USING DUMMY VARIABLES TO CHECK FOR ROUNDING ERROR IN COMPUTERIZED REGRESSION PROGRAMS*

After a brief review of the role of dummy variables in regression analysis and the current state-of-the art in rounding/truncation error detection in computerized least squares programs, this paper presents a theorem that can be used to detect this type of error whenever an analyst is running a regression program that has one (or more) dummy variables as independent variables.     

REGRESSION METHODOLOGY WITH GROSS OBSERVATION ERRORS IN THE EXPLANATORY VARIABLES***

The robustness of linear programming regression estimators is examined where the disturbance terms are normally distributed and there are observation errors in the explanatory variables. These errors are occasional gross biases between one set of observations and another. The simulation of short series data offers preliminary evidence that when these biases have a non-zero mean, MSAE estimation is more robust than least squares.     

THE EFFECTS OF INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATIONAL FORMATS ON CONCEPT RETENTION AND PROBLEM–SOLVING ABILITY*

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of different interdisciplinary problem-oriented formats on a student's knowledge of and retention of disciplinary concepts and principles, his application of these concepts and principles to disciplinary problems, and his use of a discipline in his analysis of a complex problem. Performances of students enrolled in the experimental sections were compared to those of students enrolled in standard lecture-discussion sections. Regression analysis was used to analyze students' performance in order to control the effects of differences in student backgrounds. It was found that altering the pedagogical format and reward system within the experimental sections had no significant effect upon student performances in the experimental, problem-oriented program. In general, this study indicates that students taught in the standard lecture-discussion format in which grades are determined by examination over course material retain concepts and principles, apply these concepts and principles to disciplinary problems, and integrate disciplinary concepts into their analysis of complex problems as well as, if not better than, students taught in an interdisciplinary, problem-solving format.     

Exercising Privilege: The Cyclical Reproduction of Capital through Swim Club Membership

According to cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu, social class is defined by the interplay and operation of various forms of capital, within the set of durable and objective relations in which the classed subject is located. Informed by Bourdieu's understanding of social class, this article details the empirical dimensions of upper‐middle‐class familial involvement at the Valley View Swim and Tennis Club. An institution prefigured on the practice and development of important physical skills, Valley View represents a site for the complex interplay of capitals (economic, social, cultural, and physical) complicit in the preservation and reproduction of members' upper‐middle‐class habitus, and corresponding elevated and privileged social status. Specifically, we discuss the findings of ethnographic fieldwork focused on the acquisition, transmission, and conversion of economic, social, cultural, and physical capital in and through member families' club involvement. We argue that Valley View operates as a distinctive cultural field, wherein embodied techniques and expressions of class‐based power and privilege contribute to the reproduction of social class differences, boundaries, and hierarchies, in such a way as to render them natural, and largely unacknowledged, effects of being.     

Unconditional government social cash transfer in Africa does not increase fertility

Among policymakers, a common perception surrounding the effects of cash transfer programmes, particularly unconditional programmes targeted to families with children, is that they induce increased fertility. We evaluate the Zambian Child Grant Programme, a government unconditional cash transfer targeted to families with a child under the age of 5 and examine impacts on fertility and household composition. The evaluation was a cluster randomized control trial, with data collected over 4 years from 2010 to 2014. Our results indicate that there are no programme impacts on overall fertility. Our results contribute to a small evidence base demonstrating that there are no unintended incentives related to fertility due to cash transfers.     

The effect of fast and slow decisions on risk taking

We experimentally compare fast and slow decisions in a series of experiments on financial risk taking in three countries involving over 1700 subjects. To manipulate fast and slow decisions, subjects were randomly allocated to responding within 7 seconds (time pressure) or waiting for at least 7 or 20 seconds (time delay) before responding. To control for different effects of time pressure and time delay on measurement noise, we estimate separate parameters for noise and risk preferences within a random utility framework. We find that time pressure increases risk aversion for gains and risk taking for losses compared to time delay, implying that time pressure increases the reflection effect of Prospect Theory. The results for gains are weaker and less robust than the results for losses. We find no significant difference between time pressure and time delay for loss aversion (tested in only one of the experiments). Time delay also leads to less measurement noise than time pressure and unconstrained decisions, and appears to be an effective way of decreasing noise in experiments.     

Heading South: Time to Abandon the ‘Parallel Worlds’ of International Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and Domestic Third Sector Scholarship?

Since third sector research emerged as a full-fledged interdisciplinary academic field during the late 1980s, a separation has usually been maintained—in common with many other social science disciplines—between communities of researchers who are primarily concerned with the study of the third sector in rich Western countries and those who work on the third sector in the so-called developing world. Whilst internationally focused researchers tend to use the language of ‘non-governmental organizations’, those in domestic settings usually prefer the terms ‘non-profit organization’ or ‘voluntary organization’, even though both subsectors share common principles and are equally internally diverse in terms of organisations and activities. Whilst there has long been common-sense logic to distinguishing between wealthier and poorer regions of the world based on differences in the scale of human need, the ‘developed’ versus ‘developing’ category can also be criticised as being rather simplistic and unhelpfully ideological. As the categories of ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries become less clear-cut, and global interconnectedness between third sectors and their ideas grows, this paper argues that we need to reconsider the value of maintaining these parallel worlds of research, and instead develop a more unified approach.