Interpretations of Child Emotion Expressions and Coercive Parenting Practices Among Adolescent Mothers

This study examined the relation between adolescent mothers' interpretations of various child emotion expressions and coercive parenting practices (n = 4 mother-child dyads, child ages = 10–34 mos.). The more coercive mothers decoded a range of child emotion expressions as exhibiting greater anger, and attributed greater defiant intentions to the child, compared to less coercive mothers. The findings for attributions of defiance were robust, as they were independent of both emotion decoding and level of child difficulty. Findings are discussed with regard to (a) mothers' basic assumptions about the child; (b) the robust character of attributions of defiance in relation to coercive parenting; (c) the potential implications of this study for research with adult mothers; and (d) investigation of temporal precedence and developmental pathways in the interrelations among child behavior, maternal cognition, and parenting behavior.     

An approximation method for bivariate and multvariate normal equiprobability contours

This paper presents a very simple approximation, having “graph” accuracy, for calculating bivariate normal probability contours. Such contours are useful in simultaneous inference and other applications. This method is then adapted to approximate roughly bivariate and multivariate normal union probabilities.     

Approximately Median-Unbiased Estimation of Autoregressive Models

A hedonic model of automobile prices that takes gasoline costs into account is developed and used to examine whether gasoline price increases (especially those related to the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks) changed consumer evaluations of the relative qualities of used cars in the U.S. during 1970–1981. We test the null hypothesis that the characteristics' coefficients remained constant over time. It is rejected if gasoline costs are excluded from the model but not if they are included. Alternative approaches are developed to show that the gasoline price increases alone can explain much of the observed changes in the coefficients.     

Assessment of a Brief CES-D Measure for Depression in Homebound Medically Ill Older Adults

Black elderly individuals represent one of the most disadvantaged groups in the United States in terms of income levels, health problems, and access to supportive services. This paper describes four major factors to be considered by social service providers to focus their programs toward needs of the black elderly population in their local communities. A research project designed to examine the social service needs and service utilization of the black elderly in a Midwestern community indicated that the following factons hould be considered if effective service programs are to be implemented: (1) Negotiation Initiative, (2) Responsible Research, (3) Symbolism, (4) Modeling.     

Dynamic Female Labor Supply

The increase in female employment and participation rates is one of the most dramatic changes to have taken place in the economy during the last century. However, while the employment rate of married women more than doubled during the last 50 years, that of unmarried women remained almost constant. To empirically analyze these trends, we estimate a female dynamic labor supply model using an extended version of Eckstein and Wolpin (1989) to compare the various explanations in the literature for the observed trends. This dynamic model provides a much better fit to the life‐cycle employment pattern than a static version of the model and a standard static reduced form model (Heckman (1979)). The main finding using the dynamic model is that the rise in education levels accounts for about 33 percent of the increase in female employment, and the rise in wages and narrowing of the gender wage gap account for another 20 percent, while about 40 percent remains unexplained by observed household characteristics. We show that this unexplained portion can be empirically attributed to cohort‐specific changes in preferences or the costs of child‐rearing and household maintenance. Finally, the decline in fertility and the increase in divorce rates account for only a small share of the increase in female employment rates.     

Are there children to educate for peace in conflict‐ridden areas? A critical essay on peace and coexistence education

In this paper, I reflect on the education that is being conducted in two Israeli schools, often held up as exemplary, that have the declared educational aim of cultivating tolerance and recognition of otherness. What is ‘going on’ with those presumed to be the primary beneficiaries (the children studying at these schools) of an integrated educational enterprise? Should the focus for future peace be on these children at all. I take a critical look at the way we are attempting to forge a peaceful future through our young.     

The impossibility of experimental elicitation of subjective probabilities

We show that if decision makers may have stakes in certain events then the experimental elicitation of their subjective probabilities of these events is impossible.We thank Eyal Sulganik for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

A note on measuring the degree of dependence between two discrete random variables measured on a nominal scale

This paper discusses some of the problematic aspects of the term “dependence” and suggests a measure of a special kind of association - complete dependence - between two discrete random variables measured on a nominal scale.     

On the Limit of the Generalized Binomial Distribution

ABSTRACT

In this article we investigate the limit of the Generalized Binomial Distribution that results from correlated Bernoulli processes as the number of trials goes to infinity. For a correlation factor less than or equal to one half, we show, under certain assumptions, that the limit distribution is the standardized normal. For a correlation factor greater than one half, we find empirically that the limit is different from the standardized normal distribution.