Virtual Interpersonal Touch and Digital Chameleons

We studied the characteristics of hand touch with a mechanical device that approximated a handshake, and we then examined the effect of handshake mimicry on assessment of a partner. Two participants interacted with a force-feedback joystick that recorded each of their hand movements individually. The two participants then greeted one another by feeling the recording of the other person’s movements via the force-feedback device. For each dyad, one of the participants actually received his or her own virtual handshake back under the guise that it was the other person’s virtual handshake. Results demonstrated three significant findings. First, for any given participant, a metric that took into account position, angle, speed, and acceleration of the hand movements correlated highly within individuals across two handshakes. Second, across participants, these metrics demonstrated specific differences by gender. Finally, there was an interaction between gender and mimicry, such that male participants liked people who mimicked their handshakes more than female participants did. We discuss the implications of these findings and relate them to theories of social interaction.

Food Insecurity Measurement: Stakeholder Comparisons of the EU-SILC and HFSSM Indicators and Considerations Towards the Usefulness of a Headline Indicator

Social Indicators Research - Prior to the February 2019 announcement that the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) will be used to estimate household food insecurity, there has not been a...     

Provident funds and investment in developing countries in the Pacific

This report describes the current avenues of investment used by provident fund schemes in seven island nations in the Pacific; the returns on these investments; the criteria for their selection; and the governments' guidelines and restrictions on these schemes. New investment guidelines from 1988 to 1992 are summarized and the reasons for them are explained. Limitations on permitted investment avenues are briefly described. The latter part of the report, and its main focus, analyses the problems faced when trying to balance the interests of provident fund members with national interests when selecting investments. The report concludes with some recommendations for solutions to the problems related to limited investment outlets and government restrictions. To gather information for this report, a questionnaire was sent to the provident fund schemes in the Pacific and the available annual reports were analysed. Responses, when received, have been included.     

The optimal design of fallible organizations: invariance of optimal decision criterion and uniqueness of hierarchy and polyarchy structures

We present a general framework to study the project selection problem in an organization of fallible decision-makers. We show that when the organizational size and the majority rule for project acceptance are optimized simultaneously, the optimal quality of decision-making, as determined by the decision criterion, is invariant, and depends only on the expertise of decision-makers. This result clarifies that the circumstances under which the decision-making quality varies with the organizational structure are situations where the organizational size or majority rule is restricted from reaching the optimal level. Moreover, in contrast to earlier findings in the literature that the hierarchy and the polyarchy are generally sub-optimal structures, we show that when the size, structure and decision criterion are simultaneously optimized, the hierarchy and the polyarchy are in fact the only possible optimal organizational structures when decision-making costs are present.

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Discreteness Causes Bias in Percentage-Based Comparisons: A Case Study From Educational Testing

Discretizing continuous distributions can lead to bias in parameter estimates. We present a case study from educational testing that illustrates dramatic consequences of discreteness when discretizing partitions differ across distributions. The percentage of test takers who score above a certain cutoff score (percent above cutoff, or “PAC”) often describes overall performance on a test. Year-over-year changes in PAC, or ΔPAC, have gained prominence under recent U.S. education policies, with public schools facing sanctions if they fail to meet PAC targets. In this article, we describe how test score distributions act as continuous distributions that are discretized inconsistently over time. We show that this can propagate considerable bias to PAC trends, where positive ΔPACs appear negative, and vice versa, for a substantial number of actual tests. A simple model shows that this bias applies to any comparison of PAC statistics in which values for one distribution are discretized differently from values for the other.     

A study exploring factors of decision to text while walking among college students based on Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)

ABSTRACT

Objective: This study attempted to identify critical predictors of intention to both send and read texts while walking based on Theory of Planned Behavior in order to provide resources for practitioners and campaign designers to inform college students of the perils of texting while walking and dissuade them from such a risky behavior. Participants: Three hundred twenty-nine college students were recruited from a large public university in the Southwest in September 2014. Methods: This study used a cross-sectional survey design. Results: Subjective norm (sending: B = .17, p = .02; reading: B = .17, p = .04), personal norms (sending: B = ?.32, p = .001, reading: B = ?.35, p = .001), and self-efficacy (sending: B = ?.27, p = .001; reading: B = ?.24, p = .001) were significant predictors of intention to both send and read text messages while walking. Conclusions: For students who have greater intention of texting while walking, persuasive communication should utilize normative influence and self-efficacy to discourage texting while walking.     

Assembling life history narratives from quantitative longitudinal panel data: What’s the story for families using social work?

Abstract

Embedded within quantitative longitudinal panel or cohort studies is narrative potential that is arguably untapped but might enrich our understanding of individual and social lives across time. This paper discusses a methodology to assemble the life history narratives of families using social work by drawing on quantitative data from the British Household Panel Survey. It explores whether this person-centred approach helps us to understand the counter-intuitive results of a parallel multivariate analyses, which suggest that families using social work fare worse than similar others over time. Our findings are tentative, due to the experimental use of this narrative method and the limits of social work information in the data-set. Nonetheless, the life histories presented bring to light complexities, diversity and the non-linear pathways between families’ needs, support and outcomes that the aggregates obscure. We conclude that reconstructing families’ lives in this way, especially in the absence of complementary longitudinal qualitative data, affords the wider opportunity to interrogate and better understand the findings of quantitative longitudinal studies.     

Bodily Offerings of Belonging: Chinese-Australians in Perth

Under the auspices of a prominent Chinese association, a group of young Chinese girls diligently practise, produce and perform what they understand to be Chinese cultural dance in Perth, Western Australia. The public performance of this cultural dance form has been a common sight since the implementation of multiculturalism in the Australian landscape in the 1970s. This paper explores how a uniquely Chinese-Australian belonging is enabled for a migrant community in one of Australia's key cities by focusing on the processes through which Chinese cultural dance is postured, practised and produced. It underlines the dynamic reflexivity and resilience demonstrated by the community in seeking to define their belonging within a state-imposed framework.