Sport and Social Inequalities

This article reviews recent research on the relationship between sport and social inequalities, focusing on gender, race, nation and social mobility. Through an engagement with these areas of research, we highlight how sport reflects and reinforces broader hierarchical structures; how it serves as a site for both inclusion and exclusion, but in ways that work unevenly; and how sport is ultimately a site for social reproduction of hierarchy and social stratification. We argue that the gender, racial and national hierarchies that sport is embedded within interact to largely prevent sport from being a site for social mobility, despite popular myths to the contrary.     

Classification Error of the Thresholded Independence Rule

We consider classification in the situation of two groups with normally distributed data in the ‘large p small n’ framework. To counterbalance the high number of variables, we consider the thresholded independence rule. An upper bound on the classification error is established that is taylored to a mean value of interest in biological applications.     

Comparison of the accuracy of multiple binary tests in the presence of partial disease verification

In the presence of partial disease verification, the comparison of the accuracy of binary diagnostic tests cannot be carried out through the paired comparison of the diagnostic tests applying McNemar's test, since for a subsample of patients the disease status is unknown. In this study, we have deduced the maximum likelihood estimators for the sensitivities and specificities of multiple binary diagnostic tests and we have studied various joint hypothesis tests based on the chi-square distribution to compare simultaneously the accuracy of these binary diagnostic tests when for some patients in the sample the disease status is unknown. Simulation experiments were carried out to study the type I error and the power of each hypothesis test deduced. The results obtained were applied to the diagnosis of coronary stenosis.     

Prenatal and delivery care and childhood immunization in guatemala: Do family and community matter?*

In this paper we investigate family choices about pregnancy-related care and the use of childhood immunization. Estimates obtained from a multilevel logistic model indicate that use of formal (or “modern ”) health services differs substantially by ethnicity, by social and economic factors, and by availability of health services. The results also show that family and community membership are very important determinants of the use of health care, even in the presence of controls for a large number of observed characteristics of individuals, families, and communities.     

The effect of verification bias on the comparison of predictive values of two binary diagnostic tests

The comparison of the accuracy of two binary diagnostic tests has traditionally required knowledge of the disease status in all of the patients in the sample via the application of a gold standard. In practice, the gold standard is not always applied to all patients in a sample, and the problem of partial verification of the disease arises. The accuracy of a binary diagnostic test can be measured in terms of positive and negative predictive values, which represent the accuracy of a diagnostic test when it is applied to a cohort of patients. In this paper, we deduce the maximum likelihood estimators of predictive values (PVs) of two binary diagnostic tests, and the hypothesis tests to compare these measures when, in the presence of partial disease verification, the verification process only depends on the results of the two diagnostic tests. The effect of verification bias on the naïve estimators of PVs of two diagnostic tests is studied, and simulation experiments are performed in order to investigate the small sample behaviour of hypothesis tests. The hypothesis tests which we have deduced can be applied when all of the patients are verified with the gold standard. The results obtained have been applied to the diagnosis of coronary stenosis.     

Flexible spatio-temporal stationary variogram models

In this paper we propose a generalization of the Shapiro and Botha (1991) approach that allows one to obtain flexible spatio-temporal stationary variogram models. It is shown that if the weighted least squares criterion is chosen, the fitting of such models to pilot estimations of the variogram can be easily carried out by solving a quadratic programming problem. The work also includes an application to real data and a simulation study in order to illustrate the performance of the proposed space-time dependency modeling.     

Book Review: Organizing Women in Contemporary Russia: Engendering Transition,Valerie Sperling,Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, UK, 1999

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Projected spending on pensions in Spain: A viability analysis

The viability of pay-as-you-go retirement pension schemes, such as that of Spain, remains a subject of ongoing debate. In this article we shall attempt to demonstrate that demography is the key variable that determines a system's viability. Analysis of several predictive studies conducted in the country shows that many of their predictions have been erroneous and their findings overpessimistic. This is because their forecasts were based on projections for the resident population, and overlooked the magnitude of the recent phenomenon of immigration. If the current influx of migrants continues, the problem of viability can be resolved.