Independent Variable. Place of Residence by region This variable describes women’s current place of residence in Kenya. In both the long and short questionnaire used to interview women, there is an identification section at the beginning that allows each participant to provide background information about their current county, district, and location/town of residence. Therefore, place of residence by region, a categorical variable, will be measured based on each participants’ response. For this thesis, ‘place of residence’ is subject to two distinct geographical regions of Kenya, Eastern and Nairobi. Hence, the utilization of maternal services for women in Nairobi will be compared to women living in the Eastern region. This independent variable was selected in order to examine how women’s place of residence affects their utilization of health services such as ANC, place of delivery, and skilled attendance during delivery.
Independent Variable. • Occupation • Age of donor • Types of donors (regular or new) • Educational background • Vaccination • History of sexual behavior
Independent Variable. Electoral Turnover The independent variable I have chosen to measure electoral turnover is the number of changes in party control in the mayor seat. Electoral turnover is a reliable measure of changes in party control because it is an observable phenomenon, whose presence or absence is visible to anyone, and therefore, if this study were repeated, one would expect the same results each time. Unlike electoral competition where the concern is how many votes each party won, electoral turnover is simply which party won for a given election year, and thus highly reliable. Most Mexican municipalities elect their governments with a secret ballot and universal suffrage (all women and men ages eighteen and older), a system that is referred to as the Political Parties (PP) system.4 Mayoral candidates are presented by the political 4 Exceptions to the PP system include the state of Oaxaca, in which 418 out of the 570 municipalities use xxx Xxxx y Costumbres System (UyC), where suffrage and candidate eligibility are determined by the parties, which have been formally recognized by the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE), and thus meet restrictive national registration guidelines (Xxxxxx, 5). This institutional characteristic is important for my study, because given that a political party nominates one candidate to run for mayor, one can assume that the candidate’s policy platform matches that of his/her party, at least to a certain extent.5 As mentioned earlier, municipal elections are held every three years, although the election years vary by state (ie: municipalities within a state hold elections on the same year, but municipalities amongst different states hold their elections in different years). Despite that every municipality holds an election for the mayor seat every three years, in some states the election month varies by year (for example, municipalities in Mexico state held elections every three years beginning in 2000, but in different months ranging from March-September). In order to measure electoral turnover, I gathered election results from 2,200 Mexican municipalities and coded which political party won during an election year. Given that politicians cannot stand for re-election in Mexico, electoral turnover measures whether or not a political party was re-elected for a consecutive three-year term. Although turnover between same political party also presents challenges in implementing effective reform, I am concerned with turnover between parties becaus...
Independent Variable. Political Shock A shock is an event that introduces new levels of uncertainty. This uncertainty is over the likelihood of the dominant group remaining in power, a non-dominant group coming to power, and the state destabilizing. In this dataset, I code for four types of political shocks: formation of an independent state, creation of a democratic government, transition from one authoritarian regime to another, and implementation of a significant economic reform. If any—or any combination—of the shocks happens in year k, I assign the variable of interest (shock) with a value of 1. Since it is expected that there is a time lag between the political shock and the language regime change, I code the nine subsequent years (k +1, k + 2 ... k +9) after the shock in year k also as part of the initial shock. I use two different coding schemes for these subsequent nine years. The first scheme assigns all nine subsequent years a value of 1 as well. This scheme is identified by Shock (Dichotomous). So for instance, South Korea became a democracy in 1988. Under this coding scheme, all ten observations from South Korea 1988 through South Korea 1997 have a value of 1 for Shock (Dichotomous). In contrast, the second scheme, identified as Shock (Count: 1-10) is ordinal: Each of the subsequent nine years is coded according to the number of years since the shock has happened, with the year of the shock k taking on a value of 1. So in the previous example of South Korea, the observation South Korea 1988 has a value of 1 for Shock (Count: 1-10); South Korea 1989, a value of 2; and so forth, up through South Korea 1997 with a value of 10. The observation South Korea 1998 is assigned a value of 0 as ten years had passed since the democratic shock. As a robustness check, I also disaggregate the shock into four dichotomous variables. Each variable represents one type of shock (political independence, democratic transition, regime change, and economic reform). Data for the formation of an independent state and the creation of a democratic government are from the POLITY IV dataset; data for the transition from one dictatorial government to another, from Xxxxxx (1999); and data for the implementation of a significant economic reform, from Xxxxx et al (2007).
Independent Variable. ⮚ Designing a guide of cooperative strategies for significant English learning.
Independent Variable. The independent variable for both research questions was a categorical measurement of religiosity. Respondents were asked in the NSDUH surveys to rank how much they agree with the following statement “Your religious beliefs influence how you make decisions in your life.” The available responses included “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “agree”, and “strongly agree”.
Independent Variable. Adolescents’ probable internalising disorder or probable externalising disorder SDQ subscales can be summarised into internalising (emotional and peer subscale) and externalising (conduct and hyperactivity subscales) problems (Xxxxxxx et al. 2010). Each of the subscale ranges from 0-10 with higher scores indicating more problems and with 80% of adolescents in the community having normal levels of problems in respective subscale and 10% either borderline or abnormal levels. Abnormal levels are used as an indication for having a probable emotional, conduct or hyperactivity disorder (Xxxxxxx 2001). For probable internalising disorder in this study: Cronbach’s (parent report)=0.62; Xxxxxxxx’s (adolescent report)=0.60. For probable externalising disorder in this study Cronbach’s (parent report)=0.70; Xxxxxxxx’s (adolescent report)=0.68. First, separately for adolescents and parents, probable internalising disorders were defined as reporting abnormal levels on the subscales emotional and/or peer problems; probable externalising disorders as reporting abnormal levels on conduct and/or hyperactivity problems. Second, we defined the presence of a probable internalising disorder as either adolescents or parents reporting it on an abnormal level, while we defined the absence of probable internalising disorder as both adolescents and parents reporting internalising disorders on a normal or borderline level. We proceeded accordingly for the presence and absence of externalising disorders. This was done before by (Xxxxx et al. 2013). Independent variable eMaterial 1 continued What was measured Measure (questionnaire or questions) How we used the measure (categories of measures are indicated in italic) Regression used as: Parents’ knowledge about adolescents’ feelings Question: ‘How much do your parents know about how you are feeling?’ Answered on a 4-point likert scale from ‘a lot’ to ‘not at all’. We collapsed four categories into two (‘a lot/some’ and ‘a little/not at all’). Independent variable General family functioning Reliable and valid six items version (Boterhoven De Haan et al. 1985) of the McMaster Family Functioning scale (Xxxxxxx et al. 1983). Items are rated on a 4-point likert scale, answers are summed up and divided by the number of items to receive a score between 1-6 (Xxxxxx et al. 1985). In this study including parents with adolescents aged 13-17, Xxxxxxxx’s =0.87. Used as proposed by Xxxxxx and colleagues (1985): score of >2 indicate healthy and ...
Independent Variable. HMO The main independent variable is a recoded binary variable for insurance type: HMO (1) and non-HMO (0). Variables in the consolidated files that are used to define these plans include those that define enrollees of public HMOs (Medicaid or SCHIP), private HMOs and all other types of plans defined as “non-HMO”. We used MEPS’ classification of HMOs as a distinct version of managed care, other than Preferred provider organizations (PPOs), Exclusive provider organizations (EPOs), and Point of service plans (POSs). MEPS describes HMOs as: “A health care system that assumes both the financial risks associated with providing comprehensive medical services (insurance and service risk) and the responsibility for health care delivery in a particular geographic area to HMO members, usually in return for a fixed, prepaid fee. Financial risk may be shared with the providers participating in the HMO.1” MEPS has clearly defined HMO variables and we defined all other insurance variables as non-HMOs.
