This paper tests Caldwell’s mass schooling hypothesis in the context of rural Pakistan. His hypothesis was that the onset of the fertility transition is closely linked to the achievement of “mass formal schooling” of boys and girls. Punjab and Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) were selected for this study because they appear to be on the leading edge of the demographic transition—a transition ...

If an agent desires that φ and desires that ψ, this agent often also desires that φ and ψ hold at the same time (φ∧ψ). However, there are cases where φ ∧ ψ may be found less satisfactory for the agent than each of φ or ψ alone. This paper is a first attempt at modeling such nonmonotonic desires. The approach is developed in the setting of possibility theory, since it has been recently pointed o...

This paper offers a simple but powerful model of wishful thinking, cognitive dissonance, and related biases. Choices maximize subjective expected utility, but beliefs depend on the decision maker’s interests as well as on relevant information. Simplifying assumptions yield a representation in which the payoff in an event affects beliefs as if it were part of the evidence about its likelihood. A...

Fertility intentions are theoretical constructs of great importance to the fields of family planning and demography. Using a motivational traits-desires-intentions-behavior theoretical framework, I develop a graphic model that demonstrates how the two unipolar dimensions of positive and negative childbearing motivations are transformed via conscious desires and intentions into a single bipolar ...

INTRODUCTION HIV-affected women and couples often desire children and many accept HIV risk in order to attempt pregnancy and satisfy goals for a family. Risk reduction strategies to mitigate sexual and perinatal HIV transmission include biomedical and behavioural approaches. Current efforts to integrate HIV and reproductive health services offer prime opportunities to incorporate strategies for...

In the present study, we used experience sampling to measure desires and desire regulation in everyday life. Our analysis included data from 205 adults, who furnished a total of 7,827 reports of their desires over the course of a week. Across various desire domains, results revealed substantial differences in desire frequency and strength, the degree of conflict between desires and other goals,...

The authors present a polytomous item randomized response model to measure socially sensitive consumer behavior. It complements established methods in marketing to correct for social desirability bias a posteriori and traditional randomized response models to prevent social desirability bias a priori. The model allows for individual-level inferences at the construct level while protecting the p...

Adopting an alternative, yet complimentary view to the traditional, performance-based task/technology fit perspective, we examine the post-adoption of social network sites (SNS) by extending the concept of IT desirability as a central predictor of SNS continuous-use. We conceptualize SNS desirability as reflecting the affective relationship individuals experience with SNS, an approach that emph...

In this paper we study the logic of goals, which are formalized as desires with an utilitarian semantics. In our framework goals have a dual character, because they are constraints on utility functions as well as constructors of these utility functions. The non-monotonic reasoning related to the constructors reeects that goals are used as heuristic approximations of preferences in decision maki...