TY - JOUR AU - Fox, John AB - This article attempts to explain negatively correlated disturbances in "parallel"simultaneous-equation models in which each equation contains essentially thesame variables as the others but is written for a different position of the socialsystem under study. The two general methodological explanations presented are:random error in the measures of the endogenous variables and upward bias in thecalculation of the (positively signed) reciprocal effects. We show how upwardbias in the calculation of these effects can be produced by the following types ofspecification error: failure to control for random error in the measures of theexogenous variables, the omission of the "cross-effects " of the exogenous variables, the omission of correlated parallel common causes, and contamination ofthe measures of the exogenous variables b y the endogenous variables. We illustratethe consequences of these last four types of specification error through the analysisof contrived data TI - Specification Error and Negatively Correlated Disturbances in "Parallel" Simultaneous-Equation Models JF - Sociological Methods & Research DO - 10.1177/004912418000800302 DA - 1980-02-01 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/specification-error-and-negatively-correlated-disturbances-in-parallel-U2iv78pGpT SP - 273 EP - 308 VL - 8 IS - 3 DP - DeepDyve ER -