Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 1990. / Thesis Advisor(s): Johnson, Laura ; Thomas, George. Second Reader: Gorman, Linda. "September 1990." Description based on title screen as viewed on December 17, 2009. DTIC Identifier(s): Army Personnel, Recruiting, Theses, Military Forces (United States), Incentives, NRS (New Recruit Survey), Motivation, Statistical Analysis, Demography, Encentives. Author(s) subject terms: Enlistment, Incentive, Motivation, New Recruit Survey. Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-69). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-220). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

This study evaluates three hypotheses of return migration from Australia: the success hypothesis, the failure hypothesis and the continued evaluation hypothesis. Under the success hypothesis, migrants integrate well into Australian society, but return when they reach their target income. The failure hypothesis proposes that migrants have strong ties to their country of origin and do not integrate well into Australian society. This weak level of integration leads to low probabilities of finding employment and low wage. That, combined with the high pecuniary costs associated with remaining in Australia leads to high probabilities of return migration when economic conditions in Australia are poor. Under this scenario, migrants tend to be older, married and are poorly skilled. In the final hypothesis--the continued evaluation hypothesis--migrants retain strong ties to their country of origin while also integrating into Australian society. However, unlike the previous two hypotheses, migrants continue to compare economic conditions in their country of origin with those in Australia, and return when benefits outweigh the costs of remaining in Australia. The three hypotheses are tested using data from Australian arrival and departure cards and a Cox proportional hazard model. The continued evaluation path hypothesis is found to be most appropriate for Hong Kong, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, whereas the success hypothesis is most applicable for South Africa, Viet Nam and Yugoslavia. There was little support for the failure hypothesis.

With a representative sample of 487 elementary schools serving 3 rd grade and 490 elementary schools serving 5th grade in Arizona, this study examined the relationship between student mobility and student academic achievement. Controlling for student family background and school characteristics, multiple regression analysis revealed a statistically significant negative relationship between mobility and academic achievement for math, reading and language in 3rd and 5th grade. This negative effect was pronounced for high SES schools. For all regression analyses performed, a key finding was that much of the variation in standardized test scores for math, reading and language in both 3rd and 5th was consistently explained by mobility, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Separate analyses were conducted for low SES, middle SES, and high SES schools. A comparison of the means reveals a stark reality. Low SES students in Arizona have higher mobility rates, are more likely to be Hispanic or other minority ethnicity, are poor, and are taught by teachers with less experience and education compared to high SES students. However, regression results show that mobility was not significantly related to academic achievement for low SES students; rather an unexpected consistent statistically significant negative effect on achievement was observed across all subject areas for 3rd and 5 th grade for high SES students.

<p>Current theories of marriage and family formation behavior tend to rely on the assumption that people can and do consciously plan both fertility and marriage and post-hoc intentions should align with a priori reasons for action (Fishbein & Azjen 2010). However, research shows this is not always the case and researchers have labeled inconsistencies between pre- and post- reports of intentions and behavior as retrospective bias. Researchers such as Bongaarts (1990) have tried to create models that minimize this "bias".</p><p> The Theory of Conjunctural Action is a new model that can explain, rather than explain away, this "bias" (Johnson-Hanks et al. 2011; Morgan and Bachrach 2011). This new theoretical innovation uses insights about the workings of the mind to gain a greater understanding of how individuals report family formation decisions and how and why they might change over time. In this theory, individuals experience conjunctures (or social context which exists in the material world) and use cognitive schemas (or frames within the mind through which individuals use to interpret the world around them). These schemas are multiple and the set can change over time as individuals incorporate new experiences into them. </p><p> In this dissertation, I explore how and why pre- and post- reports of intentions may be different using insights from the Theory of Conjunctural Action. In the second chapter, using data from the NLSY79 and log-linear models, I show that there are considerable inconsistencies between prospective and retrospective reports of fertility intentions. Specifically, nearly 6% of births (346 out of 6022) are retrospectively reported as unwanted at the time of conception by women who prospectively reported they wanted more children one or two years prior to the birth. Similarly, over 400 births are retrospectively reported as wanted by women who intended to have no more births one or two years prior (i.e., in the prior survey wave). The innovation here is to see this inconsistency, not as an error in reporting, but as different construals of a seemingly similar question. In other words, women may not be consciously intending births and then enacting these intentions; rather women may have different schemas (or meanings) of prospective and retrospective measures of fertility intentions.</p><p> The next chapter uses this same data to test if women use different schemas to guide their reporting of prospective and retrospective fertility intentions. Again, using insights from the Theory of Conjunctural Action, I expect that different schemas (represented by different sets of variables) predict prospective and retrospective wantedness differentially. I show that retrospective reports of wantedness are guided more by age, marital status, education, job satisfaction, and educational enrollment at birth, while prospective wantedness was guided more by number of children desired and how many children they currently have. I show four logistic models predicting wanted verses unwanted births. I then compared the model fit of logistic models predicting prospective wanted verses unwanted births using the hypothesized prospective and retrospective schema variables and I did the same for the models of retrospective wantedness. I find that when women report retrospective wantedness, they are guided more by the hypothesized variables. </p><p> Finally, in the last empirical paper, because schemas are difficult to measure, I build a methodology, Network Text Analysis, to measure schemas and to understand the schemas surrounding marriage and fertility for low-income Blacks who have not yet had children. I use interview data from the Becoming Parents and Partners Study (BPP), a sample of young, unmarried, childless adults with low incomes. I use these data to explore schemas of childbearing and marriage. Contrary to previous findings that low-income parents do not link marriage and fertility and have different requirements for marriage and fertility, I find that marriage and childbearing are indeed linked and have similar requirements for low-income Blacks prior to childbearing. Low income Blacks hold quite traditional views about the role of marriage and its sequencing vis-à-vis fertility. I argue that the material constraints to marital childbearing may lead to non-marital births and thus respondents sever schemas connecting marriage and childbearing and adopt other schemas of childbearing to provide ad hoc justifications for their behavior.</p> / Dissertation

No description available.

This report examines the mortality of the James Bay Cree of northern Quebec during the period 1982-1986. Life expectancy at birth is higher in this population than among most other North American Indians. Infant mortality remains high, due to high death rates in the postneonatal period. Genetic diseases, infections, and accidents take a heavy toll among Cree infants and children. The Cree continue to experience lower mortality rates than Canada as a whole from cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The rate of drownings remains ten times the Canadian rate, but the Cree are still relatively exempt from the high incidence of accidental and violent deaths which effect many North American Indian groups.

No description available.

<p> This study addressed the frequently discussed issue of a relationship between the demographic diversity of a workgroup and its performance, by empirically testing for a relationship between a complex conceptualization of diversity (demographic faultlines) and workgroup performance bifurcated into processes, specifically relationship and task conflict, and outcomes, in terms of groups member's individual satisfaction with the group, commitment to the group, liking of other group members, and intent to stay. In addition, it hypothesized processes (relationship and task conflict) as mediators of outcomes. An online survey was administered at a single firm, ultimately gathering data from a sample population of 95 workgroups, representing 389 individual members. Using hierarchical regression analysis, the strength of the demographic faultline (<i>Fau</i>) of each group was tested for a relationship with relationship and task conflict and workgroup outcomes. Controlling for group size, the study found <i>Fau</i> positively predictive of relationship and task conflict, and not predictive of workgroup performance outcomes (given the finding of no relationship between <i>Fau</i> and outcomes, relationship and task conflict as mediators of outcomes was not tested), confirming only one of five hypotheses. The possible impact of the sample characteristics on this field study was discussed in conjunction with the theoretical, research, and practical implications of the findings.</p>

<p> This dissertation is dedicated to an exploration of "Wood's Method" -- a novel approach to fitting demographic transition matrices to age and sex population count data. Demographic transition matrices, otherwise known as "Leslie matrices," are extensively used to forecast population by age, sex, and other characteristics. Our implementation of Wood's Method simplifies the creation of age and sex population forecasts greatly by reducing the amount of data necessary to create a demographic transition matrix. Furthermore, the method can be used to infer a demographic component of change (one of migration, fertility, or mortality) if the other two components are specified. </p><p> In Chapter One, we introduce Wood's Method, as well as showing some illustrative examples. In Chapter Two, we evaluate the accuracy of Wood's Method by crossvalidating age and sex specific forecasts for 3,120 US counties. In Chapter Three, we present a simpler, alternative derivation of Wood's Method with an extensive example and show some extensions to the method made possible by this new formulation. In Chapter Four, we use the method to examine migration rates at the US County level and show important results regarding clustering of migration. Each chapters is independent of the others, but should be read in order. </p><p> To our knowledge, this is the first time Wood's Method has been used for forecasting human populations. We hope to show its viability as a forecasting and analysis method and sketch directions for further research.</p>