A comparative approach to assessing the quality of life of intercollegiate athletes

Although concerns have frequently been raised recently regarding the quality of life of intercollegiate athletes, information is seldom available on which college and university administrators can base policy decisions. Particularly lacking are studies that provide administrators with assessments of their own athletics programs relative to athletics programs at other institutions. We describe here a method we used in conducting a comparative evaluation of the status of student-athletes at a large public university, involving comparisons of student-athletes at this university to student-athletes at a subset of the institutions that participated in the 1987–88 National Study of Intercollegiate Athletes. By utilizing existing data sets to construct comparison samples, relative assessments of the status of student-athletes at a given institution can be performed without the excessive costs of gathering data on student-athletes at comparison institutions. Techniques employed in data collection and analysis are discussed as well as the format of the report in which the findings of the study were presented.     

Inequality and fiscal policies in Uruguay by race

The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of fiscal policy by race, disaggregating to consider Uruguayans with primarily European, African and indigenous ancestry. We perform an incidence analysis, an estimation of the effect of fiscal policy on the poverty exit rate and an assessment of the impact on the average ethno-racial gaps. The findings support the idea that fiscal policy reduces (but does not eliminate) ethnic gaps. This result is led by health care and educational transfers, and to a lesser degree by direct transfers. We do not consider quality issues with public services, which may affect the estimated narrowing of gaps. Finally, we find that Afro-descendants and indigenous individuals do not capture the full potential of education transfers because of their high drop-out rate.     

In-Sample Inference and Forecasting in Misspecified Factor Models

This article considers in-sample prediction and out-of-sample forecasting in regressions with many exogenous predictors. We consider four dimension-reduction devices: principal components, ridge, Landweber Fridman, and partial least squares. We derive rates of convergence for two representative models: an ill-posed model and an approximate factor model. The theory is developed for a large cross-section and a large time-series. As all these methods depend on a tuning parameter to be selected, we also propose data-driven selection methods based on cross-validation and establish their optimality. Monte Carlo simulations and an empirical application to forecasting inflation and output growth in the U.S. show that data-reduction methods outperform conventional methods in several relevant settings, and might effectively guard against instabilities in predictors’ forecasting ability.     

Activity analysis: contributions to the innovation of projects for aircrafts cabins

This article presents results obtained from some ergonomics intervention in the project for the conception of aircraft's cabins. The study's aim is to analyze the contribution of the method adopted in the passengers' activities analysis in reference situations, real-use situations in aircraft's cabins, applied to analyze typical activities performed by people in their own environment. Within this perspective, the study shows two analyses which highlight the use of electronic device. The first analysis has been registered through a shooting filming in a real commercial flight. In the second one, the use is developed within the domestic environment. The same method has been applied in both contexts and it is based on activity analysis. Starting with the filming activity, postures and actions analysis, self-confrontation interviews, action course reconstruction and elaboration of postures envelopes. The results point out that the developed method might be applied to different contexts, evincing different ways of space occupation to meet human personal needs while performing an activity, which can help us with the anticipation of the users' needs, as well as indicate some innovation possibilities.     

Contributions from the activity analysis to the products development project: case study based on a project of innovation and comfort in aircraft's cabins

Comfort is an issue that has gained relevance within the aeronautical industry due to the necessity of manufacturers and airline companies of differentiating themselves in a market that has become more and more competitive each day. This study's aim is to analyze the comfort/discomfort of passengers, based on the analysis of the activities performed in the aircrafts' cabin during real flights, in order to create ergonomics requirements and a methodology of comfort analysis. The study has been performed during domestic commercial flights, and the adopted data collection techniques have been: the application of 219 questionnaires to passengers, 44 registrations of postures and actions through filmings and 12 semistructured interviews. The method has made possible the reconstruction of the user's action course in performing activities in real flight situations, and the calculation of the area occupied by the passenger during his or her actions. The integrated analysis of the results corroborates data from previous studies in which both the space made available to each passenger and the activity performed interfere in their perception of comfort. From this study it has been concluded that the method constitutes itself as an innovative tool within the process of aircrafts' cabins project enabling the calculation of the action space based on the reconstructed course.     

Designing from activities. The "ability /difficulty table", a useful tool to detect the "limit users" in the Design for All Approach

In the Design for All Approach (DfA), an important phase of the design process consists in the individuation of the so-called "limit users", that are that particular group of people with the most "critical" features for the autonomous fruition of a system or a product. Generally, however, it is not easy to identify them in a complete and objective way. A clear and complete outline of design requirements with respect to the "normal" use of a service, product or environment, moreover, is of fundamental importance in inclusive design. In fact, we know how bad design, that doesn't take in account the true "strategies of use", may lead to situations of handicap, also serious, temporary or permanent, regardless if the user is a "disabled" person or not. In relation to this scenario, the paper shows the results of a research which has developed the "Ability/Difficulty Table" ("A/D Table"), a new tool useful to identify the so-called "limit users" and their needs with respect to different activities, linking the main "difficulties", expressed by people, with the "abilities" required to carry out in autonomy the investigated activity.     

PEER PRESSURE: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM RESTROOM BEHAVIOR

We provide experimental evidence on the effect of peer pressure on individual behavior. Specifically, we study the effect of being exposed to an observer in a public restroom on handwashing and urinal flushing behavior. Our estimates show that being exposed to an observer increases the probability of handwashing by 13 percentage points and the probability of urinal flushing by 15 percentage points. Given that handwashing and urinal flushing have social benefits that exceed individual benefits, our findings provide support for peer pressure as an additional way of addressing the social suboptimality arising from externalities. (JEL C91, C93)     

Minimal Risk in Pediatric Research: A Philosophical Review and Reconsideration

Despite more than thirty years of debate, disagreement persists among research ethicists about the most appropriate way to interpret the U.S. regulations on pediatric research, specifically the categories of “minimal risk” and a “minor increase over minimal risk.” Focusing primarily on the definition of “minimal risk,” we argue in this article that the continued debate about the pediatric risk categories is at least partly because their conceptual status is seldom considered directly. Once this is done, it becomes clear that the most popular strategy for interpreting “minimal risk”—defining it as a specific set of risks—is indefensible and, from a pragmatic perspective, unlikely to resolve disagreement. Primarily this is because judgments about minimal risk are both normative and heavily intuitive in nature and thus cannot easily be captured by reductions to a given set of risks. We suggest instead that a more defensible approach to evaluating risk should incorporate room for reflection and deliberation. This dispositional, deliberative framework can nonetheless accommodate a number of intellectual resources for reducing reliance on sheer intuition and improving the quality of risk evaluations.     

Beyond Cultural Relativity: The Place of Values in Social Science

Abstract

Samples of three organizations: The American Economic Association, the Union of Radical Political Economics, and the Association for Evolutionary Economics, were obtained in an effort to determine the social forces which create a radical paradigm in contemporary economics. Radicalism is maintained through the operation of (1) social forces external to the discipline, namely, low levels of religiosity and modest income, as well as prior political socialization through natal family political interest and student activism, and (2) forces internal to the discipline and found within its professional socialization subsystem. A structural model incorporating these variables and emphasizing the adoption of an academic perspective consistent with prior political socialization was tested by means of LISREL VII analysis.