Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Bibliometrics: From "Bean Counting" To Academic Accountability, Ruth A. Pagell

Research Collection Library

No abstract provided.

Outcome Evaluation For Mine Action Programme, Robert Keeley

Global CWD Repository

During a country wide survey undertaken by Swiss Foundation for Mine-action (FSD) between 2003-05 it was determined that approximately km2 of land was contaminated with mines and Un-exploded Ordnance (UXO). However, during the past 5 years, various activities such as Land Release (LR), Technical Survey (TS) and Clearance, has reduced the SHAs level to approximately 15-17 km2. UNDP hired Dr. Robert Keeley of RK Consulting Ltd (the 'Consultant') to undertake an Outcome Evaluation of the Country Programme Action Plan (CPAP) 2005-2009, Outcome #6 to "Create a sustainable national institution to plan, coordinate and implement comprehensive mine action." The Consultant identified …

Linking Mine Action And Development | Humanitarian And Development Ngos, Gichd

Global CWD Repository

Mine action programmes often are not linked early and strongly enough with key development actors. Despite the availability of extensive research documenting the need for greater coordination between mine action and development organisations, concrete guidance for practitioners and policy-makers on how to link mine action with development has been lacking. In response, the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Development has published guidelines on how to ensure mine action promotes development in mine-affected countries. More specifically, the guidelines seek to:

• Increase awareness that landmines and other remnants of conflict block development in many affected countries

• Strengthen coordination between mine action and …

Wrl Newsletter November 2008, Maryke Barber

WRL Newsletters

No abstract provided.

West Virginia Libraries 2008 Vol.61 No.6, Pamela Coyle

West Virginia Libraries Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Beaverton School District: Population And Enrollment Forecasts 2009-10 To 2025-26, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Kenneth Radin, Vivian Siu

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents Enrollment Forecasts prepared by the Portland State University Population Research Center (PRC) exploring three possible scenarios for BSD enrollment during the next 17 years based on different assumptions about future net migration and fertility rates. The study includes analysis of population, housing and enrollment trends affecting the District in recent years and forecasts of district-wide enrollments by grade level for the 2009-10 to 2025-26 school years.

Teaching Tips: Personal Criminal History Analysis Paper, Gordon Crews, Angela Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Research

Students often have difficulty visualizing the practical application of criminological theory. The following activity assists instructors to develop students‘ abilities in evaluating behaviors and determining the theoretical perspectives that potentially could be used to explain those behaviors. It also is designed to assist students in comprehending how their own experiences impact their views on law-violating behavior and its etiology. This exercise facilitates students‘ awareness of how their beliefs about the causes of law-violating behavior inevitably impact their beliefs about potential solutions or responses to this type of behavior. Eventually, students unfailingly begin to realize the artificial dichotomy between us, as …

An Expanded Conceptualization And A New Measure Of Compulsive Buying, Nancy Ridgway, Monika Kukar-Kinney, Kent B. Monroe

Marketing Faculty Publications

Drawing on the theoretical foundation of obsessive‐compulsive spectrum disorder, this article develops an expanded conceptualization and new measure of consumers’ proclivity to buy compulsively. Compulsive buying is defined as a consumer’s tendency to be preoccupied with buying that is revealed through repetitive buying and a lack of impulse control over buying. This measure includes dimensions of both obsessive‐compulsive and impulse‐control disorders. By measuring income‐dependent items or consequences of compulsive buying separately from the compulsive‐buying scale, we develop a measure that has a strong theoretical foundation, well‐documented psychometric properties, and an ability to be applied to general consumer populations.

Wmu International News November 2008, Haenicke Institute For Global Education

WMU International News

In this issue:

WMU joins Internationalization Laboratory of the American Council on Education

Japan university awards honorary doctorate to WMU emeritus physics professor

Fall activities feature flags, apples, Halloween and Chicago

Quenching the Middle East’s thirst for water is desired outcome for WMU geoscience researchers

New innovative summer program in Egypt

International lady Broncos share tips for succeeding on the field and in the classroom

Love of linguistics leads to ESL career for Ila Baker

Report On Mineburner System Used And Trialled By Handicap International In Bosnia And Herzegovina In 2008, P. Mccullough

Global CWD Repository

The aim of this report is to:

• Report on MineBurner training for HI staff.

• Show cost comparison between MineBurner and sub-contracted demolitions

• Document all operational uses of MineBurner during the reporting period.

• List observations and make recommendations.

Impacts Of ‘Three Strikes And You’Re Out’ On Crime Trends In California And Throughout The United States, Elsa Y. Chen

Political Science

The impacts of Three Strikes on crime in California and throughout the U.S. are analyzed using cross-sectional time series analysis of state-level data from 1986 to 2005. The model measures both deterrence and incapacitation effects, controlling for pre-existing crime trends and economic, demographic, and policy factors. Despite limited usage outside California, the presence of a Three Strikes law appears to be associated with slightly but significantly faster rates of decline in robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft nationwide. Three Strikes is also associated with slower declines in murder rates. Although California’s law is the broadest and most-frequently-used Three Strikes …

Speak Softly...With Everyone You Can, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From the Monroe Doctrine to the Bush Doctrine, United States foreign policy has been predicated on the assumption that somehow it knows what is best for the rest of the world. Monroe feared a potential encroachment from Russia and meddling in the "American" Hemisphere by the European powers and issued what originally appeared as a modest statement about resistance to intervention by any other country than the United States . Ironically enforced by the British Navy at that time, the Monroe Doctrine went far beyond its modest beginnings to set a precedent for the development of U.S. foreign policy. The …

Human Rights And The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There has been a vivid tendency this year by the conventional keepers of Washington wisdom to explicate the two presidential candidates' foreign policy views using old frameworks of "hawk" and "dove." Not only is this binary wrong, it fundamentally obscures some rather ironic potentials for how each candidate, if elected president, will focus upon human rights in their foreign policy. McCain's neoconservative view of the world is founded upon the Wilsonian call for democratization-culminating in what he terms a "League of Democracies." To use a concept that Arnold Wolfers first coined, and one which Joshua Muravchik has proffered as well, …

Contact With Nature, Sense Of Humor, And Psychological Well-Being, Thomas R. Herzog, Sarah J. Strevey

Peer Reviewed Articles

We administered a questionnaire measuring contact with nature, sense of humor, and psychological well-being. Factor analysis of the humor items yielded four factors: humor production, humor appreciation, coping humor, and humor tolerance. Factor analysis of 14 well-being measures yielded three factors: emotional well-being, personal development, and effective functioning. The best sense-of-humor predictor of the well-being measures and factors was humor appreciation. Regression models for each of the well-being factors as dependent variables with humor appreciation and contact with nature as independent variables showed that additive models with both predictors were appropriate for personal development and effective functioning and that a …

Road Ecology Course And Seminar Series, Mark D. Sytsma

TREC Final Reports

The American road network is a major economic investment that is a major organizing force for human activity. The road system has profoundly altered ecological processes and, as a result, it is also an important organizing force for ecosystems. Understanding the ecological consequences of road system design and use is critical to effective engineering and management of road systems to minimize impacts. I propose a new course within Environmental Science and Resources at PSU that will expose upper division undergraduate and graduate students to the fundamental concepts of road ecology through discussion, guest speakers, and field trips. I propose a …

Havre Community Survey, Christine Oschell

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

The purpose of this case study was to provide Havre community planners with an understanding of their visitors and the money spent by them in Havre, MT.

Are Electronic Journals Good For Science?, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Most people accept the notion that e-journals, through library subscriptions or open access, are good for science. They save readers time in tracking down articles and help them identify relevant materials from a wide range of journal titles. However, the academic world was buzzing recently over a study that challenged this notion.

Ua35/1 Doers & Deeds Vol. 7, No. 8, Wku Provost

WKU Archives Records

Newsletter created by the WKU Provost & Vice President of Academic Affairs to highlight the activities of faculty, staff and alumni.

Exploratory Study Of Environmental Effects On Physical Activity And Overweight In Older Women: Research Update, Heather A. Whitcomb, Kosuke Tamura, Lauren Milius, Francine Laden, Steve Melly, Peter James, Robin Puett, Ellen Cromley, Eran Ben-Joseph, Philip J. Troped

GIS Day

Background: Physical inactivity and obesity are major public health issues. Recent studies have provided evidence that attributes of the built environment influence physical activity among adults and that factors such as greater urban sprawl are related to overweight and obesity. Few studies have developed objective individual-level measures of the built environment, a geographic scale that may be more relevant to certain types of physical activity, such as walking. In addition, further research is needed to assess the associations of both objective and perceived environmental factors with physical activity. In this 2-year exploratory study funded by the National Cancer Institute, we …

Australian Consumer Attitudes To Health Claim - Food Product Compatibility For Functional Foods, P. G. Williams, L. Ridges, M. Batterham, B. Ripper, M. C. Hung

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This study with Australian consumers investigated how appealing different health claims combined with particular food carriers were to Australian consumers, and compared the results of a similar study with Dutch consumers. 149 shoppers considered up to 30 different food concepts, rating how ‘attractive’, ‘believable’, and ‘new and different’ they found each concept and their ‘intention to try’. Each variable was significantly related to intention to try (p<0.001) and together explained 56% of the intention score. Claims and carriers independently had a significant effect on ratings of attractiveness and intention to try but, unlike the Dutch study, the carrier was a more important predictor of intention to purchase than the claim. Implications for regulation of health claims for food are discussed.

Estimation And Model Selection Of Semiparametric Multivariate Survival Functions Under General Censorship, Xiaohong Chen, Yanqin Fan, Demian Pouzo, Zhiliang Ying

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Many models of semiparametric multivariate survival functions are characterized by nonparametric marginal survival functions and parametric copula functions, where different copulas imply different dependence structures. This paper considers estimation and model selection for these semiparametric multivariate survival functions, allowing for misspecified parametric copulas and data subject to general censoring. We first establish convergence of the two-step estimator of the copula parameter to the pseudo-true value defined as the value of the parameter that minimizes the KLIC between the parametric copula induced multivariate density and the unknown true density. We then derive its root–n asymptotically normal distribution and provide a simple …

Can’T Test This: Test Performance And Anxiety, Brian Judd, Danielle Merli, Jamie Zagar

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

We analyzed test anxiety with performance on a standardized test. We had four groups of participants. We looked at two variables: time warning and presence of a confederate. We hypothesized that the performance of participants in a more natural test environment (testing in the presence of another test taker, i.e., the confederate) would perform worse than those who were tested by themselves, and that those who received a time warning would perform worse than those who did not receive a time warning. Those with a higher GPA would have performed better overall on the test. There was not a significant …

Implicit And Explicit Self-Esteem And Their Correlations With Codependency, Rachel N. Rogers

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

The present study examined the correlations between implicit and explicit self-esteem and codependency. Implicit self-esteem involves automatic, over-learned self-evaluations and explicit self-esteem refers to conscious feelings of one’s self. It was predicted that participants who scored higher on the implicit self-esteem measure would score lower on the codependency scale, regardless of scores on the explicit self-esteem scale. Participants engaged in a timed task involving me/not-me primes and positive/negative words to measure implicit self-esteem. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Spann-Fischer Codependency Scale were used to measure explicit self-esteem and codependency, respectively. Should a strong negative correlation be found between codependency …

Managing Strategic Buyers, Johannes Hörner, Larry Samuelson

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We consider the problem of a monopolist with an object to sell before some deadline, facing n buyers with independent private values. The monopolist posts prices but has no commitment power. We show that the monopolist can always secure at least the larger of the static monopoly profit and the revenue from a Dutch auction with a zero reserve price. When there are only a few buyers, her profits are higher than this bound, and she essentially posts unacceptable prices up to the very end, at which point prices collapse to a “reservation price” that exceeds marginal cost. When there …

Estimating Explanatory Power In A Simple Regression Model Via Smoothers, Rand R. Wilcox

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Consider the regression model Y = γ(X) + ε , where γ(X) is some conditional measure of location associated with Y , given X. Let Υ̂ be some estimate of Y, given X, and let τ² (Y) be some measure of variation. Explanatory power is η² = τ² (Υ̂) /τ²(Y) . When γ(X) = β₀ + β₁X and τ²(Y) is the variance of Y , η² = ρ² , …

Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis For Testing Measurement Invariance In Mixed Item Format Data, Kim H. Koh, Bruno D. Zumbo

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

This simulation study investigated the empirical Type I error rates of using the maximum likelihood estimation method and Pearson covariance matrix for multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) of full and strong measurement invariance hypotheses with mixed item format data that are ordinal in nature. The results indicate that mixed item formats and sample size combinations do not result in inflated empirical Type I error rates for rejecting the true measurement invariance hypotheses. Therefore, although the common methods are in a sense sub-optimal, they don’t lead to researchers claiming that measures are functioning differently across groups – i.e., a lack of …

An Optimum Allocation With A Family Of Estimators Using Auxiliary Information In Sample Survey, Gajendra K. Vishwakarma, Housila P. Singh

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The problem of obtaining optimum allocation using auxiliary information in stratified random sampling. An optimum allocation with a family of estimators is obtained and its efficiency is compared with that of Neyman allocation based on Srivastava (1971) class of estimators and the optimum allocation suggested by Zaidi et al., (1989). It is shown that the proposed allocation is better in the sense having smaller variance compared to other optimum allocation.

Data Mining Ceo Compensation, Susan M. Adams, Atul Gupta, Dominique M. Haughton, John D. Leeth

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The need to pre-specify expected interactions between variables is an issue in multiple regression. Theoretical and practical considerations make it impossible to pre-specify all possible interactions. The functional form of the dependent variable on the predictors is unknown in many cases. Two ways are described in which the data mining technique Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) can be utilized: first, to obtain possible improvements in model specification, and second, to test for the robustness of findings from a regression analysis. An empirical illustration is provided to show how MARS can be used for both purposes.

On Some Properties Of Quasi-Negative-Binomial Distribution And Its Applications, Anwar Hassan, Sheikh Bilal

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The quasi-negative-binomial distribution was applied to queuing theory for determining the distribution of total number of customers served before the queue vanishes under certain assumptions. Some structural properties (probability generating function, convolution, mode and recurrence relation) for the moments of quasi-negative-binomial distribution are discussed. The distribution’s characterization and its relation with other distributions were investigated. A computer program was developed using R to obtain ML estimates and the distribution was fitted to some observed sets of data to test its goodness of fit.

Mental Rotation In Human Infants: A Sex Difference, David S. Moore, Scott P. Johnson

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

A sex difference on mental-rotation tasks has been demonstrated repeatedly, but not in children less than 4 years of age. To demonstrate mental rotation in human infants, we habituated 5-month-old infants to an object revolving through a 240° angle. In successive test trials, infants saw the habituation object or its mirror image revolving through a previously unseen 120° angle. Only the male infants appeared to recognize the familiar object from the new perspective, a feat requiring mental rotation. These data provide evidence for a sex difference in mental rotation of an object through three-dimensional space, consistently seen in adult populations.