Local Control Strategy: Simple Analyses of Air Pollution Data Can Reveal Heterogeneity in Longevity Outcomes

Claims from observational studies that use traditional model specification searches often fail to replicate, partially because the available data tend to be biased. There is an urgent need for an alternative statistical analysis strategy, that is not only simple and easily understood but also is more likely to give reliable insights when the available data have not been designed and balanced. The alternative strategy known as local control first generates local, nonparametric effect‐size estimates (fair treatment comparisons) and only then asks whether the observed variation in these local estimates can be predicted from potential confounding factors. Here, we illustrate application of local control to a historical air pollution data set describing a “natural experiment” initiated by the federal Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970. Our reanalysis reveals subgroup heterogeneity in the effects of air quality regulation on elderly longevity (one size does not fit all), and we show that this heterogeneity is largely explained by socioeconomic and environmental confounders other than air quality.     

The Role of Social Support in Bereavement

Spousal bereavement involves a social network crisis. The individual's response is influenced by prebereavement personality factors and preexisting social network characteristics. The impact of the loss on the individual and other network members, and the presence or absence of concurrent stressors, will determine the "goodness of fit" between the support offered and the needs of the bereaved and perception of the environment as helpful or unhelpful. An inadequate social network is associated with high distress over the course of bereavement. Intervention aimed at increasing social support can decrease the distress of bereavement.     

GENDER-COHORT SUCCESSION AND RETIREMENT AMONG OLDER MEN AND WOMEN, 1951 TO 1984

Long-term trends in occupational change and retirement policy have influenced the relative labor force participation and retirement patterns of subgroups of the older population. Structural changes in the economy have had a large impact on older men and women, pushing the former out of the labor force while pulling the latter in. Meanwhile, the expansion of pension programs for the aged has generally increased the early retirement of men under age 65. Time-series analyses of these trends between 1951 and 1984 point to the specific influences of these factors on gender-cohorts.     

Family cap provisions and changes in births and abortions

As part of welfare reform efforts in the 1990s, 23 states implemented family caps, provisions that deny or reduce cash assistance to welfare recipients who have additional births. We use birth and abortion records from 24 states to estimate effects of family caps on birth and abortion rates. We use age, marital status, and completed schooling to identify women at high risk for use of public assistance, and parity (number of previous live births) to identify those most directly affected by the family cap. In family cap states, birth rates fell more and abortion rates rose more among high-risk women with at least one previous live birth compared to similar childless women, consistent with an effect of the family cap. However, this parity-specific pattern of births and abortions also occurred in states that implemented welfare reform with no family cap. Thus, the effects of welfare reform may have differed between mothers and childless women, but there is little evidence of an independent effect of the family cap.     

Adoptive parents' hostility toward their adopted children

This paper focuses on the latent, underlying hostility that we feel exists between adoptive parents and their adopted children. The focus of this study is on the adolescent adoptee who is struggling with a “double” identity-crisis. Also addressed are countertransference feelings between the adoptive parent and the adolescent adoptee.     

Experiments in Producing Nonresponse Bias

While nonresponse rates in household surveys are increasingin most industrialized nations, the increasing rates do notalways produce nonresponse bias in survey estimates. The linkagebetween nonresponse rates and nonresponse bias arises from thepresence of a covariance between response propensity and thesurvey variables of interest. To understand the covariance term,researchers must think about the common influences on responsepropensity and the survey variable. Three variables appear tobe especially relevant in this regard: interest in the surveytopic, reactions to the survey sponsor, and the use of incentives.A set of randomized experiments tests whether those likely tobe interested in the stated survey topic participate at higherrates and whether nonresponse bias on estimates involving variablescentral to the survey topic is affected by this. The experimentsalso test whether incentives disproportionately increase theparticipation of those less interested in the topic. The experimentsshow mixed results in support of these key hypotheses.     

Respondent characteristics in citizen evaluation of municipal services

Research on citizen surveys tend to focus on how to conduct a survey and how to best utilize the survey data. How respondent characteristics affect responses to a survey has received only cursory treatment in the literature. The present study investigated the role of demographics and generalized attitude, two types of respondent characteristics, in citizen evaluations of municipal services. Of particular interest was the pattern of respondent-responses interaction across time. The Automatic Interaction Detector (AID) was used to analyze survey data collected annually from 1974 through 1979 by a University-affiliated Urban Studies Center in a mid-size metropolitan area. Results indicated that these respondent characteristics could account for a substantial portion of the variance associated with service evaluation. However, the relationship between respondent characteristics and service evaluations is nonlinear, interactively complex and lacking in consistency across time. This widely varying pattern of respondent-responses interactions across time was explained in terms of the effect of a third exposure-experiential factor. Implications for future research and for using citizen survey data in public policy analysis and program development were discussed.