Survey item nonresponse and its treatment

Summary One of the most salient data problems empirical researchers face is the lack of informative responses in survey data. This contribution briefly surveys the literature on item nonresponse behavior and its determinants before it describes four approaches to address item nonresponse problems: Casewise deletion of observations, weighting, imputation, and model-based procedures. We describe the basic approaches, their strengths and weaknesses and illustrate some of their effects using a simulation study. The paper concludes with some recommendations for the applied researcher. We are grateful to an anonymous referee who provided helpful comments. Also we like to thank Donald B. Rubin for helpful comments and always motivating discussions as well as Ralf Münnich for inspiring discussions about raking procedures.     

Personal-und Organisationsentwicklung im Schul-, Sozial-und Bildungs-Sektor durch Formen dyadischer Intervision

Zusammenfassung Personalentwicklungs-und Coachingprozesse müssen und sollten sich nicht auf hergebrachte Lehrer-Lerner-Modelle begrenzen. In vielf?ltigen Lernkontexten und insbesondere in der Didaktik haben reziprok angelegte Lernpartnerschaften zwischen zwei Personen auf Zeit lange Tradition. Zentrale Erwartungen richten sich in der Regel einerseits auf die ?konomie entsprechender Settings, andererseits auf die Nachhaltigkeit und Ganzheitlichkeit einer Unterstützung, die im Medium ?hnlicher Position, ?hnlicher Erfahrung und der Gegenseitigkeit der Supportbeziehung entsteht. Diese Erwartungsbündel gelten als Unterscheidungskriterien gegenüber expertengestützten Lehrer-Lerner-Modellen. Im folgenden wird das Konzept einer Lernpartnerschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit im Kontext der Führungskr?fteentwicklung er?rtert. Nachdem seit einiger Zeit „Tandem“-Ans?tze im Profit-Bereich in ersten Projekten erprobt werden,¹ geht es in diesem Beitrag nicht zuletzt um überlegungen, die sich auf die Eignung für den Bereich der Non-Profit-Organisationen (NPO; vgl. als überblick Badelt, 2002) sozialer Dienstleistungen beziehen, da eine übertragbarkeit angesichts der historischen und systematischen Spezifika im NPO-Bereich nicht umstandslos gegeben sein muss. Wirkungen werden wesentlich im Referenzrahmen sozialer Unterstützung thematisiert, der in besonderem Ma?e geeignet scheint, die auf Austauschprozessen beruhenden Effekte zu begreifen. Zu den Autoren Ulrich Otto, Dr. rer. soc. habil, Dipl.-P?d., Univ.-Prof. für Sozialmanagement am Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft der Friedrich-Schiller-Universit?t Jena. Arbeitsschwerpunkte: Netzwerk-und Unterstützungsforschung, Theorie sozialp?dagogischer Hilfe, soziale Dienstleistungen im Welfare-mix Susanne Vespermann, Dipl.-P?d., Tübingen, freiberufliche Organisationsberaterin und Coach www.tandem-coaching.de     

What are the chances of young Turks and Italians for equal education and employment in Germany? The role of objective and subjective indicators

As the recent OECD PISA studies have shown, social background plays a greater role for achieving a solid education in Germany than in most other developed countries; this is especially so for migrant youths. This paper deals with the question, which level education and qualification migrants in Germany achieve, and how their chances for achieving qualifications and positions are compared to Germans. First, an overview over results of studies on educational participation, degrees, and social inequality among migrants is given. Then I show, using data from the 2000 BiB-Integration Survey, that young Turks and Italians have achieved notably lower levels of education than Germans. Finally, I discuss possible reasons and agencies that might cause these findings, which then are scrutinised by empirical analyses. It can be found that the marked under-representation with regard to higher educational and professional degrees of young Italians and Turks is clearly related to the low educational level of their parents, as well as factors of integration and attitudes. It does become obvious, however, that Turks have lower chances that cannot be explained by their parents’ qualification or other factors. This is also the case for the second immigrant generation.     

On estimation of covariate-specific residual time quantiles under the proportional hazards model

Estimation and inference in time-to-event analysis typically focus on hazard functions and their ratios under the Cox proportional hazards model. These hazard functions, while popular in the statistical literature, are not always easily or intuitively communicated in clinical practice, such as in the settings of patient counseling or resource planning. Expressing and comparing quantiles of event times may allow for easier understanding. In this article we focus on residual time, i.e., the remaining time-to-event at an arbitrary time t given that the event has yet to occur by t. In particular, we develop estimation and inference procedures for covariate-specific quantiles of the residual time under the Cox model. Our methods and theory are assessed by simulations, and demonstrated in analysis of two real data sets.     

Optimum taxation of life annuities

The market for private life annuities is characterised by adverse selection; that is, contracts offer lower than fair payoffs to individuals with low life expectancy. Moreover, longevity and income have been found to be positively correlated. We formulate an optimum income taxation model that incorporates these facts and discuss the conditions under which a linear tax on annuity payoffs, which raises more revenues from long-living individuals than from short-living, can serve as an instrument for redistribution. Further, we consider a nonlinear tax on annuity payoffs, and find that it can be employed to correct the distortion of the rate of return caused by asymmetric information.     

Documenting the quick and the dead: a study of suicide case files in a coroner's office

In keeping with recent critiques of literature on the body and the life course, the argument of this paper is that social identities can, to a certain extent, be constructed post‐mortem and in the absence of a living body. The authors make this case with reference to a sociological autopsy study of a hundred suicide case files in a coroner's office in a medium‐sized British city. The research draws on ethnographic approaches to the study of documents. There is discussion of some of the diverse artefacts in the coroners' files: medical reports, witness statements and suicide notes. The identity work revealed in these sources is as much about the living as the dead and is especially bound up in the process of avoiding blame.