The Cox proportional hazards model has been pervasively used in many social science areas to examine the effects of covariates on timing to an event. The standard Cox model is intended to study univariate survival data where there is a singular event of interest, which can only be experienced once. However, we may additionally wish to explore a…

Questionnaires that include items eliciting count responses are becoming increasingly common in psychology. This study proposes methodological techniques to overcome some of the challenges associated with analyzing multivariate item response data that exhibit zero inflation, maximum inflation, and heaping at preferred digits. The modeling…

Measuring values in sociological research sometimes involves the use of ranking data. A disadvantage of a ranking assignment is that the order in which the items are presented might influence the choice preferences of respondents regardless of the content being measured. The standard procedure to rule out such effects is to randomize the order of…

This report is the result of an experimental effort by the Population Studies Program at the University of Louisville. The program investigated the feasibility of estimating the percentage of Kentucky residents in poverty at the county level based on a variety of income, employment, demographic, and public assistance data available annually for…

The effects of education on social cohesion at the societal level were examined. First, a theoretical analysis and critique of models in the existing international and comparative literature on education, social capital, and social cohesion was conducted. The analysis resulted in development of a new hypothetical model relating skills distribution…