Commitment in same-sex love relationships

This study sought to desribe and compare commitment structures among lesbian and gay male living-together relationships, and to develop an instrument which would measure different dimensions of commitment among gay dyads without some heterosexual biases inherent in traditional measures of interpersonal commitment. Questionnaire data collected from 32 lesbians and 50 gay males who had lived together for at least six months were factor analyzed, yielding three factors: (1) intradyadic commitment, (2) extradyadic commitment, and (3) commitment-as-trust. On all three of these indices the lesbians scored somewhat higher than did the gay males, but in fact there were surprisingly few significant differences between the gay men and the lesbians. Suggestions in the data that lesbians report somewhat less social supports and are more concerned with couple boundary maintenance, whereas gay males report somewhat more jealousy and dependency, are discussed in terms of their implications for such relationships.     

Decomposing three dimensional contingency tables

A simple box-like diagram makes the task of teaching or analyzing three dimensional contingency tables much easier. Little is to be gained using the log-linear model and iterative procedures, as all but one hypothesis can be tested and necessary statistics calculated with a hand-held electronic calculator and without iterations.     

Evaluations of Women and Men Among Black and White College Students1

Rainwater's assertion that blacks have low self-evaluations because they receive more negative evaluations from other blacks than whites receive from other whites is challenged here by reference to Heiss and Owens evidence that negative self evaluation among blacks is limited to work-related traits. Substantial support was found for our major hypotheses that, compared to whites, (1) blacks would report more negative evaluation of “most men” but not of “most women” (since the provider role is traditionally ascribed primarily to men), and (2) the more negative evaluation of “most men” by blacks would be limited to work-related traits.     

A note on unbiasedness in ratio estimation

The method of ratio estimation for estimating the population mean ? of a characteristic y when we have auxillary information on a characteristic x highly correlated with y, consists in getting an estimator of the population ratio R = ?/X? and then multiplying this estimator by the known population mean X?. Though efficient, ratio estimators are in general biased and in this article we review some of the unbiased ratio estimators and discuss a method of constructing them. Next we present the Jackknife technique for reducing bias and show how the generalized Jackknife could be interpreted by the same method.     

The Transport System and Society’s Metabolism in the UK

This paper analyses the interrelation between the transport system and measures of resource consumption such as material and energy consumption over a 60-year period (1937–1997) in the UK. Non-motorized transport and time consumption for mobility are estimated in addition to conventional measures of transport. During the period analyzed, the UK population grew by 20% while transport of goods and persons increased more than threefold and material and energy consumption almost doubled. The transport intensity of domestic material input (DMI) doubled to 300 ton-kilometers (tkm) per ton of DMI while the transport intensity of domestic energy consumption (DEC) doubled to 20 tkm per gigajoule (GJ) of DEC. Thus, while the material and energy intensity of GDP declined significantly, a well-established trend in many advanced countries, the transport intensity of materials and energy consumption rose. These findings suggest a close link between transport, economic development, and long-term structural transformations. In the case of personal transport, a rebound effect was also observed: whereas the average speed of transport has greatly increased, the average number of hours per day devoted to personal transport has not declined.     

Implemented as intended? Recording family worker activities in a Families First program

In evaluating family preservation services, it is important not only to study the service outcomes and the family characteristics, but also what actually happens during the treatment. This requires a program model. This article describes how a program model works, prescribes how workers should carry it out, and describes how researchers should measure the program's characteristics. The authors use data from Families First in The Netherlands to test the model. Results show that the method of the program meets the specified characteristics. The results are important for treatment, policy, education, and evaluation research.     

The relationship between lead and crime

This study investigates the association between air-lead levels and crime rates across 2,772 U.S. counties. Data for the analysis come from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Census, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Results suggest that air-lead levels have a direct effect on property and violent crime rates even after adjusting for general levels of air pollution and several structural covariates of crime. We also find that resource deprivation interacts with air-lead levels. The association between air-lead levels and crime rates-property and violent-is strongest in counties that have high levels of resource deprivation and weakest in counties that have low levels of deprivation. This interaction is consistent with arguments and evidence in the health care literature that populations most at risk of lead poisoning are least likely to get the resources required to prevent, screen, and treat the illness.