The Austrian Parliamentary Election of 1995

The unexpectedly early Austrian elections of 1995 resulted in the first setback for Jor Haider's dynamic far-right 'Freieitlichen' movement since he became party leader in 1986. The Austrian Social Democrats managed to overcome early inertia and mobilise the collective fear of many Austrians about the political and economic future and increase their parliamentary strength. Nevertheless, after the elections they used their strengthened position to introduce a programme of sharp cuts in the traditionally generous welfare budget which had been previously demanded by their opponents.     

Assessing preferences in cost-benefit analysis: Reflections on rural water supply evaluation in haiti

This article examines an area of cost-benefit methodology which has come under increasing philosophical scrutiny in recent years: the appropriate treatment of individuals' preferences. We illustrate some of the difficulties involved in assessing preferences in the context of a concrete example: the evaluation of a rural water supply project in southern Haiti. Four problems in the application of cost-benefit principles are discussed: (1) how to count the social value of private water taps connected to homes if they are preferred for prestige reasons, (2) how to assess husbands' preferences concerning the time savings by wives who previously carried water from more distant sources, (3) how to count preferences based on a respondent's desire to support general community welfare, and (4) how to evaluate a water project when people's preferences may change after the new water system is installed. We argue that policy analysis will be improved by presenting philosophical arguments as to why some preferences should be included in the evaluation and others ignored.     

Taking Fact-Checks Literally But Not Seriously? The Effects of Journalistic Fact-Checking on Factual Beliefs and Candidate Favorability

Political Behavior - Are citizens willing to accept journalistic fact-checks of misleading claims from candidates they support and to update their attitudes about those candidates? Previous studies...     

THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VALIDITY OF THE REGRESSION DISCONTINUITY DESIGN: A META‐ANALYSIS OF 15 WITHIN‐STUDY COMPARISONS

Theory predicts that regression discontinuity (RD) provides valid causal inference at the cutoff score that determines treatment assignment. One purpose of this paper is to test RD's internal validity across 15 studies. Each of them assesses the correspondence between causal estimates from an RD study and a randomized control trial (RCT) when the estimates are made at the same cutoff point where they should not differ asymptotically. However, statistical error, imperfect design implementation, and a plethora of different possible analysis options, mean that they might nonetheless differ. We test whether they do, assuming that the bias potential is greater with RDs than RCTs. A second purpose of this paper is to investigate the external validity of RD by exploring how the size of the bias estimates varies across the 15 studies, for they differ in their settings, interventions, analyses, and implementation details. Both Bayesian and frequentist meta‐analysis methods show that the RD bias is below 0.01 standard deviations on average, indicating RD's high internal validity. When the study‐specific estimates are shrunken to capitalize on the information the other studies provide, all the RD causal estimates fall within 0.07 standard deviations of their RCT counterparts, now indicating high external validity. With unshrunken estimates, the mean RD bias is still essentially zero, but the distribution of RD bias estimates is less tight, especially with smaller samples and when parametric RD analyses are used.     

What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study

What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The Family Options Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long‐term rent subsidies, short‐term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psychosocial services. In two waves of follow‐up data collected 20 and 37 months later, priority access to long‐term rent subsidies reduced homelessness and food insecurity and improved other aspects of adult and child well‐being relative to usual care, at a cost 9 percent higher. The other interventions had little effect. The study provides support for the view that homelessness for most families is an economic problem that long‐term rent subsidies resolve and does not support the view that families must address psychosocial problems to succeed in housing. It has implications for focusing government resources on this important social problem.     

Implementing Public Utility Commission Web Sites: Targeting Audiences, Missing Opportunities

Research demonstrates that some government agencies are more accomplished than others when it comes to e-government. More generally, various scholars suggest that e-government is moving forward at a relatively slow pace, especially in relation to the sophistication of government Web sites. With these issues in mind, this research utilized interviews with state public utility commission staff members to explore their agencies' experiences with staffing, funding, coordinating, and prioritizing their e-government efforts, particularly their Web site activities. Assessing such efforts in both quantitative and qualitative terms, this research found that a mix of various factors, including financial resources, knowledgeable staff, and administrative oversight, related to better performance. Moreover, although public utility commissions have a clear mission to serve both consumers and regulated utilities, this research indicates that the commissions are focusing more of their e-government efforts on industry rather than citizens.     

Longitudinal Bi-directional Relationships Between Sleep and Youth Substance Use

Despite the known deficits in sleep that occur during adolescence and the high prevalence of substance use behaviors among this group, relatively little research has explored how sleep and substance use may be causally related. The purpose of this study was to explore the longitudinal bi-directional relationships between sleep duration, sleep patterns and youth substance use behaviors. Participants included 704 mostly white (86.4?%) youth, 51?% female, with a baseline mean age of 14.7?years. Self-reported substance use behaviors included past month alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. Sleep measures included sleep duration on weekends and weekdays, total sleep, weekend oversleep, and weekend sleep delay. Cross-lagged structural equation models, accounting for clustering at the school level, were run to determine the longitudinal association between sleep and substance use adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics, pubertal status, body mass index z-score, and depressive symptoms. Cigarette use and weekend sleep were bi-directionally related as were marijuana use and total sleep. No other bi-directional associations were identified. However, alcohol use predicted shorter weekend oversleep and marijuana use predicted increased weekend sleep and weekend oversleep. Sleep patterns and duration also predicted adolescents' cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use. Sleep, both patterns and duration, and substance use among youth are intertwined. Future research is needed to explore these bi-directional relationships, as well as other important contextual factors that may moderate these associations.