Advancements in marginal modeling for categorical data

Very often the data collected by social scientists involve dependent observations, without, however, the investigators having any substantive interest in the nature of the dependencies. Although these dependencies are not important for the answers to the research questions concerned, they must still be taken into account in the analysis. Standard statistical estimation and testing procedures assume independent and identically distributed observations, and they need to be modified for observations that are clustered in some way. Marginal models provide the tools to deal with these dependencies without having to make restrictive assumptions about their nature. In this paper, recent developments in the (maximum likelihood) estimation and testing of marginal models for categorical data will be explained, including marginal models with latent variables. The differences and commonalities with other ways of dealing with these nuisance dependencies will be discussed, especially with GEE and also briefly with (hierarchical) random coefficient models. The usefulness of marginal modeling will be illuminated by showing several common types of research questions and designs for which marginal models may provide the answers, along with two extensive real world examples. Finally, a brief evaluation will be given, including a discussion of shortcomings and strong point

Critical accommodations: Washington, Hollywood, and the World War II housing shortage

This article explores the extraordinary currency that the Washington housing crisis achieved during World War as a topic of popular joking. Looking at films, radio broadcasts, posters and other contemporary materials, I argue that the housing crisis provided a cultural scenario through which wartime audiences and the popular media could address (and express) ambivalent responses to the official paradigms of dutiful citizenship. In particular, I examine how a cycle of Hollywood films, mostly romantic comedies, make use of the housing crisis as a springboard for stories that examine the broader social and emotional accommodations required within the mobilized culture of wartime