The Role of Social Goals in Bullies' and Victims' Social Information Processing in Response to Ambiguous and Overtly Hostile Provocation

Understanding what social goals are associated with bullying and victimization behaviours, even after allowing for biases in interpretation of and affective responses to social events, is critical for understanding the socio‐behavioural profile of bullies and victims. In the present study, 181 nine‐ to ten‐year‐olds' affective responses, attribution of intent, and social goals were assessed in the context of a series of ambiguous and overtly hostile provocation vignettes. Results showed that even after allowing for other social information processing biases, social goals were meaningfully associated with bullying and victimization scores. Bullying was inversely associated with relationship‐building goals, and positively associated with goals to be assertive over the provocateur when provocation was overtly hostile. Being victimized was associated with having submissive goals even when provocation was ambiguous and after accounting for attribution of hostile intent. Findings are discussed in light of theoretical and practical implications.     

Caring is not enough: the importance of Internet skills for online privacy protection

This article explains Internet users’ self-help activities in protecting their privacy online using structural equation modeling. Based on a representative survey of Swiss Internet users, it reveals past experiences with privacy breaches as a strong predictor of current protective behavior. Further, in line with the ‘privacy paradox’ argument, caring about privacy (privacy attitudes) alone does not necessarily result in substantial self-protection. Most strikingly, however, general Internet skills are key in explaining users’ privacy behavior. These skills enable users to reduce risks of privacy loss while obtaining the benefits from online activities that increasingly depend on the revelation of personal data. Consequently, Internet skills are an essential starting point for public policies regarding users’ self-help in privacy protection.     

Electronic payment mechanisms in social security: Extending the reach of benefit and contribution transactions

More often than not, the existing modes of contribution collection and benefit payment of social security organizations are adapted to the collective arrangements that characterize employer‐employee relationships. Extending coverage to individuals in difficult‐to‐reach groups, however, may require new modalities of service that can cope with many separate, secure transactions rather than a few bulk data transfers between organizations. Recent developments in electronic payment show its wide applicability in enabling huge volumes of such individual transactions. It is in this light that the article explores the potentials of this technology and identifies possible arrangements through which electronic payments could surmount barriers that stand in the way of covering difficult‐to‐reach groups. The high level of mobile phone penetration on a global scale augurs well for using e‐payment mechanisms to collect social security contributions and to deliver social security benefits and services. A generic model is used to describe the requisite elements to implement electronic payments in social protection programmes. Based on empirical evidence of current social protection practices from around the world, five scenarios are presented to describe possible configurations for electronic payment, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. The broader objective is to contribute in a practical manner to the international commitment to extend social protection to all, as defined by the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.     

论作为创新信息系统的专利制度

专利制度发挥着一种受信赖的信息系统之作用，它被视为信息可靠性的保障，降低了发明信息的传递成本和交易成本。它所意欲促进扩散的创新信息不仅指技术信息，还包括与技术相关的非技术信息。非技术信息对于技术扩散也具有重要的意义，但其价值常常被人们漠视，其原因在于人们对专利制度如何促进技术信息扩散的作用机理产生了错误的认识。专利制度不仅应该通过公开充分性制度来实现技术信息的扩散，它还需要通过权利要求解释、侵权救济与权利例外等制度的完善来实现非技术信息的扩散。因此，传统上的“专利公开”概念应该予以拓宽。     

GIS‐Based Integration of Social Vulnerability and Level 3 Probabilistic Risk Assessment to Advance Emergency Preparedness,Planning, and Response for Severe Nuclear Power Plant Accidents

In the nuclear power industry, Level 3 probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is used to estimate damage to public health and the environment if a severe accident leads to large radiological release. Current Level 3 PRA does not have an explicit inclusion of social factors and, therefore, it is not possible to perform importance ranking of social factors for risk‐informing emergency preparedness, planning, and response (EPPR). This article offers a methodology for adapting the concept of social vulnerability, commonly used in natural hazard research, in the context of a severe nuclear power plant accident. The methodology has four steps: (1) calculating a hazard‐independent social vulnerability index for the local population; (2) developing a location‐specific representation of the maximum radiological hazard estimated from current Level 3 PRA, in a geographic information system (GIS) environment; (3) developing a GIS‐based socio‐technical risk map by combining the social vulnerability index and the location‐specific radiological hazard; and (4) conducting a risk importance measure analysis to rank the criticality of social factors based on their contribution to the socio‐technical risk. The methodology is applied using results from the 2012 Surry Power Station state‐of‐the‐art reactor consequence analysis. A radiological hazard model is generated from MELCOR accident consequence code system, translated into a GIS environment, and combined with the Center for Disease Control social vulnerability index (SVI). This research creates an opportunity to explicitly consider and rank the criticality of location‐specific SVI themes based on their influence on risk, providing input for EPPR.     

《电子商务法》视角下网约车平台的信息披露义务

近年来网约车平台的信息管控问题受到较多关注。网约车属于服务提供型电子商务平台，具有更强的人身安全保障需求，以区别于以实物商品为交易标的的商品提供型电子商务平台。网约车平台对于服务提供过程中的驾乘信息有强大的管控能力，同时也需承担承运人责任。《电子商务法》为电子商务平台直接或间接设定了信息披露义务，在《电子商务法》未明确规定或仅做原则性规定的情形下，网约车平台亦应当根据实际情况将相应信息做单独处理以满足乘客、利益相关人和国家机关合法的信息披露要求。在一般情况下，网约车平台需向一般公众提供平台信息与平台内经营者信息，特别是法律要求的基本信息，而在特殊情况下，网约车平台不仅需要提供相应个人信息与运营信息，还需满足披露质量上的即时性和全面性要求。     

A new estimator of Kullback–Leibler information and its application in goodness of fit tests*

We propose here a general statistic for the goodness of fit test of statistical distributions. The proposed statistic is constructed based on an estimate of Kullback–Leibler information. The proposed test is consistent and the limiting distribution of the test statistic is derived. Then, the established results are used to introduce goodness of fit tests for the normal, exponential, Laplace and Weibull distributions. A simulation study is carried out for examining the power of the proposed test and to compare it with those of some existing procedures. Finally, some illustrative examples are presented and analysed, and concluding comments are made.     

Checking validity of monotone domain mean estimators

Estimates of population characteristics such as domain means are often expected to follow monotonicity assumptions. Recently, a method to adaptively pool neighbouring domains was proposed, which ensures that the resulting domain mean estimates follow monotone constraints. The method leads to asymptotically valid estimation and inference, and can lead to substantial improvements in efficiency, in comparison with unconstrained domain estimators. However, assuming incorrect shape constraints may lead to biased estimators. Here, we develop the Cone Information Criterion for Survey Data as a diagnostic method to measure monotonicity departures on population domain means. We show that the criterion leads to a consistent methodology that makes an asymptotically correct decision choosing between unconstrained and constrained domain mean estimators. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 47: 315–331; 2019 © 2019 Statistical Society of Canada     

Model selection for factor analysis: Some new criteria and performance comparisons

This paper derives Akaike information criterion (AIC), corrected AIC, the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and Hannan and Quinn’s information criterion for approximate factor models assuming a large number of cross-sectional observations and studies the consistency properties of these information criteria. It also reports extensive simulation results comparing the performance of the extant and new procedures for the selection of the number of factors. The simulation results show the di?culty of determining which criterion performs best. In practice, it is advisable to consider several criteria at the same time, especially Hannan and Quinn’s information criterion, Bai and Ng’s IC_p2 and BIC₃, and Onatski’s and Ahn and Horenstein’s eigenvalue-based criteria. The model-selection criteria considered in this paper are also applied to Stock and Watson’s two macroeconomic data sets. The results differ considerably depending on the model-selection criterion in use, but evidence suggesting five factors for the first data and five to seven factors for the second data is obtainable.     

Multilevel maximum likelihood estimation with application to covariance matrices

The asymptotic variance of the maximum likelihood estimate is proved to decrease when the maximization is restricted to a subspace that contains the true parameter value. Maximum likelihood estimation allows a systematic fitting of covariance models to the sample, which is important in data assimilation. The hierarchical maximum likelihood approach is applied to the spectral diagonal covariance model with different parameterizations of eigenvalue decay, and to the sparse inverse covariance model with specified parameter values on different sets of nonzero entries. It is shown computationally that using smaller sets of parameters can decrease the sampling noise in high dimension substantially.