A Comparison of Organic and Conventional Fresh Produce Buyers in the Boston Area

Food safety concerns and the demand for organically grown produce have increased significantly in the United States over the last decade. Key differences in lifestyle characteristics, food safety attitudes and beliefs, perceived food safety risks, and valuation of health risk reductions between organic and conventional food buyers remain largely unknown, however. To better characterize how buyers of organic fresh produce differ from their conventional counterparts, over 700 food shoppers were sampled from ten major retail stores in the Boston area. Survey results show that self-reported organic buyers are more likely than conventional buyers to engage in a variety of health-promoting and environmentally friendly behaviors. Organic buyers are less trusting of federal food safety agencies than are conventional buyers, and perceive greater benefits associated with organically grown produce than do their conventional counterparts. Further, organic buyers have significantly higher risk perceptions than do conventional buyers for food safety hazards associated with conventionally grown produce. Compared to conventional buyers, organic produce buyers also perceive significant risk reductions associated with switching to organically grown produce and are willing to pay a higher price to reduce perceived food safety risks. Few sociodemographic differences between buyer types were observed, possibly due to how organic and conventional food stores were matched. Survey findings highlight the need for greater public education about a range of food safety issues and farming practices to ensure that consumers are making informed decisions in the marketplace.     

Correlates of sexual experience among university students

It was hypothesized that males experiencing erectile and/or ejaculatory difficulties would exhibit higher levels of hostility, intrapunitiveness, submis‐siveness, be more sensitive to rejection, and perceive their fate as being dictated largely by external forces (locus of control), when compared to a control group. Similar differences were predicted between the dysfunctional males and their wives. Further predictions were made concerning differences between wives of the dysfunctioning males and the control wives. The sample of 19 dysfunctioning males and their wives were compared with a sample of 25 control males and their wives. All were Israeli Jews. The predicted differences between patients and controls were found for all variables except submissiveness. Sensitivity to rejection and the guilt subtest were particularly important predictors. Patients' wives and control wives differed only in aspects of hostility. The patients were also more sensitive to rejection than their own wives and regarded women to be significantly lower in status. Suggestions for further research and clinical implications of these results are discussed.     

A note on Dean's overdispersion test

This note discusses an extension to the score test statistics for overdispersion in Poisson and binomial regression models [Dean, C.B., 1992. Testing for overdispersion in Poisson and binomial regression models. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 87, 451–457]. Examples illustrate the application of the extended results.     

Dimensions of Problem Gambling Behavior Associated with Purchasing Sports Lottery

The purpose of this study was to identify and examine the dimensions of problem gambling behaviors associated with purchasing sports lottery in China. This was accomplished through the development and validation of the Scale of Assessing Problem Gambling (SAPG). The SAPG was initially developed through a comprehensive qualitative research process. Research participants (N = 4,982) were Chinese residents who had purchased sports lottery tickets, who responded to a survey packet, representing a response rate of 91.4%. Data were split into two halves, one for conducting an EFA and the other for a CFA. A five-factor model with 19 items (Social Consequence, Financial Consequence, Harmful Behavior, Compulsive Disorder, and Depression Sign) showed good measurement properties to assess problem gambling of sports lottery consumers in China, including good fit to the data (RMSEA = 0.050, TLI = 0.978, and CFI = 0.922), convergent and discriminate validity, and reliability. Regression analyses revealed that except for Depression Sign, the SAPG factors were significantly (P < 0.05) predictive of purchase behaviors of sports lottery. This study represents an initial effort to understand the dimensions of problem gambling associated with Chinese sports lottery. The developed scale may be adopted by researchers and practitioners to examine problem gambling behaviors and develop effective prevention and intervention procedures based on tangible evidence.     

Bayesian Interval Estimation for the Difference in TPRs and FPRs of Two Diagnostic Tests with Unverified Negatives

We derive Bayesian interval estimators for the differences in the true positive rates and false positive rates of two dichotomous diagnostic tests applied to the members of two distinct populations. The populations have varying disease prevalences with unverified negatives. We compare the performance of the Bayesian credible interval to the Wald interval using Monte Carlo simulation for a spectrum of different TPRs, FPRs, and sample sizes. For the case of a low TPR and low FPR, we found that a Bayesian credible interval with relatively noninformative priors performed well. We obtain similar interval comparison results for the cases of a high TPR and high FPR, a high TPR and low FPR, and of a high TPR and mixed FPR after incorporating mildly informative priors.     

Pay comparability in state governments

Earnings differentials between state government and private industry employees are estimated for each state using 1990 Census data. Female employees in most state governments receive higher earnings than comparable private sector employees, whereas the opposite result applies to males. However, the size of the state government earnings advantage or penalty is not uniform across states for either sex. The relative earnings of state employees increase with their membership in unions and with the revenues generated by state government’s tax and financing policies.