Goodness of fit tests for the multiple logistic regression model

Several test statistics are proposed for the purpose of assessing the goodness of fit of the multiple logistic regression model. The test statistics are obtained by applying a chi-square test for a contingency table in which the expected frequencies are determined using two different grouping strategies and two different sets of distributional assumptions. The null distributions of these statistics are examined by applying the theory for chi-square tests of Moore Spruill (1975) and through computer simulations. All statistics are shown to have a chi-square distribution or a distribution which can be well approximated by a chi-square. The degrees of freedom are shown to depend on the particular statistic and the distributional assumptions.

The power of each of the proposed statistics is examined for the normal, linear, and exponential alternative models using computer simulations.     

Integrating professional socialization and training for sociology graduate students

It is a curious contradiction that sociology, a discipline that includes in its subject matter socialization, norms, occupations, formal organization, the institution of education and the concept of the career does not necessarily prepare its products in a systematic and coherent manner to become trained professionals. Newly minted Ph.D.s must often learn by trial and error because we have left them adrift concerning how to conduct themselves as professional sociologists. Moreover, while these new Ph.D.s are usually trained well as scholarly researchers, many are not prepared for the non-research careers they will take as sociologists. When this happens, we sociologists, supposedly enlightened about such matters, have failed our students. This article is divided into two parts. The first is a critique of traditional graduate education in sociology. The second part plays off these criticisms by offering a coherent plan, consonant with the current and future possibilities for sociologists.     

Effect of urbanization on surface water chemistry in south-central Texas

The use of state factors can adequately describe the biogeochemistry and geochemistry of relatively undisturbed surface waters. Watersheds with increasing proportions of urban and suburban land use, particularly in sub-tropical, semi-arid and arid urban areas, that utilize irrigation for turfgrass and landscaping may have a low flow urban signature that relates to the source water used by municipal water suppliers. We examined thirteen watersheds; four with waste water treatment plants (24–67% urbanization), four rural (< 30% urbanization) and five urban (> 30% urbanization) in a humid sub-tropical oak savannah in south-central Texas. Three of our urban and one of our rural watersheds displayed the signature of municipal tap water. Three out of four watersheds with waste water treatment plants displayed the signature of treated sewage effluent. We suggest as a result of this study that the chemistry of municipal tap water particularly that with high sodium and bicarbonate, used in urban watersheds for irrigating turfgrass and landscapes may have detrimental effects on base flow stream water quality after it has interacted with watershed soils.     

Historic Preservation in Czechoslovakia: The Chȃteau at Staré Hrady

The paper discusses the gendering of the Lithuanian national movement during its formative stage, 1883–1914. It concentrates on the intelligentsia’s debate on the women’s question, which served as one of the most significant cultural battlegrounds for the national elite, helping to define its own identity and new directions for Lithuanian nationalism. Through the discussion of different marital strategies and women’s roles in national politics as seen by the male intelligentsia, the paper argues that, despite the harsh critique of traditional peasant gender relations, the debate amounted to women’s virtual domestication. For male patriots, the emancipation of Lithuanian women meant, first of all, accepting the role of patriotic wives, i.e., responsibility for the education of children, or the role of nation mothers, which entailed nurturing new members of the community. A few secular and independent women writers were welcomed into nation-building politics but only as junior partners.     

Some New Regression Methods for Predictive and Construct Validation

Social Indicators Research -     

The Christian difference: Surviving postmodernism

Abstract

Drawing on the work of Nicholas Boyle, this paper argues that postmodernism represents the intellectual style we should expect as part of developing global capitalist regimes. Accordingly, I argue that postmodernism is not a friend but an enemy to Christianity just to the extent the former tempts us to lose our history. In that respect, the challenge of postmodernism is no different than the challenge of modernity. It becomes the Christian task now to narrate modernity and postmodernity on our own terms rather than those offered by the postmodernists. But for Christianity to be capable of such narration, it must rediscover in its own life the significance of the church which is capable of surviving in a world which is in many ways quite accurately described as postmodern.     

An Integrated Approach for Assessing the Impact of Large-Scale Future Floods on a Highway Transport System

The negative impact of climate change continues to escalate flood risk. Floods directly and indirectly damage highway systems and disturb the socioeconomic order. In this study, we propose an integrated approach to quantitatively assess how floods impact the functioning of a highway system. The approach has three parts: (1) a multi-agent simulation model to represent traffic, heterogeneous user demand, and route choice in a highway network; (2) a flood simulator using future runoff scenarios generated from five global climate models, three representative concentration pathways (RCPs), and the CaMa-Flood model; and (3) an impact analyzer, which superimposes the simulated floods on the highway traffic simulation system, and quantifies the flood impact on a highway system based on car following model. This approach is illustrated with a case study of the Chinese highway network. The results show that (i) for different global climate models, the associated flood damage to a highway system is not linearly correlated with the forcing levels of RCPs, or with future years; (ii) floods in different years have variable impacts on regional connectivity; and (iii) extreme flood impacts can cause huge damages in highway networks; that is, in 2030, the estimated 84.5% of routes between provinces cannot be completed when the highway system is disturbed by a future major flood. These results have critical implications for transport sector policies and can be used to guide highway design and infrastructure protection. The approach can be extended to analyze other networks with spatial vulnerability, and it is an effective quantitative tool for reducing systemic disaster risk.     

Matrix Theory Formalism for Event Tree Analysis: Application to Nuclear-Risk Analysis

It is pointed out that the familiar analytical device of "event tree", widely used in risk analysis, can be viewed as a transition matrix expressing the likelihood of going from "entry states" to "exit states". This point of view is shown to have numerous interesting conceptual and computational features which promise to make it a very useful addition to the arsenal of tools for risk analysis. The basic idea is explained first in terms of a simple, made-up example. The application of the idea to a very real and complicated problem, nuclear-plant risk assessment, is then outlined.