Birth Intervals and Childhood Mortality in Rural Bangladesh

This study investigates the relationship between birth intervals and childhood mortality, using longitudinal data from rural Bangladesh known to be of exceptional accuracy and completeness. Results demonstrate significant but very distinctive effects of the previous and subsequent birth intervals on mortality, with the former concentrated in the neonatal period and the latter during early childhood. The impact of short birth intervals on mortality, however, is substantially less than that found in many previous studies of this issue, particularly for the previous birth interval. The findings are discussed in terms of the potential for family planning programs to contribute to improved child survival in settings such as Bangladesh.     

Thurstone scaling via binary response regression

Thurstone scaling is a widely used tool in marketing research, as well as in areas of applied psychology. The positions of the compared items, or stimuli on a Thurstone scale are estimated by averaging the quantiles corresponding to frequencies of each stimulus’s preference over the other stimuli. We consider maximum likelihood estimation for Thurstone scaling that utilizes paired comparison data. From this perspective we obtain a binary response regression with a probit or logit link. In addition to the levels on a psychological scale, the suggested approach produces standard errors, t-statistics, and other characteristics of regression quality. This approach can help in both the theoretical interpretation and the practical application of Thurstone modeling.     

Policy Development for the Reduction of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems at an Australian University

Universities, as with other workplaces, experience problems related to alcohol and other drug use by staff and students. There is little published information about the prevalence of these problems among students in the university setting in Australia as compared with the availability of information from the USA. Curtin University of Technology's experience with alcohol-related problems seems to be documented better than most other Australian institutions, and the available evidence indicates that the level of student alcohol consumption and reported alcohol-related problems is cause for concern. However, this is not to say that Curtin's problems may be any greater than those of any other Australian university with alcohol available on the premises. Many years of involvement in health promotion teaching and research, combined with identification of alcohol and drug related problems on campus, were thought to be the primary factors preceding the university's decision to begin the process of formulating comprehensive alcohol and other drug policy for staff and students. The absence of clear and consistent alcohol and other drug policy can lead to 1) undermining of the educational environment, 2) confusion about appropriate behaviour, 3) dealing with drug-related problems by inaction or arbitrary and inappropriate action. Alcohol and other drug policy has two main goals: problem reduction and better management of problems.     

Sensitivity of Linear Programs to Related Changes in Multiple Inputs*

In a 1991 paper in Decision Sciences, Camm and Burwell presented smart modeling techniques for obtaining the sensitivity of linear programs to simultaneous common changes in common inputs. This note addresses sensitivity analysis of simultaneous related changes in multiple inputs, and shows how related multi-parametric analysis can be performed with software that has no or only limited parametric programming capability.     

Relative Objective Functions in Multiobjective Decision Support Models*

This paper considers the importance of using the nondominated minimum in forming relative objective functions. Other minima can prevent the decision maker from reaching a preferred decision. They disturb the zero and distort the scale, thereby misguiding the decision maker by falsifying trade-off possibilities. Worse, some of these other minima can inadvertently hide whole regions of preferred solutions. Zeleny's multiple criteria simplex method is used to find the nondominated minimum for the linear case.