Acculturation and Risk Behavior among Pregnant Mexican American Females: A Structural Equation Model

The purpose of this study was to test a theoretical model designed to predict risk behavior (i.e., cigarette and/or alcohol use) in a sample of Mexican American females who were pregnant and ranged in age from adolescence to early adulthood. The model consisted of six hypothesized predictors–acculturation status, intergenerational family conflict, acculturative stress, educational attainment, household income, and age of respondent, which were proposed as antecedents of risk behavior. Structural equation modeling was used to test both the direct and indirect effects for a set of proposed antecedents to the tendency for Mexican American females to engage in risk behaviors. Several of the hypothesized relationships were supported, with the strongest predictors of risk behavior being acculturation status, intergenerational family conflict, and acculturative stress. An important conclusion was that risk behavior by Mexican American females increased as they became more acculturated to the social circumstances of the U.S. Another notable result was that risk behavior increased among Mexican American females as they experienced higher levels of intergenerational conflict within their families.     

Puerto rican drug users’ experiences of physical and sexual abuse: Comparisons based on sexual identities

This study integrates the results of quantitative and qualitative methods to elucidate the association between sexual identity and physical and sexual abuse among Puerto Rican drug users. A structured questionnaire was administered to 800 subjects in New York and 399 in Puerto Rico. A total of 93 subjects (7.9%) self‐identified as homosexual or bisexual. Gay males were significantly more likely than heterosexual males to report first occurrence of physical abuse by a family member in childhood. Both gay and bisexual males were more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to report first experiencing unwanted sex in childhood and intimate partner physical abuse later in life. Lesbians were more likely than female heterosexuals to report unwanted sex in childhood. Qualitative data were collected through in‐depth life histories with 21 subjects and suggest that gay and lesbian subjects perceive antihomosexual prejudice on the part of family members as one cause of childhood physical and sexual abuse.     

From Pong to Planet Quake: Post-Industrial Transitions from Leisure to Work

In the closing weeks of 2002, video games were featured in various popular American news publications and media outlets such as Wired, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek and Time Magazine. It is becoming increasingly apparent that video games are no longer child's play, but rather that they are poised to become a major entertainment form for the twenty-first century. Social analysts and media scholars must begin to formulate an understanding of this emerging mass-consumer phenomenon because it will increasingly impact social and economic structures of post-industrial societies. Part of the tremendous value generated by the American video-game industry is tied into broad global economic shifts that have created a space where services and ephemeral products, such as software, can be created and cheaply distributed. The predominance of " high-tech' production, the rise of the Internet, and the cultural capital associated with computerization all have contributed to the rise of hobbyist software developers that currently tinker with commercial video games and freely add to them increasing levels of sophistication. This paper sees video-game programmer hobbyists as a source of some of the significant value that the video-game industry generates, and understands the role of the programmer hobbyists through the lens of theories on post-industrial work. My analysis situates the work of hobbyists on the Internet within the context of post-Fordism and explores some of the motivations for this unwaged work. In the sections that follow, I will analyse the potential value of the work hobbyist do as well as analyse its transition to paid work as some commercial software developers experiment with incorporating these fan bases into the game design process.     

SOCIAL HIERARCHIES: A LABORATORY STUDY ON PUNISHMENT PATTERNS ACROSS NETWORKS

We experimentally study punishment patterns across network structures, and their effect on cooperation. In a repeated public goods setting, subjects can only observe and punish their neighbors. Centralized structures (like the star network) outperform other incomplete networks and reach contribution levels like the ones observed in a complete network. Our results suggest that hierarchical network structures with a commonly observed player benefit more from sanctions not because central players punish more, but because they follow, and promote, different punishment patterns. While quasi-central players in other incomplete architectures (like the line network) retaliate, and get trapped in the vicious circle of antisocial punishment, central players in the star network do not punish back, increase their contributions when sanctioned by peripheral players, and sanction other participants in a prosocial manner. Our results illustrate recent field studies on the evolutionary prevalence of hierarchical networks. We document a network-based rationale for this positive effect in an identity-free, fully anonymous environment. (JEL C72, C91, C92, D90, H41)     

Not ‘women's burden’: how washing clothes and grinding corn became issues of social justice and development

Women's heavy and unequal responsibilities for care, long considered ordinary or insignificant by development workers as well as the wider public, are being reframed as issues of social justice through new methodologies for communities to analyse care work and advocate for change. Oxfam and local partners in the Philippines, Honduras, and Bangladesh are piloting two approaches. The first, Rapid Care-Analysis, uses focus groups to assess the local provision of care, identify problems, and propose solutions, reframing care as a compelling issue for both women and men. The second, the Household Care Survey, can be used to gather evidence to persuade governments and aid donors to invest in infrastructure to lessen the practical load of care work. This article shares the experience so far of evolving and piloting these innovative methods.     

The Generalized Means Model (GMM) for non-deterministic decision making: Its normative and descriptive power,including sketch of the representation theorem

Two schools of thought have been arguing during the last thirty years about the foundations of the theory of choice under uncertainty, namely: The neo-Bernoullian or American school defending an Expected Utility Model (EUM); and the Allais or French school proposing a model based on the moments of the probability distribution over psychological values (MM). In this paper we present a unified theory: the Generalized Means Model (GMM). By using the well known concept of the generalized mean it is possible to derive both contesting models from the same core of axioms, that — surprisingly enough — includes an extended form of the hotly debated Substitution Principle. It can be seen that the differences between the two models occur at the beginning and at the end of their axiomatic derivation, as follows: the EUM starts from a probability distribution function over consequences whereas the MM begins with a probability distribution over psychological values. The EUM finishes with an early introduction of a behavioural axiom on the existance of utility, whereas the MM uses first the properties of the distribution function, and then introduces the behavioural assumptions. The simplest MM consistent with all axioms of the GMM is the model proposed by the author some years ago. It is suggested that a reduced version, the Three Moments Model (TMM), is sufficient for practical applications. The second part of the paper demonstrates how the TMM solves in a very natural way the Allais Paradox, the certainty effect, the reflection effect, and several other behavioural observations.