Jeffrey A Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 3582452 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeffrey A Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeffrey A |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH J A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nebraska–Lincoln |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1847-1858 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 584 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Bucky, Becky, and Student Financial Aid Policy Design
Bucky’s Tuition Promise (BTP) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison offers generous financial aid to low-income, in-state students. Unlike many similar programs at other public universities, financial eligibility for BTP depends solely on a family’s adjusted gross income (AGI), rather than on the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or some function of the poverty line. This program design …
Short Take
Conducting field research with a vulnerable population is difficult under the most auspicious conditions, and these difficulties only increase during a pandemic. Here, we describe the practical challenges and ethical considerations surrounding a recent data collection effort with a high-risk population during the COVID-19 pandemic. We detail our strategies related to research design, site selection, and ethical review
Workforce Entry Including Career and Technical Education and Training
This article reviews the basic patterns of employment and school enrollment for new labor market entrants in the period leading up to the Great Recession and in the decade thereafter. We find a persistent shift into four-year colleges that began during the Great Recession. At the same time, fewer youth are neither working nor enrolled in school. We see little change in occupational training programs during our study period, in program or in parti…
Network sampling coverage III
Exacerbating Inequalities
Importantly, racial/ethnic disparities in social networks both prior to and as a result of the pandemic intensify existing inequalities and demonstrate the necessity of better understanding social network inequalities for marginalized older adults, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis
Estimating Contextual Effects from Ego Network Data
Network concepts are often used to characterize the features of a social context. For example, past work has asked if individuals in more socially cohesive neighborhoods have better mental health outcomes. Despite the ubiquity of use, it is relatively rare for contextual studies to use the methods of network analysis. This is the case, in part, because network data are difficult to collect, requiring information on all ties between all actors. In…
Using Ego Network Data to Inform Agent-based Models of Diffusion
Agent-based modeling holds great potential as an analytical tool. Agent-based models (ABMs) are, however, also vulnerable to critique, as they often employ stylized social worlds, with little connection to the actual environment in question. Given these concerns, there has been a recent call to more fully incorporate empirical data into ABMs. This article falls in this tradition, exploring the benefits of using sampled ego network data in ABMs of…
Network Effects in Blau Space
We develop a method of imputing ego network characteristics for respondents in probability samples of individuals. This imputed network uses the homophily principle to estimate certain properties of a respondent's core discussion network in the absence of actual network data. These properties measure the potential exposure of respondents to the attitudes, values, beliefs, and so on of their (likely) network alters. We use American National Electi…
Nonresponse in Organizational Surveying
In this study, survey nonresponse is researcher specified and data simulated to evaluate its impact on error and bias in attitudinal ratings. We accomplish this by scaling densities of (non)response probabilities to a survey's item metric and using these now conditional probabilities to sample from known attitudinal distributions. The illustrative context we choose for our simulations is intra-organizational surveying (within which attitudes towa…
A Social Space Approach to Testing Complex Hypotheses
Where do individuals identifying as Hispanic fit in the racial landscape of the United States? The answer offered by past work is complex: The empirical results do not lend themselves to simple interpretation as no single hypothesis fits the Hispanic case very well. Instead, Hispanic integration is described as mixtures of different archetypical hypotheses, like panethnic formation, white assimilation, and racialized assimilation. My goal is to d…
Network sampling coverage II
Global Network Inference from Ego Network Samples
Network sampling poses a radical idea: that it is possible to measure global network structure without the full population coverage assumed in most network studies. Network sampling is only useful, however, if a researcher can produce accurate global network estimates. This article explores the practicality of making network inference, focusing on the approach introduced in Smith (2012 Smith, J. A. (2012). Macrostructure from microstructure: Gene…
Challenges to recruiting population representative samples of female sex workers in China using Respondent Driven Sampling
Movement without mobility
Network Ecology and Adolescent Social Structure
Adolescent societies-whether arising from weak, short-term classroom friendships or from close, long-term friendships-exhibit various levels of network clustering, segregation, and hierarchy. Some are rank-ordered caste systems and others are flat, cliquish worlds. Explaining the source of such structural variation remains a challenge, however, because global network features are generally treated as the agglomeration of micro-level tie-formation…
Social Distance in the United States
Homophily, the tendency for similar actors to be connected at a higher rate than dissimilar actors, is a pervasive social fact. In this article, we examine changes over a 20-year period in two types of homophily-the actual level of contact between people in different social categories and the level of contact relative to chance. We use data from the 1985 and 2004 General Social Surveys to ask whether the strengths of five social distinctions-sex,…
Structural effects of network sampling coverage I
Macrostructure from Microstructure
This article presents a new simulation method to make global network inference from sampled data. The proposed method takes sampled ego network data and uses exponential random graph models (ERGM) to reconstruct the features of the true, unknown network. After describing the method, the author presents two validity checks of the approach: the first uses the 20 largest Add Health networks while the second uses the Sociology Coauthorship network in…
Estimating the Returns to College Quality with Multiple Proxies for Quality
Existing studies of the effects of college quality on wages typically rely on a single proxy variable for college quality. This study questions the wisdom of using a single proxy given that it likely contains substantial measurement error. We consider four econometric approaches to the problem that involve the use of multiple proxies for college quality: factor analysis, instruments variables, a method recently proposed by Lubotsky and Wittenberg…
Nature, Nation-Building, and the Seasons of Justice in Rousseau's Political Thought
Examining the special relations between On the Social Contract and the Constitutional Project for Corsica , this essay argues that Rousseau conceives of constitutionalism on the basis of his understanding of the “natural development” of any state. What is “natural” is a certain order in which developmental periods best emerge, such that any state's disordered development will always result in its premature “death.” The essay explains four aspects…
Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators?
How robust is the evidence on the effects of college quality? Evidence from matching
Nationalism, Virtue, and the Spirit of Liberty in Rousseau's Government of Poland
According to Rousseau in The Government of Poland , the “love of liberty,” when properly cultivated, engenders the patriotism and virtue of citizens. The citizen's love of liberty, however, is not his enjoyment of liberty; it is his fiery longing or passion for national liberty, which has endured in the hearts of Poles owing to the constant threat posed by Russian imperialism. Unless the Poles continue to believe their liberty is threatened, they…
"Natural Happiness, Sensation, and Infancy in Rousseau's "Emile
At the beginning of the Emile, Rousseau defines human nature in teleological terms, referring to it as a natural "direction," "rule," and "path" of development over the course of the individual human life span. The hypothetical education of Emile depicts man's development according to that direction. From infancy until adolescence, nature's direction points Emile toward natural happiness-the equilibrium between his original faculties or powers an…
War and Press Freedom
Journal Article War & Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative Power. By Jeffery A. Smith. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. xii, 324 pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN 0-19-509945-1. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-19-509946-X.) Get access Patrick S. Washburn Patrick S. Washburn Ohio University, Athens, Ohio Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 2, September 2000, Pages 710–711…
Social Distance in the United States
Homophily, the tendency for similar actors to be connected at a higher rate than dissimilar actors, is a pervasive social fact. In this article, we examine changes over a 20-year period in two types of homophily-the actual level of contact between people in different social categories and the level of contact relative to chance. We use data from the 1985 and 2004 General Social Surveys to ask whether the strengths of five social distinctions-sex,…
Network Ecology and Adolescent Social Structure
Adolescent societies-whether arising from weak, short-term classroom friendships or from close, long-term friendships-exhibit various levels of network clustering, segregation, and hierarchy. Some are rank-ordered caste systems and others are flat, cliquish worlds. Explaining the source of such structural variation remains a challenge, however, because global network features are generally treated as the agglomeration of micro-level tie-formation…
Assessing the Case for Social Experiments
This paper analyzes the method of social experiments. The assumptions that justify the experimental method are exposited. Parameters of interest in evaluating social programs are discussed. The authors show how experiments sometimes serve as instrumental variables to identify program impacts. The most favorable case for experiments ignores variability across persons in response to treatments received and assumes that mean impacts of a program are…
Structural effects of network sampling coverage I
Exacerbating Inequalities
Importantly, racial/ethnic disparities in social networks both prior to and as a result of the pandemic intensify existing inequalities and demonstrate the necessity of better understanding social network inequalities for marginalized older adults, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis
The Pre‐programme Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Programme. Implications for Simple Programme Evaluation Strategies
Journal Article The Pre‐programme Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Programme. Implications for Simple Programme Evaluation Strategies Get access James J. Heckman, James J. Heckman University of Chicago and American Bar Foundation Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jeffrey A. Smith Jeffrey A. Smith University of Western Ontario Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Acad…
Network sampling coverage II
A Test of Downsian Voter Rationality
Systematic testing of Downsian voter rationality is accomplished using a computer simulation technique on the 1964 SRC voting survey. The simulation tests both the hypotheses predicting whether an individual will vote and for whom an individual will vote. To evaluate the results of the tests we develop a statistic analogous to Pearson's r. This statistic measures the percentage improvement over a random guess technique. Utilizing this statistic, …
Macrostructure from Microstructure
This article presents a new simulation method to make global network inference from sampled data. The proposed method takes sampled ego network data and uses exponential random graph models (ERGM) to reconstruct the features of the true, unknown network. After describing the method, the author presents two validity checks of the approach: the first uses the 20 largest Add Health networks while the second uses the Sociology Coauthorship network in…
Behavioral economic analysis of food choice in obese children
Network Effects in Blau Space
We develop a method of imputing ego network characteristics for respondents in probability samples of individuals. This imputed network uses the homophily principle to estimate certain properties of a respondent's core discussion network in the absence of actual network data. These properties measure the potential exposure of respondents to the attitudes, values, beliefs, and so on of their (likely) network alters. We use American National Electi…
Network sampling coverage III
Challenges to recruiting population representative samples of female sex workers in China using Respondent Driven Sampling
Nationalism, Virtue, and the Spirit of Liberty in Rousseau's Government of Poland
According to Rousseau in The Government of Poland , the “love of liberty,” when properly cultivated, engenders the patriotism and virtue of citizens. The citizen's love of liberty, however, is not his enjoyment of liberty; it is his fiery longing or passion for national liberty, which has endured in the hearts of Poles owing to the constant threat posed by Russian imperialism. Unless the Poles continue to believe their liberty is threatened, they…
Circumscribed Accuracy among Well-Acquainted Individuals
Global Network Inference from Ego Network Samples
Network sampling poses a radical idea: that it is possible to measure global network structure without the full population coverage assumed in most network studies. Network sampling is only useful, however, if a researcher can produce accurate global network estimates. This article explores the practicality of making network inference, focusing on the approach introduced in Smith (2012 Smith, J. A. (2012). Macrostructure from microstructure: Gene…
A Social Space Approach to Testing Complex Hypotheses
Where do individuals identifying as Hispanic fit in the racial landscape of the United States? The answer offered by past work is complex: The empirical results do not lend themselves to simple interpretation as no single hypothesis fits the Hispanic case very well. Instead, Hispanic integration is described as mixtures of different archetypical hypotheses, like panethnic formation, white assimilation, and racialized assimilation. My goal is to d…
Estimating Contextual Effects from Ego Network Data
Network concepts are often used to characterize the features of a social context. For example, past work has asked if individuals in more socially cohesive neighborhoods have better mental health outcomes. Despite the ubiquity of use, it is relatively rare for contextual studies to use the methods of network analysis. This is the case, in part, because network data are difficult to collect, requiring information on all ties between all actors. In…
Using Ego Network Data to Inform Agent-based Models of Diffusion
Agent-based modeling holds great potential as an analytical tool. Agent-based models (ABMs) are, however, also vulnerable to critique, as they often employ stylized social worlds, with little connection to the actual environment in question. Given these concerns, there has been a recent call to more fully incorporate empirical data into ABMs. This article falls in this tradition, exploring the benefits of using sampled ego network data in ABMs of…
Bucky, Becky, and Student Financial Aid Policy Design
Bucky’s Tuition Promise (BTP) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison offers generous financial aid to low-income, in-state students. Unlike many similar programs at other public universities, financial eligibility for BTP depends solely on a family’s adjusted gross income (AGI), rather than on the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or some function of the poverty line. This program design …
Short Take
Conducting field research with a vulnerable population is difficult under the most auspicious conditions, and these difficulties only increase during a pandemic. Here, we describe the practical challenges and ethical considerations surrounding a recent data collection effort with a high-risk population during the COVID-19 pandemic. We detail our strategies related to research design, site selection, and ethical review
Nonresponse in Organizational Surveying
In this study, survey nonresponse is researcher specified and data simulated to evaluate its impact on error and bias in attitudinal ratings. We accomplish this by scaling densities of (non)response probabilities to a survey's item metric and using these now conditional probabilities to sample from known attitudinal distributions. The illustrative context we choose for our simulations is intra-organizational surveying (within which attitudes towa…
Nature, Nation-Building, and the Seasons of Justice in Rousseau's Political Thought
Examining the special relations between On the Social Contract and the Constitutional Project for Corsica , this essay argues that Rousseau conceives of constitutionalism on the basis of his understanding of the “natural development” of any state. What is “natural” is a certain order in which developmental periods best emerge, such that any state's disordered development will always result in its premature “death.” The essay explains four aspects…
"Natural Happiness, Sensation, and Infancy in Rousseau's "Emile
At the beginning of the Emile, Rousseau defines human nature in teleological terms, referring to it as a natural "direction," "rule," and "path" of development over the course of the individual human life span. The hypothetical education of Emile depicts man's development according to that direction. From infancy until adolescence, nature's direction points Emile toward natural happiness-the equilibrium between his original faculties or powers an…
More Criticism of Ethics Proposals
A Test of Downsian Voter Rationality
Systematic testing of Downsian voter rationality is accomplished using a computer simulation technique on the 1964 SRC voting survey. The simulation tests both the hypotheses predicting whether an individual will vote and for whom an individual will vote. To evaluate the results of the tests we develop a statistic analogous to Pearson's r. This statistic measures the percentage improvement over a random guess technique. Utilizing this statistic, …
Another World
Whiggery's Onward March
Behavioral economic analysis of food choice in obese children
Franklin and Bache
Journal Article Franklin and Bache: Envisioning the Enlightened Republic. By Jeffery A. Smith. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. x + 222 pp. $28.00.) Get access David A. Wilson David A. Wilson University of Toronto, Canada Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 78, Issue 2, September 1991, Pages 646–647, https://doi.org/10.2307/2079563 Published: 01 September 1991
Franklin and Bache
Franklin and Bache
Assessing the Case for Social Experiments
This paper analyzes the method of social experiments. The assumptions that justify the experimental method are exposited. Parameters of interest in evaluating social programs are discussed. The authors show how experiments sometimes serve as instrumental variables to identify program impacts. The most favorable case for experiments ignores variability across persons in response to treatments received and assumes that mean impacts of a program are…
Circumscribed Accuracy among Well-Acquainted Individuals
Making The Most Out Of Programme Evaluations and Social Experiments
The conventional approach to social programme evaluation focuses on estimating mean impacts of programmes. Yet many interesting questions regarding the political economy of programmes, the distribution of programme benefits and the option values conferred on programme participants require knowledge of the distribution of impacts, or features of it. This paper presents evidence that heterogeneity in response to programmes is empirically important …
How much is your vote worth? The unfairness of campaign spending limits
How much is your vote worth? The unfairness of campaign spending limits
Characterizing Selection Bias Using Experimental Data
This paper develops and applies semiparametric econometric methods to estimate the form of selection bias that arises from using nonexperimental comparison groups to evaluate social programs and to test the identifying assumptions that justify three widely-used classes of estimators and our extensions of them: (a) the method of matching; (b) the classical econometric selection model which represents the bias solely as a function of the probabilit…
Accounting for Dropouts in Evaluations of Social Programs
This paper explores issues that arise in the evaluation of social programs using experimental data in the frequently encountered case where some of the experimental treatment group members drop out of the program prior to receiving treatment. We begin with the standard estimator for this case and the identifying assumption upon which it rests. We then examine the behavior of the estimator when the dropouts receive a partial “dose” of the program …
The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs
The Pre‐programme Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Programme. Implications for Simple Programme Evaluation Strategies
Journal Article The Pre‐programme Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Programme. Implications for Simple Programme Evaluation Strategies Get access James J. Heckman, James J. Heckman University of Chicago and American Bar Foundation Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jeffrey A. Smith Jeffrey A. Smith University of Western Ontario Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Acad…
War and Press Freedom
Journal Article War & Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative Power. By Jeffery A. Smith. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. xii, 324 pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN 0-19-509945-1. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-19-509946-X.) Get access Patrick S. Washburn Patrick S. Washburn Ohio University, Athens, Ohio Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 2, September 2000, Pages 710–711…
"Natural Happiness, Sensation, and Infancy in Rousseau's "Emile
At the beginning of the Emile, Rousseau defines human nature in teleological terms, referring to it as a natural "direction," "rule," and "path" of development over the course of the individual human life span. The hypothetical education of Emile depicts man's development according to that direction. From infancy until adolescence, nature's direction points Emile toward natural happiness-the equilibrium between his original faculties or powers an…
Nationalism, Virtue, and the Spirit of Liberty in Rousseau's Government of Poland
According to Rousseau in The Government of Poland , the “love of liberty,” when properly cultivated, engenders the patriotism and virtue of citizens. The citizen's love of liberty, however, is not his enjoyment of liberty; it is his fiery longing or passion for national liberty, which has endured in the hearts of Poles owing to the constant threat posed by Russian imperialism. Unless the Poles continue to believe their liberty is threatened, they…
How robust is the evidence on the effects of college quality? Evidence from matching
Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators?
Estimating the Returns to College Quality with Multiple Proxies for Quality
Existing studies of the effects of college quality on wages typically rely on a single proxy variable for college quality. This study questions the wisdom of using a single proxy given that it likely contains substantial measurement error. We consider four econometric approaches to the problem that involve the use of multiple proxies for college quality: factor analysis, instruments variables, a method recently proposed by Lubotsky and Wittenberg…
Nature, Nation-Building, and the Seasons of Justice in Rousseau's Political Thought
Examining the special relations between On the Social Contract and the Constitutional Project for Corsica , this essay argues that Rousseau conceives of constitutionalism on the basis of his understanding of the “natural development” of any state. What is “natural” is a certain order in which developmental periods best emerge, such that any state's disordered development will always result in its premature “death.” The essay explains four aspects…
Macrostructure from Microstructure
This article presents a new simulation method to make global network inference from sampled data. The proposed method takes sampled ego network data and uses exponential random graph models (ERGM) to reconstruct the features of the true, unknown network. After describing the method, the author presents two validity checks of the approach: the first uses the 20 largest Add Health networks while the second uses the Sociology Coauthorship network in…
Computer Science (21 works) · Political science (18 works) · Mathematics (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Economics (15 works) · Statistics (15 works) · Econometrics (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works)