Latent class, or finite mixture, modelling has proved a very popular, and relatively easy, way of introducing much-needed heterogeneity into empirical models right across the social sciences. The technique involves (probabilistically) splitting the population into a finite number of (relatively...

Measures of mental wellbeing are heavily relied upon to identify at-risk individuals. However, self-reported mental health metrics might be unduly affected by mis-reporting (perhaps stemming from stigma effects). In this paper we consider this phenomenon using data from the British Household...

We contribute to the small, but important, literature exploring the incidence and implications of mis-reporting in survey data. Specifically, when modelling ?social bads such as illegal drug consumption, researchers are often faced with exceptionally low reported participation rates. We propose...

Data for discrete ordered random variables are often characterised by "excessive" zero observations. Traditional ordered probit models have limited capacity in explaining the preponderance of zero observations, especially when the zeros may relate to two distinct situations of non-participation...

We introduce the (panel) zero-inflated interval regression (ZIIR) model, which is ideally suited when data are in the form of groups, which is commonly the case in survey data, and there is an ‘excess’ of zero observations. We apply our new modelling framework to the analysis of visits to...

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 directs over $7 billion to expand broadband Internet availability and adoption in the United States. One target of such funding is the elderly population, a group of Americans for which broadband adoption is relatively low. An interesting...

This paper proposes a joint model of tobacco consumption and mortality over the life-cycle. The decision to smoke is a trade off between current utility derived from smoking and a mortality risk increasing with age. Thus, individuals with a shorter potential life expectancy have less incentive...

Health related data with discrete ordered dependent variables are often characterised by excessive 'zero' observations that may relate to two distinct data generating processes. For example, there may be a large proportion of 'no visit' in modeling discrete ordered levels of health service uses...

The adverse effects of excessive alcohol consumption are well-known. Of great concern to policy makers is to understand the potentially different drivers for consumers of different levels of alcohol consumption. Using unit record data from the Australian Drug Strategy Household Surveys, this...

Latent class, or finite mixture, modelling has proved a very popular, and relatively easy, way of introducing much-needed heterogeneity into empirical models right across the social sciences. The technique involves (probabilistically) splitting the population into a finite number of (relatively...