Dutch tenants at risk of eviction: Identifying predictors of eviction orders.

In order to prevent evictions, it is important to gain more insight into factors predicting whether or not tenants receive an eviction order. In this study, ten potential risk factors for evictions were tested. Tenants who were at risk of eviction due to rent arrears in five Dutch cities were interviewed using a structured questionnaire, and six months later their housing associations were asked to provide information about the tenants' current situation. Multiple logistic regression analyses with data on 344 tenants revealed that the amount of rent arrears was a strong predictor for receiving an eviction order. Furthermore, single tenants and tenants who had already been summoned to appear in court were more likely to receive an eviction order. These results can contribute to identifying households at risk of eviction at an early stage, and to develop targeted interventions to prevent evictions.

The Paradox of Rising Ethnic Prejudice in Times of Educational Expansion and Secularization in the Netherlands, 1985-2011.

We aim to clarify a puzzling paradox: while shares of highly educated and non-religious individuals-who generally hold less prejudice-have increased in the Netherlands, levels of prejudice against ethnic minorities have yet risen over time. To solve the paradox, we use cross-sectional data from 1985 to 2011 in counterfactual analyses. In these analyses we simulate that levels of ethnic prejudice within categories of education, church membership, and church attendance are kept constant at the 1985 level and a new simulated trend in prejudice is estimated for the 1985-2011 period. Our findings show that changing levels of prejudice within categories of education are partly responsible for the trend. We conclude that the increasing share of highly educated individuals has not resulted in a decline of prejudice in the Netherlands over time, because all Dutch have become more prejudiced over the years and in particular the higher educated.

The relationship between societal change and rising support for gender egalitarianism among men and women: Results from counterfactual analyses in the Netherlands, 1979-2012.

This study examines the relationship between important social, cultural, economic, and demographic changes and the rise of support for gender egalitarianism within the Dutch population between 1979 and 2012. Cohort replacement, educational expansion, secularization, and the feminization of the labor force are important processes that have taken place in western societies in ways that may have fostered support for gender egalitarianism. Using unique data from 16 repeated cross-sectional surveys in the Netherlands, we estimate age-period-cohort regression models, and the outcomes are subsequently applied in counterfactual simulation designs. Our results show that the social, cultural, economic, and demographic changes explain only a small part of the modest rise in support for gender egalitarianism for men, while they provide a much better explanation of the stronger rise among women. Especially the replacement of older female cohorts by younger ones seems to have propelled support for gender egalitarianism among women throughout the years.

Exact p-values for pairwise comparison of Friedman rank sums, with application to comparing classifiers.

BACKGROUND: The Friedman rank sum test is a widely-used nonparametric method in computational biology. In addition to examining the overall null hypothesis of no significant difference among any of the rank sums, it is typically of interest to conduct pairwise comparison tests. Current approaches to such tests rely on large-sample approximations, due to the numerical complexity of computing the exact distribution. These approximate methods lead to inaccurate estimates in the tail of the distribution, which is most relevant for p-value calculation. RESULTS: We propose an efficient, combinatorial exact approach for calculating the probability mass distribution of the rank sum difference statistic for pairwise comparison of Friedman rank sums, and compare exact results with recommended asymptotic approximations. Whereas the chi-squared approximation performs inferiorly to exact computation overall, others, particularly the normal, perform well, except for the extreme tail. Hence exact calculation offers an improvement when small p-values occur following multiple testing correction. Exact inference also enhances the identification of significant differences whenever the observed values are close to the approximate critical value. We illustrate the proposed method in the context of biological machine learning, were Friedman rank sum difference tests are commonly used for the comparison of classifiers over multiple datasets. CONCLUSIONS: We provide a computationally fast method to determine the exact p-value of the absolute rank sum difference of a pair of Friedman rank sums, making asymptotic tests obsolete. Calculation of exact p-values is easy to implement in statistical software and the implementation in R is provided in one of the Additional files and is also available at http://www.ru.nl/publish/pages/726696/friedmanrsd.zip .

The Intrinsic Estimator, Alternative Estimates, and Predictions of Mortality Trends: A Comment on Masters, Hummer, Powers, Beck, Lin, and Finch.

In this article, we discuss a study by Masters et al. (2014), published in Demography. Masters and associates estimated age, period, and cohort (APC) effects on U.S. mortality rates between 1959 and 2009 using the intrinsic estimator (IE). We first argue that before applying the IE, a grounded theoretical justification is needed for its fundamental constraint on minimum variance of the estimates. We next demonstrate IE's high sensitivity to the type of dummy parameterization used to obtain the estimates. Finally, we discuss challenges in the interpretation of APC models. Our comments are not restricted to the article in question but pertain generally to any research that uses the IE.

The Non-uniqueness Property of the Intrinsic Estimator in APC Models.

This article explores an important property of the intrinsic estimator that has received no attention in literature: the age, period, and cohort estimates of the intrinsic estimator are not unique but vary with the parameterization and reference categories chosen for these variables. We give a formal proof of the non-uniqueness property for effect coding and dummy variable coding. Using data on female mortality in the United States over the years 1960-1999, we show that the variation in the results obtained for different parameterizations and reference categories is substantial and leads to contradictory conclusions. We conclude that the non-uniqueness property is a new argument for not routinely applying the intrinsic estimator.

Interviewer BMI effects on under- and over-reporting of restrained eating: evidence from a national Dutch face-to-face survey and a postal follow-up.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the effect of interviewer BMI on self-reported restrained eating in a face-to-face survey and to examine under- and over-reporting using the face-to face study and a postal follow-up. METHODS: A sample of 1,212 Dutch adults was assigned to 98 interviewers with different BMI who administered an eating questionnaire. To further evaluate misreporting a mail follow-up was conducted among 504 participants. Data were analyzed using two-level hierarchical models. RESULTS: Interviewer BMI had a positive effect on restrained eating. Normal weight and pre-obese interviewers obtained valid responses, underweight interviewers stimulated under-reporting whereas obese interviewers triggered over-reporting. CONCLUSION: In face-to-face interviews self-reported dietary restraint is distorted by interviewer BMI. This result has implications for public health surveys, the more so given the expanding obesity epidemic.

Weather conditions and voter turnout in Dutch national parliament elections, 1971-2010.

While conventional wisdom assumes that inclement weather on election day reduces voter turnout, there is remarkably little evidence available to support truth to such belief. This paper examines the effects of temperature, sunshine duration and rainfall on voter turnout in 13 Dutch national parliament elections held from 1971 to 2010. It merges the election results from over 400 municipalities with election-day weather data drawn from the nearest weather station. We find that the weather parameters indeed affect voter turnout. Election-day rainfall of roughly 25 mm (1 inch) reduces turnout by a rate of one percent, whereas a 10-degree-Celsius increase in temperature correlates with an increase of almost one percent in overall turnout. One hundred percent sunshine corresponds to a one and a half percent greater voter turnout compared to zero sunshine.

Weather conditions and political party vote share in Dutch national parliament elections, 1971-2010.

Inclement weather on election day is widely seen to benefit certain political parties at the expense of others. Empirical evidence for this weather-vote share hypothesis is sparse however. We examine the effects of rainfall and temperature on share of the votes of eight political parties that participated in 13 national parliament elections, held in the Netherlands from 1971 to 2010. This paper merges the election results for all Dutch municipalities with election-day weather observations drawn from all official weather stations well distributed over the country. We find that the weather parameters affect the election results in a statistically and politically significant way. Whereas the Christian Democratic party benefits from substantial rain (10 mm) on voting day by gaining one extra seat in the 150-seat Dutch national parliament, the left-wing Social Democratic (Labor) and the Socialist parties are found to suffer from cold and wet conditions. Cold (5°C) and rainy (10 mm) election day weather causes the latter parties to lose one or two parliamentary seats.

Demand for mental health care and changes in service use patterns in the Netherlands, 1979 to 1995.

OBJECTIVE: Mental health services appear increasingly incapable of satisfying the demand for care, which may cause some segments of the population to be less effectively reached. This study investigated the rates of use of mental health services in the Netherlands from 1979 to 1995 and examined whether particular sociodemographic groups made greater or lesser relative use of these services over time. METHODS: Data were derived from the Facilities Use Surveys, a series of Dutch cross-sectional population studies that have recorded household characteristics and service use since 1979. More than 28,000 households were included in the analyses. RESULTS: The overall use of mental health services virtually doubled from 1979 to 1995; a particularly steep rise was seen in the first half of the 1980s. Households that had one parent, that had low income, that were dependent on benefits, and that were younger all had greater odds of using both specialized mental health care (for example, prevention programs for mental health problems and psychotherapeutic and social psychiatric treatment offered by psychologists, psychotherapists, or psychiatrists) and social work services (for example, psychosocial counselling and practical support offered by social workers to people with social problems, such as housing, finances, and psychosocial issues). Households with low education were less likely to use specialized mental health care but were more likely to use social work services. Nonreligious households and urban households were more likely to use specialized mental health care and were equally likely to use social work services. Overall, these relative use patterns did not change over time. CONCLUSIONS: Despite greater pressures on mental health services and the many changes in service delivery in recent decades, relative patterns of help seeking and referral to mental health services have not varied systematically over time.