Simple and accurate one‐sided inference from signed roots of likelihood ratios

The authors propose two methods based on the signed root of the likelihood ratio statistic for one‐sided testing of a simple null hypothesis about a scalar parameter in the présence of nuisance parameters. Both methods are third‐order accurate and utilise simulation to avoid the need for onerous analytical calculations characteristic of competing saddlepoint procedures. Moreover, the new methods do not require specification of ancillary statistics. The methods respect the conditioning associated with similar tests up to an error of third order, and conditioning on ancillary statistics to an error of second order.     

Responsive design for household surveys: tools for actively controlling survey errors and costs

Summary.  Over the past few years surveys have expanded to new populations, have incorporated measurement of new and more complex substantive issues and have adopted new data collection tools. At the same time there has been a growing reluctance among many household populations to participate in surveys. These factors have combined to present survey designers and survey researchers with increased uncertainty about the performance of any given survey design at any particular point in time. This uncertainty has, in turn, challenged the survey practitioner's ability to control the cost of data collection and quality of resulting statistics. The development of computer-assisted methods for data collection has provided survey researchers with tools to capture a variety of process data ('paradata') that can be used to inform cost–quality trade-off decisions in realtime. The ability to monitor continually the streams of process data and survey data creates the opportunity to alter the design during the course of data collection to improve survey cost efficiency and to achieve more precise, less biased estimates. We label such surveys as 'responsive designs'. The paper defines responsive design and uses examples to illustrate the responsive use of paradata to guide mid-survey decisions affecting the non-response, measurement and sampling variance properties of resulting statistics.     

THE EFFECT OF YOUTH ALCOHOL INITIATION ON HIGH SCHOOL COMPLETION

The social environment inherent in schools impacts both alcohol consumption onset and high school completion. The results reported here, based on data from the 1979–96 NLSY panels, show that the social coincidences between alcohol consumption and education are important determinants of both education completion and alcohol onset. Ignoring the social nature of these simultaneous decisions underestimates the impact of alcohol onset on education. After correcting for the presence of an endogenous positive relationship between schooling and alcohol consumption, we find that alcohol initiation before age 14 significantly reduces the probability of timeously completing high school by between 7% and 22%. (JEL I18 , I21 )     

Block designs for random treatment effects

A Bayesian design criterion for selection experiments in plant breeding is derived using a utility function that minimizes the risk of an incorrect selection. A prior distribution on the heritability parameter is used to complete the definition of the design optimality criterion. An example is given with evaluations of the criterion for different prior distributions on the heritability. Though coming from a genetic motivation this criterion should prove useful for any other types of experiments with random treatment effects.     

Surviving Hegemony Through Resistance and Identity Articulation Among Outreaching Social Workers

An understanding of outreaching social work in Hong Kong is viable through an analysis of discourses constructed and experienced by social workers. The discourses address hegemony by the government and consent, resistance, and identity arising from social workers. These discourses were the focus of the present study, which relied on repeated in-depth interviews with 20 practitioners in the outreaching social work field. The results give insight in three main ways: they unfold the discourses of hegemony and consent in terms of effectiveness, accountability, and social control; they address the discourses of resistance in terms of incompatibility, social defense, and others; and they examine professional identity in terms of respect for self-determination, relationship building, youth development, and unionization. All the discourses and identities emerged from a process of international spillover. Moreover, the study found that social workers realized that the hegemonic crisis triggered identity development because of the need to preserve the profession. The study implies that the social work profession has high levels of commitment and internationalization, both of which help proliferate the profession.     

Stadium size, ticket allotments and home field advantage in college football

This study builds on a conceptual framework that explores of the relationship between relative fan attendance, stadium size and home field advantage in college football. We extend the conceptual model by providing empirical estimates of the impact that various ticket allotment arrangements and home stadium size have on the probability of winning in college football. The Auburn–Alabama rivalry (the “Iron Bowl”) provides a unique case given that the series has been played both at a neutral site with an equal division of tickets, as well as on a home-and-home basis with an uneven ticket split and nonuniform stadium capacities.     

A nail-biting election

In the first competitive election for President of the Social Choice and Welfare Society, the (official) approval-voting winner differed from the (hypothetical) Borda count winner, who was also the Condorcet winner. But because the election was essentially a toss-up, it is impossible to say who should have won. The election for Council was more true to form of other professional-society elections, with the winners identical, and even their rankings almost duplicative, under both voting systems. Received: 11 April 2000/Accepted: 26 March 2001     

Moral structures and axiomatic theory

Axiomatic decision theory has proven to be a valuable analytical tool in many disciplines, and in this paper I discuss its application to moral theory. The first part of the paper discusses the general structure of moral theory, and it argues that morality need not be identified with a particular moral principle. The concept of a moral framework is introduced, and a framework for use in analyzing issues of distributive justice is presented in the second section. The application of this framework is discussed in the paper's final section, and two different moral situations are analyzed. The utilitarian principle is argued to be appropriate for the first situation in which a scarce good is to be efficiently distributed, while Rawls' difference principle is claimed to be the correct one for the more abstract issue of basic institutional justice.     

TANF Participation Rates: Do Community Conditions Matter?*

Abstract A general criticism of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act is that it is primarily the result of an urban political agenda, and it may hurt rather than help the rural poor. Under the new welfare system, the rural poor that are most likely to be affected are those who live in socially, economically, and spatially disadvantaged communities. More residents in these communities are likely to need TANF, clients in these communities are least likely to leave TANF by finding employment, and community organizations are likely to have more limited resources to help TANF recipients. The objective of this study is to examine the extent to which variations in community conditions account for differences in TANF participation rates. Using 1997 TANF data from the Mississippi Department of Human Services, we estimated OLS regression models of local TANF participation rates across 100 communities in nonmetro counties. The results indicate that TANF participation rates tend to be higher in communities with high concentrations of African Americans, less faith‐based activeness, more employment in retail trade, spatial concentration of the poor, and located in the Delta.