Life Satisfaction Judgments and Item-Order Effects Across Cultures

We conducted two studies to investigate the item-order effect on life satisfaction judgments. In Study 1, Japanese and American participants completed various life-domain satisfaction items either before or after completing general life satisfaction items. American respondents weighed the best life domains more strongly than Japanese respondents, in particular when they answered domain satisfaction items before making life satisfaction judgments. Overall, Japanese tended to weigh the worst life domains more heavily when making life satisfaction judgments than Americans. We hypothesized that the Japanese patterns of life satisfaction judgments come from the chronic attention to others’ perspective. To examine this hypothesis in Study 2, Japanese participants were exposed to either the “other are not watching” or the “other are watching” manipulation. As expected, when Japanese participants were led to believe that “others are not watching,” they judged their overall life satisfaction based more heavily on the best life domains (like Americans in Study 1).     

Intergenerational earnings mobility in Japan among sons and daughters: levels and trends

This paper estimates the extent of intergenerational income mobility in Japan among sons and daughters born between 1935 and 1975. Our estimates rely on a two-sample instrumental variables approach using representative data from the Japanese Social Stratification and Mobility surveys, collected between 1965 and 2005. Father’s income is predicted on the basis of a rich set of variables, and we discuss changes in the Japanese earnings structure for cohorts born between the early 1900s and the 1960s. Our main results indicate that the intergenerational income elasticity (IGE) for both sons and daughters in Japan lies around 0.35, which is an intermediate value, by international standards. We discuss the sensitivity of the IGE to using either personal or family income as the income variable for both fathers and children. We also examine changes across cohorts in the IGE. Results indicate that intergenerational mobility has been roughly stable over the last decades.     

Social Workers' Use of the Internet and E-Mail to Help Clients in Virginia

A survey of a random sample of licensed social workers in Virginia showed 98.8% had Internet access in either their home or workplace. A comparison of this study with a study conducted in the early 2000s indicated more than 20% difference regarding e-mail communication with clients and Internet use for work-related research. Social workers who actually used the Internet and e-mail tended to expect a future increase in their use, in contrast with nonusers. Stepwise multiple logistic regression analyses found age and type of agency (private/for-profit) as factors negatively related to having Internet access in the workplace, age, and the reason “E-mail is not secure enough” as factors negatively related in the future e-mail communication with clients among current nonusers.     

Teaching Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Psychology and Japanese Society

This article discusses educational aspects of cross-cultural psychology in relationship to Japanese society. After exploring the present status of cross-cultural psychology in Japan, the paper delineates the factual, theoretical, and methodological implications of cross-cultural psychology for the teaching of psychology in Japanese universities. It is argued that an area approach incorporating comparative research on Japanese society can add context, detail, historical perspective, new methodology, and interdisciplinary richness to classes otherwise relying on traditional journal articles and textbooks of cross-cultural psychology. Such an approach is deemed useful for cross-cultural psychology classes taking place both inside and outside Japan. The article concludes with an annotated bibliography of research on Japanese society.     

Decision-making under uncertainty: using MLMC for efficient estimation of EVPPI

Statistics and Computing - In this paper, we develop a very efficient approach to the Monte Carlo estimation of the expected value of partial perfect information (EVPPI) that measures the average...     

Fetal movement frequency and the effect of associated perinatal factors: Multicenter study

Background

Decreased fetal movements are associated with adverse perinatal outcomes, including stillbirth. Delayed maternal visits to a health care provider after perceiving decreased fetal movements are frequently observed in stillbirths. Informing pregnant women of the normal range of fetal movement frequency is essential in their earlier visits in order to prevent stillbirth.

Practical approaches for design and analysis of clinical trials of infertility treatments: crossover designs and the Mantel–Haenszel method are recommended

Crossover designs have some advantages over standard clinical trial designs and they are often used in trials evaluating the efficacy of treatments for infertility. However, clinical trials of infertility treatments violate a fundamental condition of crossover designs, because women who become pregnant in the first treatment period are not treated in the second period. In previous research, to deal with this problem, some new designs, such as re‐randomization designs, and analysis methods including the logistic mixture model and the beta‐binomial mixture model were proposed. Although the performance of these designs and methods has previously been evaluated in large‐scale clinical trials with sample sizes of more than 1000 per group, the actual sample sizes of infertility treatment trials are usually around 100 per group. The most appropriate design and analysis for these moderate‐scale clinical trials are currently unclear. In this study, we conducted simulation studies to determine the appropriate design and analysis method of moderate‐scale clinical trials for irreversible endpoints by evaluating the statistical power and bias in the treatment effect estimates. The Mantel–Haenszel method had similar power and bias to the logistic mixture model. The crossover designs had the highest power and the smallest bias. We recommend using a combination of the crossover design and the Mantel–Haenszel method for two‐period, two‐treatment clinical trials with irreversible endpoints. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On Testing Sample Selection Bias Under the Multicollinearity Problem

This paper reviews and extends the literature on the finite sample behavior of tests for sample selection bias. Monte Carlo results show that, when the “multicollinearity problem” identified by Nawata (1993) is severe, (i) the t-test based on the Heckman-Greene variance estimator can be unreliable, (ii) the Likelihood Ratio test remains powerful, and (iii) nonnormality can be interpreted as severe sample selection bias by Maximum Likelihood methods, leading to negative Wald statistics. We also confirm previous findings (Leung and Yu, 1996) that the standard regression-based t-test (Heckman, 1979) and the asymptotically efficient Lagrange Multiplier test (Melino, 1982), are robust to nonnormality but have very little power.     

DETERMINING OUTPUT AND INFLATION VARIABILITY: ARE THE PHILLIPS CURVE AND THE MONETARY POLICY REACTION FUNCTION RESPONSIBLE?

This study analyzes the policy parameters in a Taylor monetary policy reaction function and a Phillips curve equation to determine the variability of inflation and output. The theoretical and empirical investigations yield two key results. First, countries with large parameters in the monetary policy reaction function have low and stable inflation. Second, countries with flatter Phillips curves (i.e., those with a higher degree of price stickiness) have larger output variability. This article also examines the determinants of inflation and output variability as well as determinants of the slope of the Phillips curve.(JEL E32 , E52 )