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Current sociological theory often leads to underidentified simultaneous-equation models, some of which are "identified" by arbitrary specification. This paper applies the term sensitivity analysis to methods for exploring how numerical parameter estimates depend upon the identifying assumptions in such models. Three ad hoc sensitivity analysis methods are identified that have been used in the literature: (1) estimation under alternative specifications, (2) trying out a range of numerical values of underidentified parameters, and (3) the use of algebraic inequalities to obtain bounds on sample estimates of parameters. Mathematical programming is introduced here as a fourth method generalizing the last procedure and is then applied to a specific numerical example.

Social Accounting Systems: Essays on the State of the Art contains essays prepared during a workshop aimed at the development and promulgation of objectives for future work on social accounting, and the making of recommendations to achieve them by evaluating existing demographic and time-based accounting models. The essays describe and evaluate the state of the art of extant empirically based approaches to social accounting. The book opens with an overview chapter that describes the organizations of the Workshop on Social Accounting Systems at which the essays were presented and discussed, th

Social Accounting Systems: Essays on the State of the Art contains essays prepared during a workshop aimed at the development and promulgation of objectives for future work on social accounting, and the making of recommendations to achieve them by evaluating existing demographic and time-based accounting models. The essays describe and evaluate the state of the art of extant empirically based approaches to social accounting. The book opens with an overview chapter that describes the organizations of the Workshop on Social Accounting Systems at which the essays were presented and discussed, th.

The authors consider how to construct summary indices (e.g., quality-of-life [QOL] indices) for a social unit that will be endorsed by a majority of its citizens. They assume that many social indicators are available to describe the social unit, but individuals disagree about the relative weights to be assigned to each social indicator. The summary index that maximizes agreement among citizens can then be derived, along with conditions under which an index will be endorsed by a majority in the social unit. The authors show that intuition greatly underestimates the extent of agreement among individuals, and it is often possible to construct a QOL index that most citizens agree with (at least in direction). In particular, they show that the equal-weighting strategy is privileged in that it minimizes disagreement among all possible individuals' weights. They demonstrate these propositions by calculating real QOL indices for two surveys of citizens' actual importance weights.

SummaryThe traditional preference for sons may be the main hindrance to India's current population policy of two children per family. In this study, the effects of various sociodemographic covariates, particularly sex preference, on the length of the third birth interval are examined for the scheduled caste population in Assam, India. Life table and hazards regression techniques are applied to retrospective sample data. The analysis shows that couples having two surviving sons are less likely to have a third child than those without a surviving son and those with only one surviving son. Age at first marriage, length of preceding birth intervals, age of mother, and household income have strong effects on the length of the third birth interval.

This article addresses three issues that are central to the criminal career debate. First, is the life course of individual offending patterns marked by distinctive periods of quiescence? Second, at the level of the individual, do offending rates vary systematically with age? In particular, is the age‐crime curve single peaked or flat? Third, are chronic offenders different from less active offenders? Do offenders themselves differ in systematic ways? Using a new approach to the analysis of individual criminal careers—based on nested, mixed Poisson models in which the mixing distribution is estimated nonparametrically—we analyze a panel data set that tracks a sample of males for more than 20 years. Our results provide empirical evidence in support of some features of criminal propensity theory and some in support of conventional criminal careers theory. In support of latent‐trait criminal propensity theory, the individual‐level average offense rate (per unit of time) varies as a function of observable individual‐level characteristics and unobservable heterogeneity among individuals, and the age trajectory of the offense rate is generally single peaked rather than flat. On the other hand, in support of conventional criminal careers theory, models that incorporate a parameter that permits periods of active as well as inactive offending across age have greater explanatory power than those that do not. In addition, the nonparametric, discrete approximation to the population distribution of unobservable heterogeneity in the individual‐level mean offense rate facilitates identification of four classes of offenders—nonoffenders as well as individual‐level characteristics that are unique to each group. Problems of theoretical explanation and empirical generalizability of these results are described.

Rubin (1977) developed a method for estimating, in a subjective sense, the effect of nonignorable nonresponse in sample surveys. Based on Bayesian techniques, this method produces a subjective probability interval for the statistic, such as the mean of a response variable, that would have been calculated if all nonrespondents had responded. Demographic and socioeconomic background information that is recorded for both respondents and nonrespondents plays an important role in sharpening the subjective interval - through the adjustment of a regression equation that uses this information. In this article, Rubin's method-sometimes called the mixture modeling approach to drawing inferences from self-selected samples-is reviewed and applied to real survey and experimental data on community standards for sexually explicit material in which respondents were asked to judge the material's appeal to prurient interest and patent offensiveness (two of the three legal criteria for a determination of obscenity). A critically important substantive issue in this context is whether or not the sample self-selection processes governing the willingness of individuals to participate in the experiment have so truncated the frequency distributions of participant judgments about obscenity that they are grossly biased and inaccurate. It is shown how the mixture modeling approach sheds light on the possible extent of such biases.

AbstractThe absence of strong zero‐order associations between victimization and official crime rates for cities has been a puzzle for social scientists since the data for making such comparisons became available. Using the 26 large central cities for which data on both types of rates are available, we analyze the extent to which discrepancies between the rates can be accounted for by aspects of urban social structure that differ from city to city. After introducing such structural controls, we find a much closer correspondence between the two types of rates for motor vehicle theft, robbery, burglary, and forcible rape, but not for aggravated assault and larceny‐theft. These results are explained by citing evidence that we have identified some critical "suppressor" variables for the former crimes (i.e., variables that are positively associated with one type of rate and negatively associated with the other). By contrast, the heterogeneous nature of the phenomena subsumed by the latter two crime categories may preclude identification of a similarly parsimonious list of suppressors. One implication of these conclusions is that cross‐sectional analyses of intercity variation in official rates may produce results that are in reasonably close correspondence with what would be obtained with victimization rates for certain index crimes, provided that sufficient structural control variables are utilized.