An analysis of indirect mortality estimation

Abstract In this paper the robustness of Brass's child-survivorship indirect mortality estimation technique is investigated. An analytical method is developed for studying the error or bias caused in indirect mortality estimates by poor data, badly chosen model functions, and specific demographic assumptions that are often violated in practice. The resulting analytical expressions give insight into the rationale of indirect methods, the conditions under which they are robust, and the magnitude of errors that occur when specific assumptions are violated.     

Führung in Familienunternehmen: Besonderheiten der Entscheidungsfindung und Verhaltenssteuerung und deren Auswirkung auf den Unternehmenserfolg

This paper draws on a survey design to investigate whether family ownership and leadership have an influence on the decision-facilitating and decision-influencing roles of management control. Moreover, we investigate whether the more intuitive decision making in family firms which is often said to be caused by a lack of professionalism, is indeed a disadvantage. The results indicate significant differences in the use of management controls between family firms and non-family firms. However, in contrast to the prevailing view in literature, the performance of family firms is not affected negatively by their specific way of making decisions and by their more centralized management style. According to our data, the prevailing characterization of family firms as being less professionally managed seems questionable.     

Consensus in the Marital Dyad: Couples' Perceptions of Contraception,Communication, and Family Life

Abstract

The present study was based on data collected (separately for husbands and wives) from 365 couples to determine levels of consensus on a series of variables related to the family forming process. Following Scheff (1967), consensus was operationalized as both agreement and coorientation in the marital dyad. The data generally indicated low levels of consensus on such variables as contraceptive efficacy, desired family size, child spacing, unwanted pregnancies, communication with spouse, and levels of alienation. The results are discussed within the framework of family planning and effective fertility control.     

Ridge Regression: Degrees of Freedom in the Analysis of Variance

It appears to be common practice with ridge regression to obtain a decomposition of the total sum of squares, and assign degrees of freedom, according to established least squares theory. This discussion notes the obvious fallacies of such an approach, and introduces a decomposition based on orthogonality, and degrees of freedom based on expected mean squares, for non-stochastic k.     

Using relative utility curves to evaluate risk prediction

Summary.  Because many medical decisions are based on risk prediction models that are constructed from medical history and results of tests, the evaluation of these prediction models is important. This paper makes five contributions to this evaluation: the relative utility curve which gauges the potential for better prediction in terms of utilities, without the need for a reference level for one utility, while providing a sensitivity analysis for misspecification of utilities, the relevant region, which is the set of values of prediction performance that are consistent with the recommended treatment status in the absence of prediction, the test threshold, which is the minimum number of tests that would be traded for a true positive prediction in order for the expected utility to be non-negative, the evaluation of two-stage predictions that reduce test costs and connections between various measures of performance of prediction. An application involving the risk of cardiovascular disease is discussed.     

Declining inter-industry wage dispersion in the US

Industrial effects have long been significant factors in wage inequality. Previous research indicates that wage differentials across industries were increasing through the mid 1980s. Using more recent data, however, we find that the level of inter-industry wage dispersion declined by 36% from 1986 to 2002 despite the continued trend towards increasing inequality in the labor force. This decline in inter-industry wage dispersion is evident across gender and educational groups. Using multilevel growth curve models, our multivariate results indicate that the decline is only weakly related to industrial changes in education, occupation or even productivity despite the fact that the latter variable had been a critical factor in the prior period. Indicators of globalization and downsizing also do not appear to explain this decline. For the more recent period, the most important factors associated with the narrowing of inter-industry wage dispersion are reduced unionization rates and the higher proportion of casual workers. We interpret these results as suggesting that firms may now be less economically obliged to pass on a portion of their rents to broad groups of workers and may instead be engaged in more idiosyncratic processes of negotiation with individual workers based on micro-level sources of bargaining power.     

Effects of Africentric Socialization on Psychosocial Outcomes in Black Girls: The Critical Role of Gender

African American social work scholars recommend rigorous research and evaluation of Africentric interventions as one approach to building culturally appropriate, evidence-based treatments for the Black community. Following this approach, this pilot study evaluates the Imani Rites of Passage program, a 15-week Africentric curriculum with 10 Black adolescent females (mean age = 12.40), comparing their pre- and post-intervention data to that of a no-intervention group of 13 Black males (mean age = 12.08). The program evaluation is based on the degree of correspondence between theory and the measurement model spelled out by the cognitive-cultural view of African-American identity. The findings for Black females were consistent with the cognitive-cultural model in some ways but not in others, and they were more complex than the predictions. Future Africentric interventions guided by the cognitive-cultural model must consider gender differences in the outcomes. Implications for social work research and practice are discussed.