Assessing Perceptions of Synergistic Health Risk: A Comparison of Two Scales

Two approaches to measuring perceptions of synergistic risk were compared, one using the traditional Likert scale, the other using an anchored, relative scale. Perception of synergistic risk was defined as rating the combined hazard as more risky than each of its constituent single hazards. In a within-subjects design, a convenience sample from the community (N= 604) rated three hazard combinations and their constituents: Driving while Intoxicated (familiar, high synergy), Radon and Smoking (unfamiliar, high synergy), and Smoking and Driving (familiar, low synergy), on both scales. The relative scale was expected to be a more sensitive measure of synergy than the Likert scale. The effects of item order (single hazards rated first versus combined hazards rated first) were examined between subjects. Driving while Intoxicated was perceived by the large majority of participants as a synergistic risk on both scales, but neither of the other two combined hazards were rated synergistically on either scale. The relative scale demonstrated a slight advantage over the Likert scale, and presenting the single hazards first for the relative scale produced more synergistic ratings. It is recommended that anchored, relative scales be used to measure synergy and that single hazards be presented prior to the combined hazards when using relative scales.     

Subjective Reactions to Two Regional Pronunciations of Great Russian: A Matched-Guise Study

En sociolinguistique russe, il est un domaine bien négligé, celui de l’examen impartial des préjugés linguistiques contre les variétés de langue non-standard. Dans cette étude, j’ai travaillé avec des sujets russes parlant un russe standard et ayant reçu une éducation supérieure, pour mesurer leurs réactions subjectives aux deux prononciations régionales les plus marquantes du grand-russe: Vokan’e où la voyelle [o] est maintenue dans des syllabes non-accentuées, et la prononciation russe du sud dans laquelle l’occlusive vélaire voisée [g] est remplacée par la consonne fricative [Y] ou aspirée [h]. La méthode expériméntale utilisée a été la technique “Matched-Guise” dans laquelle les sujets écoutent une série de voix enregistrées et les évaluent chacune pour divers attributs sur une échelle numérique. Certains des sujets enregistrés l’ont été dans les deux varieétés de langue, la langue de prestige et la langue stigmatisée, ce qui permet de voir les réactions aux différences dans la qualité de la voix. Les données recueillies montrent que les prononciations non-standard du grand-russe sont dévalorisées pour des attributs liés au statut, et à cet égard, le russe est semblable à d’autres langues européennes qui ont une langue standard extrêmement codifiée. On a également constaté, ce qui est plus inhabituel, l’importante revalorisation des sujets parlant Vokan’e pour des attributs personnels, ainsi qu’une dévalorisation marquée de la prononciation du sud pour ées mêmes catégories. Cette dichotomie doit résulter de conditions spécifiques à l’ex-Union Soviétique. La réaction positive à l’ okan’e, un dialecte rural selon le stéréotype, peut avoir été inspirée par une littérature de village en prose, alors que la réaction négative à la prononciation du sud est peut-être liée aux dirigeants politiques de l’ère soviétique qui l’ont utilisée. Ces données confirment également l’efficacité de la technique “Matched-Guise” pour conduire ce type ?’enquête sociolinguistique en Russie.     

Organizational Environments and Performance: A Linear or Nonlinear Relationship?

The external circumstances that organizations confront are an important influence upon their prospects of success. The resources available within the environment, the multiplicity of stakeholder demands to be addressed and the rates of change in these, each have serious implications for organizational functioning. Nevertheless, it remains conceivable that the effects of different dimensions of the environment are not straightforwardly positive or negative, but may follow nonlinear patterns posing very different challenges at different levels. To draw lessons for public organizations seeking to understand how best to respond the circumstances that they face, this paper examines linear and nonlinear effects of different dimensions of the organizational environment on the performance of over 500 organizations using both objective and subjective measures of the environment. Strong support is found for the presence of linear relationships between each environmental dimension and type of measure and performance, but no evidence of statistically significant nonlinear environmental effects. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Inference for Parameters Defined by Moment Inequalities: A Recommended Moment Selection Procedure

This paper is concerned with tests and confidence intervals for parameters that are not necessarily point identified and are defined by moment inequalities. In the literature, different test statistics, critical‐value methods, and implementation methods (i.e., the asymptotic distribution versus the bootstrap) have been proposed. In this paper, we compare these methods. We provide a recommended test statistic, moment selection critical value, and implementation method. We provide data‐dependent procedures for choosing the key moment selection tuning parameter κ and a size‐correction factor η.     

Further Evidence on the Great Crash,the Oil-Price Shock,and the Unit-Root Hypothesis

Recently, Perron has carried out tests of the unit-root hypothesis against the alternative hypothesis of trend stationarity with a break in the trend occurring at the Great Crash of 1929 or at the 1973 oil-price shock. His analysis covers the Nelson–Plosser macroeconomic data series as well as a postwar quarterly real gross national product (GNP) series. His tests reject the unit-root null hypothesis for most of the series. This article takes issue with the assumption used by Perron that the Great Crash and the oil-price shock can be treated as exogenous events. A variation of Perron's test is considered in which the breakpoint is estimated rather than fixed. We argue that this test is more appropriate than Perron's because it circumvents the problem of data-mining. The asymptotic distribution of the estimated breakpoint test statistic is determined. The data series considered by Perron are reanalyzed using this test statistic. The empirical results make use of the asymptotics developed for the test statistic as well as extensive finite-sample corrections obtained by simulation. The effect on the empirical results of fat-tailed and temporally dependent innovations is investigated, in brief, by treating the breakpoint as endogenous, we find that there is less evidence against the unit-root hypothesis than Perron finds for many of the data series but stronger evidence against it for several of the series, including the Nelson-Plosser industrial-production, nominal-GNP, and real-GNP series.     

Higher‐Order Improvements of a Computationally Attractive k‐Step Bootstrap for Extremum Estimators

This paper establishes the higher‐order equivalence of the k‐step bootstrap, introduced recently by Davidson and MacKinnon (1999), and the standard bootstrap. The k‐step bootstrap is a very attractive alternative computationally to the standard bootstrap for statistics based on nonlinear extremum estimators, such as generalized method of moment and maximum likelihood estimators. The paper also extends results of Hall and Horowitz (1996) to provide new results regarding the higher‐order improvements of the standard bootstrap and the k‐step bootstrap for extremum estimators (compared to procedures based on first‐order asymptotics). The results of the paper apply to Newton‐Raphson (NR), default NR, line‐search NR, and Gauss‐Newton k‐step bootstrap procedures. The results apply to the nonparametric iid bootstrap and nonoverlapping and overlapping block bootstraps. The results cover symmetric and equal‐tailed two‐sided t tests and confidence intervals, one‐sided t tests and confidence intervals, Wald tests and confidence regions, and J tests of over‐identifying restrictions.