Forecasting Economic Time Series With Structural and Box-Jenkins Models: A Case Study

The basic structural model is a univariate time series model consisting of a slowly changing trend component, a slowly changing seasonal component, and a random irregular component. It is part of a class of models that have a number of advantages over the seasonal ARIMA models adopted by Box and Jenkins (1976). This article reports the results of an exercise in which the basic structural model was estimated for six U.K. macroeconomic time series and the forecasting performance compared with that of ARIMA models previously fitted by Prothero and Wallis (1976).     

Supervising family therapy trainees in primary care medical settings: context matters

The purpose of this article is to identify and describe four essential skills for effective supervision of family therapy trainees in primary care medical settings. The supervision skills described include: (1) Understand medical culture; (2) Locate the trainee in the treatment system; (3) Investigate the biological/health issues; and (4) Be attentive to the self-of-the-therapist. Recommendations are also made to help supervisors become better prepared for the questions medical family therapy trainees bring to supervision.     

Adding insult to injury: development and initial validation of the Partner-Directed Insults Scale

Women who are verbally abused by their intimate male partners suffer serious mental health consequences and often experience physical violence in their relationship. Despite the importance of studying verbal abuse, no previous research has investigated the specific content of the insults men use to derogate their partners. We present the development and initial validation of a new measure designed to assess the specific content of insults used by men against their intimate partners. In a preliminary study, we used feedback from battered women, along with a review of the relevant literature, to identify specific insults for inclusion in the Partner-Directed Insults Scale (PDIS). We administered the PDIS to a sample of United States participants (Study 1) and a sample of New Zealand participants (Study 2), allowing for a cross-national investigation of the specific insults that men use to derogate their partners. The results demonstrate the practical need for such a scale and provide evidence for the discriminant validity of the PDIS by documenting that men's use of insults predicts their use of controlling behaviors and physical violence.     

Fixed-parameter tractability of anonymizing data by suppressing entries

A popular model for protecting privacy when person-specific data is released is k -anonymity. A dataset is k-anonymous if each record is identical to at least (k−1) other records in the dataset. The basic k-anonymization problem, which minimizes the number of dataset entries that must be suppressed to achieve k-anonymity, is NP-hard and hence not solvable both quickly and optimally in general. We apply parameterized complexity analysis to explore algorithmic options for restricted versions of this problem that occur in practice. We present the first fixed-parameter algorithms for this problem and identify key techniques that can be applied to this and other k-anonymization problems.     

The Fate of Obamacare: Racial Resentment,Ethnocentrism and Attitudes about Healthcare Reform

Health care has been a contentious issue in American politics for decades, and scholars are beginning to understand the reasons behind public support for, and opposition to, healthcare reform. Using national survey data, we measure the impact of various racial attitudes, including Racial Resentment and Ethnocentrism, on white support for healthcare reform. We measure participants’ attitudes across a range of important dimensions of healthcare reform and examine a randomized experiment with a control group that frames legislation as “recent” healthcare reform and a treatment condition that frames legislation as “President Obama’s” healthcare reform. The findings demonstrate that racial attitudes and Ethnocentrism continue to play a role in both support and opposition to healthcare reform.     

Common threads between sample size recalculation and group sequential procedures

Sample size recalculation (SSR) methods ensure that a study closely achieves the required power by allowing for the original sample size to be modified through updating misspecified nuisance parameters. Some SSR procedures extend this concept by incorporating information on the estimated treatment difference as well. While group sequential methodology allows for early stopping of a study in the context of repeated hypothesis tests, SSR usually involves the extension of a study to accommodate misspecified design parameters. This work describes these methods and places them in a common framework. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The labor force implications of expanding the child care industry

This paper examines the labor force implications of increased social investment in the child care industry. We have two main conclusions to report. First, expanding the child care industry will remove a major barrier to employment for a sizable number of women. This includes women in middle and upper income families who desire to work for personal fulfillment and to improve their families' lifestyles. But even more so, it includes women in low-income and single-parent families who need to work to maintain a minimal and dignified standard of living and who might otherwise remain dependent on welfare benefits for their own and their families' subsistence. Second, expanding the child care industry will help employers cope with a range of personnel problems they will increasingly face as the U.S. undergoes a major transition in the 1990's from being a labor surplus economy to being a labor shortage economy.     

"He was treating me like trash, and I was loving it...": perspectives in gay male pornography

As the topic of gay male pornography has received limited attention from social scientists, little is known about how gay men perceive this medium. In the current study, a focus group methodology was used whereby participants examined specific scenes from commercially available gay pornography in terms of the messages they disseminate about the body and gay sexuality, in general. Findings suggest that discussants tended to view the medium from a utilitarian perspective. They saw pornography as a masturbatory aid, and did not believe that it possessed much significance vis-à-vis gay men's attitudes and behaviours. Those who identified potentially negative influences of this medium saw them as transitory and most likely to occur among gay men other than themselves.     

The effects of relationship aversive female partner behavior on attributions and physiological reactivity of verbally aggressive and non-aggressive males

The present study assessed the effects of aversive female partner behavior on cognitive attributions and physiological reactivity in verbally aggressive and non-aggressive college males (N = 39). Participants were presented four audiotaped vignettes which depicted hypothetical dating situations in which the female's behavior was relationship aversive or non-relationship aversive. Participants' physiological reactivity (i.e., systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate) was obtained before and after hearing each vignette. Attributional responses were obtained following the presentation of all vignettes. Relationship aversive partner behavior was expected to produce greater increases in attributional and physiological reactivity than non-relationship aversive partner behavior. Additionally, verbally aggressive males were expected to demonstrate greater negative intent and responsibility attributions and evidence greater physiological reactivity for situations involving relationship aversive partner behavior than were non-aggressive males.As hypothesized, results showed that relationship aversive partner behavior produced greater increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure than did non-relationship aversive partner behavior. Results also showed that verbally aggressive males evidenced significantly greater negative attributions to relationship aversive partner behavior than did non-aggressive males. The potential interaction between physiological reactivity and attributions in explaining males' verbally aggressive behavior toward their female partners is discussed.