Age and Education Differences in Marriages and their Effects on Life Satisfaction

Within marriages husbands typically tend to be older and higher educated than their wife. This paper tries to explain this by analyzing whether age and education differences between spouses have an effect on happiness. Two alternative hypotheses are tested on the relation between age and education gaps between partners and life satisfaction. It is found that a positive age gap between husband and wife increases both male and female life satisfaction, while female life satisfaction increases if the education gap is smaller.     

Eliciting salient beliefs in research on the theory of planned behaviour: The effect of question wording

The authors of the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and its extension, the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) recommend that researchers who use these theories to investigate the determinants of a given behaviour should first conduct an elicitation study to identify the modal salient beliefs in the target population. In spite of the importance accorded to salient beliefs by the TRA/TPB, the elicitation stage has received little research attention. This paper reports a detailed analysis of beliefs about “being more physically active in the next 12 months.” A general population sample of 213 adults completed a questionnaire while attending a research centre for a series of tests. The findings showed that the beliefs that were elicited by questions designed to prompt affective outcomes (like or enjoy, dislike or hate) differed systematically from those that were elicited by the traditional questions designed to prompt instrumental out-comes (advantages and disadvantages). Whether this resulted in different final sets of modal salient beliefs was found to depend on the particular decision rule that was employed. An alternative decision rule is proposed, based on maximizing the degree of overlap between the modal set and the full set of salient beliefs generated by the sample. The index of overlap can be used to gauge the adequacy of using a modal set of a given size to represent the salient beliefs of the whole sample. In the current dataset, the optimal modal set for “advantages and disadvantages” was associated with only 26 percent overlap with the salient beliefs of the whole sample, which was judged to be insufficient. In such cases, a better strategy may be to ask participants to generate and rate their own beliefs.     

Psychological Well-Being in a Sample of Male and Female Office Workers

This questionnaire study used a model of mental health proposed by Warr (1987, 1993) to examine how 8 aspects of the work situation (principal environmental influences, PEIs) were associated with psychological well-being, measured on several dimensions. It is hypothesized that the importance of different PEIs for well-being will be influenced by gender, particularly the relationship between control and work-related mental health. The results of multiple regression analysis indicated similarities and differences in the association of PEIs with well-being in males and females. In the male sample, control at work was significantly associated with all dimensions of work-related mental health; but in the female sample, it was not associated with any dimension of mental health. The influence of gender is discussed.     

Can we disregard the whole model? Omnibus non-inferiority testing for R2 in multi-variable linear regression and in ANOVA

Determining a lack of association between an outcome variable and a number of different explanatory variables is frequently necessary in order to disregard a proposed model (i.e., to confirm the lack of a meaningful association between an outcome and predictors). Despite this, the literature rarely offers information about, or technical recommendations concerning, the appropriate statistical methodology to be used to accomplish this task. This paper introduces non-inferiority tests for ANOVA and linear regression analyses, which correspond to the standard widely used F test for and R², respectively. A simulation study is conducted to examine the Type I error rates and statistical power of the tests, and a comparison is made with an alternative Bayesian testing approach. The results indicate that the proposed non-inferiority test is a potentially useful tool for ‘testing the null’.     

More evidence for a relational shift in the development of analogy: Children's performance on a causal-mapping task

Gentner (1988) has proposed a relational shift whereby children interpret analogy and metaphor first in terms of object similarity and then in terms of relational similarity. Goswami (1996) argues against the relational shift hypothesis, citing as evidence a study performed by Goswami and Brown (1989) in which 3-, 4-, and 6-year-old children were able to correctly complete pictorial A:B::C:? analogies based on familiar causal relations, and, contrary to the predictions of the relational shift hypothesis, made very few object-similarity errors despite the presence of an object-similarity choice. In the present experiment we obtained similarity ratings of Goswami and Brown's stimuli and found that the materials did not contain a true object similarity choice and therefore that study was not an adequate test of the relational shift hypothesis. After appropriate modifications to their methodology, we found that 4- and 5-year-old children's performance was consistent with the relational shift hypothesis: First, object-similarity errors were highly frequent initially and decreased with age; second, the rate of relational (correct) responding increased with age; and third, performance on the analogues was positively related to children's knowledge about the participating causal relations. We conclude by proposing an explanation for the relational shift based on an alignment view of similarity comparison and, further, suggest a new role for object similarity in children's analogical development.