Differential customer racial attitudes toward scandal and patriotism: The Mitchell Report,the Olympics,race, and baseball memorabilia

This paper investigates differential customer racial reaction to negative and positive publicity related to professional athletes. In terms of negative publicity, it analyzes the effect of mention in the Mitchell Report on the price of baseball cards. In regards to positive publicity, it considers the impact of having been identified as a member of the United States Olympic or national team. After controlling for player productivity with performance statistics, the effects of being mentioned in the Mitchell Report are isolated within regression analysis to draw conclusions concerning customer racial attitudes toward the steroids scandal. Similar analysis is conducted to see the impact of being seen as a baseball representative of the United States. Regression results are consistent with the conclusion that negative publicity devalues the cards of nonWhite players but not of White players. Positive publicity, however, increases the value of a player's card regardless of ethnicity.     

Sociological Factors Affecting Agricultural Price Risk Management in Australia*

Abstract The highly volatile auction system in Australia accounts for 85 percent of ex‐farm wool sales, with the remainder sold by forward contract, futures, and other hedging methods. In this article, against the background of an extensive literature on price risk strategies, we investigate title behavioral factors associated with producers' adoption of price risk‐management strategies (specifically futures and forward contracts) for selling wool. This research presents a behavioral model based on Diffusion of Innovations, the Theory of Reasoned Action, and the Theory of Planned Behavior. We found that the auction system is used as a price risk‐management tool because other selling methods are considered more risky. We also report on a curious relationship between risk and complexity in terms of wool producers' intentions to use forward contracts. We explored sociological factors in conjunction with focus‐group data in an attempt to understand this relationship. This exercise yielded some interesting findings on the impact that trust, habit, social cohesion, and networks have on decision making in the rural community. The significance of this article lies in its application of core sociological theory in a new research context: the Australian wool industry.     

Estimating Individual-Level Risk in Spatial Epidemiology Using Spatially Aggregated Information on the Population at Risk

We propose a novel alternative to case-control sampling for the estimation of individual-level risk in spatial epidemiology. Our approach uses weighted estimating equations to estimate regression parameters in the intensity function of an inhomogeneous spatial point process, when information on risk-factors is available at the individual level for cases, but only at a spatially aggregated level for the population at risk. We develop data-driven methods to select the weights used in the estimating equations and show through simulation that the choice of weights can have a major impact on efficiency of estimation. We develop a formal test to detect non-Poisson behavior in the underlying point process and assess the performance of the test using simulations of Poisson and Poisson cluster point processes. We apply our methods to data on the spatial distribution of childhood meningococcal disease cases in Merseyside, U.K. between 1981 and 2007.     

Comment on Charles Baird

Mr. Stanton E. Smith has long been an active unionist. He was the first president of the Chattanooga Local of the American Federation of Teachers (1933–1939); served as the Educational Director of the ILGWU-Southeastern Region (1945–1949); was president of the Tennessee Federation of Labor (1949); and was coordinator of State and Local Councils of the AFL-CIO (1960). Currently, Mr. Smith is a delegate to the Chattanooga Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO.     

COURSEWORK AND SELF-STUDY IN THE FAMILY TREATMENT OF ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE: EXPANDING HEATH AND ATKINSON'S CURRICULUM

In designing a course on the family treatment of alcohol and drug problems, a number of important issues and topics need to be addressed. A design by Heath and Atkinson (1988) provides an excellent, innovative model for such coverage. These authors, however, had to contend with certain constraints that have had a bearing on the course content and how it is taught. The present paper offers some revisions and alternatives to Heath and Atkinson's model in order to make it generalizable to a greater number of contexts. For clinicians who are less interested in teaching such a course, the two papers, combined, could serve as a guide for self-study in this area.