Relational Social Class, Self-Rated Health, and Mortality in the United States

Applying a relational class theory based on property ownership, authority, and credentials/skill, we analyzed the relationship between class, self-rated health (SRH), and mortality using the 1972–2016 General Social Survey. In a simple measure of class, we assigned respondents to worker, manager, petty bourgeois, or capitalist classes. In a complex measure, we subdivided workers (less-skilled/more-skilled), managers (low/high), and capitalists (small/large). Next, we estimated trends in class structure. Finally, after gender-stratification, we estimated the relationships between class, SRH, and mortality and, in sensitivity analyses, tested for class-by-race interaction. Class structure changed little over time, with workers constituting over half the population each decade. Concerning SRH, for the simple measure, managers, petty bourgeoisie, and capitalists reported better health than workers. For the complex measure, patterns were similar, although skilled workers reported better health than less-skilled workers, low managers, and petty bourgeoisie. Concerning mortality, for the simple measure, inequities were small among women; among men, only capitalists’ hazard was lower than workers’ hazard. For the complex measure, across genders, the hazards of less-skilled workers and petty bourgeoisie were highest, while skilled workers’ hazard resembled that of managers and capitalists. Finally, we found some evidence that the relationship between class and mortality varied by race, although the estimates were imprecise.

Using the Complex Measure in an Assessment of the Information Loss Due to the Microdata Disclosure Control

The paper contains a proposal of original method of assessment of information loss resulted from an application of the Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) conducted during preparation of the resulting data to the publication and disclosure to interested users. The SDC tools enable protection of sensitive data from their disclosure – both direct and indirect. The article focuses on pseudonimised microdata, i.e. individual data without fundamental identifiers, used for scientific purposes. This control is usually to suppress, swapping or disturbing of original data. However, such intervention is connected with the loss of some information. Optimization of choice of relevant SDC method requires then a minimization of such loss (and risk of disclosure of protected data). Traditionally used methods of measurement of such loss are not rarely sensitive to dissimilarities resulting from scale and scope of values of variables and cannot be used for ordinal data. Many of them weakly take also connections between variables into account, what can be important in various analyses. Hence, this paper is aimed at presentation of a proposal (having the source in papers by Zdzisław Hellwig) concerning use of a method of normalized and easy interpretable complex measure (called also the synthetic indicator) for connected features based on benchmark and anti–benchmark of development to the assessment of information loss resulted from an application of some SDC techniques and at studying its practical utility. The measure is here constructed on the basis of distances between original data and data after application of the SDC taking measurement scales into account.

Aristotle’s Measurement Dilemma

This paper has two main goals: first, it reconstructs Aristotle’s account of measurement in the Metaphysics and shows how it connects to modern notions of measurement. Second, it demonstrates that Aristotle’s notion of measurement works only for simple measures, and leads him into a dilemma once it comes to measuring complex phenomena, such as motion, where two or more different aspects, such as time and space, have to be taken into account. This is shown with the help of Aristotle’s reaction to one of the problems that Zeno’s dichotomy paradox raises: Aristotle implicitly employs a complex measure of motion when solving this problem, while he explicitly characterizes the measure of motion as a simple measure in the Physics.