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Many proposed methods for analyzing clustered ordinal data focus on the regression model and consider the association structure within a cluster as a nuisance. However, the association structure is often of equal interest—for example, temporal association in longitudinal studies and association between responses to similar questions in a survey. We discuss the use, appropriateness, and interpretability of various latent variable and Markov models for the association structure and propose a new structure that exploits the ordinality of the response. The models are illustrated with a study concerning opinions regarding government spending and an analysis of stability and change in teenage marijuana use over time, where we reveal different behavioral patterns for boys and girls through a comprehensive investigation of individual response profiles.

This paper examines differences in health-and-social care utilisation for individuals with physical and/or mental health problems. Logistic regression models are used to determine disparity in the percentage of General Household/Lifestyle Survey participants with physical compared to mental health problems receiving disability benefits or health care services between 2000 and 2011. Our findings of a relative underutilisation of secondary health care combined with a relative overutilization of out-of-work benefits by individuals with mental health problems is novel to the field of rehabilitative health care. These results provide evidence for the previously suspected disparity in health care utilisation of individuals with mental health problems and indicate problems in labour force integration. The findings support the political call for a 'parity of esteem', which, in Britain, was enshrined in the Health and Social Care Act of 2012. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10597-020-00566-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

SummaryConsistency in reporting contraceptive use between spouses is little understood, especially in developing settings. This research challenges the accuracy of measuring contraceptive prevalence rate, which is traditionally calculated based on women's responses. Multinomial logistic regression techniques are employed on a couple dataset from the 1999–2000 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) to investigate the consistency in reporting condom use between husbands and wives. The level of inconsistency in reporting condom use was about 46%, of which about 32% was explained by husbands reporting condom use while wives did not, and 14% by wives reporting condom use while husbands did not. Regression analysis showed that couple education and age difference between the spouses are significant determinants of inconsistent reporting behaviour. The findings suggest the need for alternative approaches (questions) in the DHS to ensure consistency in the collection of data related to use of family planning methods.

HIV prevalence in China is less than one per cent, but the absolute number of people living with HIV/AIDS is large and growing. Given the limited scope of any potential cure for HIV, prevention plays a crucial role in controlling the epidemic. This paper examines the evolution of HIV awareness among women in China between 1997 and 2005. A regression decomposition analysis technique was used to disentangle the two main components driving a change in HIV awareness. The results show that HIV awareness has increased over time in China. The gaps between groups are narrowing over time and lower HIV awareness groups are catching up with the higher awareness groups. In 2005 education remained one of the main factors associated with HIV awareness, the other main factors being ethnicity, exposure to TV and newspapers. The increases in HIV awareness observed between 1997 and 2001 are similar between groups of women with different demographic characteristics, whereas between 2003 and 2005 increases are more pronounced among specific groups of women such as women from rural areas, women from Western parts of the country, women who belong to ethnic minorities and those with no education or with only primary education. The results suggest that the main driver of the observed change in HIV awareness over time in China is change in the environment such as in political commitment, interventions and campaigns rather than change in population structure.

SummaryHIV prevalence in China is less than one per cent, but the absolute number of people living with HIV/AIDS is large and growing. Given the limited scope of any potential cure for HIV, prevention plays a crucial role in controlling the epidemic. This paper examines the evolution of HIV awareness among women in China between 1997 and 2005. A regression decomposition analysis technique was used to disentangle the two main components driving a change in HIV awareness. The results show that HIV awareness has increased over time in China. The gaps between groups are narrowing over time and lower HIV awareness groups are catching up with the higher awareness groups. In 2005 education remained one of the main factors associated with HIV awareness, the other main factors being ethnicity, exposure to TV and newspapers. The increases in HIV awareness observed between 1997 and 2001 are similar between groups of women with different demographic characteristics, whereas between 2003 and 2005 increases are more pronounced among specific groups of women such as women from rural areas, women from Western parts of the country, women who belong to ethnic minorities and those with no education or with only primary education. The results suggest that the main driver of the observed change in HIV awareness over time in China is change in the environment such as in political commitment, interventions and campaigns rather than change in population structure.

Age and sex patterns of migration are essential for understanding drivers of population change and heterogeneity of migrant groups. We develop a hierarchical Bayesian model to estimate such patterns for international migration in the European Union and European Free Trade Association from 2002 to 2008, which was a period of time when the number of members expanded from 19 to 31 countries. Our model corrects for the inadequacies and inconsistencies in the available data and estimates the missing patterns. The posterior distributions of the age and sex profiles are then combined with a matrix of origin–destination flows, resulting in a synthetic database with measures of uncertainty for migration flows and other model parameters.