

Trajectories of prosocial behavior and physical aggression between 6 and 12 years of age were identified for a sample (N=1,025) of males. The trajectories were then used to predict school dropout and physical violence at age 17. Using a group‐based semi‐parametric method, two trajectories of prosociality (low and moderate declining) and three trajectories of physical aggression (low, moderate, and high declining) were obtained. Only a small minority (3.4%) of the boys were characterized by both high aggression and moderate prosociality. Physical aggression predicted both school dropout and physical violence, but contrary to expectations, prosocial behavior did not have additive or protective effects.     

Cognitive Components of Risk Ratings

This study examined what lay people mean when they judge the "risk" of activities that involve the potential for accidental fatalities (e.g., hang gliding, living near a nuclear reactor). A sample of German and American students rated the "overall risk" of 14 such activities and provided 3 fatality estimates: the number of fatalities in an "average year," the individual yearly fatality probability (or odds), and the number of fatalities in a "disastrous accident." Subjects' fatality estimates were reasonably accurate and only moderately influenced by attitudes towards nuclear energy. Individual fatality probability correlated most highly with intuitive risk ratings. Disaster estimates correlated positively with risk ratings for those activities that had a low fatality probability and a relatively high disaster potential. Annual average fatality rates did not correlate with risk ratings at all. These findings were interpreted in terms of a two-dimensional cognitive structure. Subjective notions of risk were determined primarily by the personal chance of death; for some activities, "disaster potential" played a secondary role in shaping risk perception.