Biases in the relationship between dream threats and level of anxiety upon awakening

Objectives:\ud Controlling report length in dream content analysis comprises a significant methodological problem. Individual differences occur in report length which can influence category coding and rating scales. Differences are also found in dream content by sex and age. The aim of this study is to determine the bias of certain variables in dream content analysis when using rating scales, coding systems and questionnaires. As such, an evaluation was performed of the bias of these variables on the relationship between anxiety upon awakening, social threats (ST) and terrifying threats (TT) established in a previous study.\ud Methods: The sample consisted of 215 dreams collected in dreamers' homes (63 belonged to men and 152 to women). The dreamer's level of anxiety upon awakening was assessed with the CEAD. The level of social and terrifying threats in the content of the dreams was also assessed. Other variables entered into the analysis were sex, age, dream length, number of hours before answering the questionnaire, number of hours' sleep and the frequency with which the dreamer suffers nightmares.\ud Results:\ud Use of the Mann Whitney U found significant differences by sex in the dreamer's nightmare frequency (z=-2.53 p=.011), in terrifying threats in the dream (z=-2.03 p= .042) and by dream time (z=-2.51 p=.012). The Spearman Rho correlation coefficient indicated a positive relationship between anxiety upon awakening and nightmare frequency (Rho=.26 p<.001). Social and terrifying threats were also positively correlated with word count and the number of dream characters (Rho=.37 p<.001, Rho=.17 p=.010). Both anxiety upon awakening and social and terrifying threats were negatively correlated with the age of the dreamer (RhoCEAD-AGE=-.20 p=.006, RhoST-AGE=-.30 p<.001, RhoTT-AGE=-.37 p<.001). Possible biases due to sex, age, word count and the number of characters were statistically controlled by means of partial correlation. Through the use of partial correlations, the significance between anxiety upon awakening, social threats and terrifying threats in the dream was observed to be maintained (rCEAD-TS=.17 p=.025, rCEAD-TT=.19 p=.011).\ud Conclusion:\ud The sex, age of the dreamer, the report word count and the number of dream characters must be controlled in research into dream content. In addition, after eliminating these biases, a significant relationship was confirmed between threats which appear in the dream and the dreamer's level of anxiety upon awakening

Anxiety upon Awakening and Attributes of Dream Characters

Objective: To explore the attributes of dream characters related to anxiety upon awakening, and the possibility of using these attributes to construct a questionnaire administered to dreamers as an alternative to traditional methods of dream content coding via trained judges, such as those of Hall and Van de Castle and Gottschalk-Gleser. Method: A sample of 169 volunteers rated their dream characters with adjectives. Character attributes related to anxiety upon awakening were analysed through an exploratory factor analysis with orthogonal rotation. Results: With 37 character attributes a KMO sampling adequacy index of 0.83 was obtained and 33.87% of the variance was explained. Four factors were extracted: Psychological Threat, Auxiliary, Terrifying Threat and Spectator/Victim. Their corresponding alpha coefficients ranged between 0.85 and 0.73 and three of the factors presented significant (p £ 0.05)correlations with the anxiety of subjects upon awakening. Conclusions: Our results indicate that self-report questionnaires about subjects’ dreams are a reliable and valid alternative for assessing dream content. Information obtained about the characters allows for the assessment of the dream and provides indicators which allow for a simple interpretation, which does not contain biases due to the assessor or the ability of the subject to create a report

The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Income: A Panel Study of 'Bracket Creep'

This paper uses a panel of individual tax returns and the `bracket creep' as source of tax rate variation to construct instrumental variables estimates of the sensitivity of income to changes in tax rates. From 1979 to 1981, the US income tax schedule was fixed in nominal terms while inflation was high (around 10%). This produced a real change in tax rate schedules. Taxpayers near the top-end of a tax bracket were more likely to creep to a higher bracket and thus experience a rise in marginal rates the following year than the other taxpayers. Compensated elasticities can be estimated by comparing the differences in changes in income between taxpayers close to the top-end of a tax bracket to the other taxpayers. These estimates, based on comparisons between very similar groups, are robust to underlying changes in the income distribution, such as a rise in inequality. The elasticities found are higher than those derived in labor supply studies but smaller than those found previously with the same kind of tax returns data.

Reported Incomes and Marginal Tax Rates, 1960-2000: Evidence and Policy Implications

This paper use income tax return data from 1960 to 2000 to analyze the link between reported incomes and marginal tax rates. Only the top 1% incomes show evidence of behavioral responses to taxation. The data displays striking heterogeneity in the size of responses to tax changes overtime, with no response either short-term or long-term for the very large Kennedy top rate cuts in the early1960s, and striking evidence of responses, at least in the short-term, to the tax changes since the 1980s. The 1980s tax cuts generated a surge in business income reported by high income individual taxpayers due to a shift away from the corporate sector, and the disappearance of business losses for tax avoidance. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the recent 1993 tax increase generated large short-term responses of wages and salaries reported by top income earners, most likely due to re-timing in compensation to take advantage of the tax changes. However, it is unlikely that the extraordinary trend upward of the shares of total wages accruing to top wage income earners, which started in the 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s and especially the late 1990s, can be explained solely by the evolution of marginal tax rates.