Development of guidelines for designing appliances for older persons

The ability of older adults to use a domestic appliance depends on their comprehension of the appliance's operation. This may depend on transfer of understanding from similar, more familiar technology. While this may assist their interaction with the new device, it may constrain the discovery of new functionality not represented in the familiar technology, and, thereby, constrain the discovery of advanced functionality. Older adults experience declining cognitive abilities associated with attention, perceptual encoding, and memory (cueing and recall). Designing appliances to extend cognitive abilities provides opportunity to prolong functional independence. Concepts from cognitive psychology, human factors, and gerontology are reviewed to explain age-related behavior towards technology to support innovative product development of technologies for older adults.     

An integrative model of leadership behavior

Decades of questionnaire and interview studies have revealed various leadership behaviors observed in successful leaders. However, little is known about the actual behaviors that cause those observations. Given that lay observers are prone to cognitive biases, such as the halo effect, the validity of theories that are exclusively based on observed behaviors is questionable. We thus follow the call of leading scientists in the field and derive a parsimonious model of leadership behavior that is informed by established psychological theories. Building on the taxonomy of Yukl (2012), we propose three task-oriented behavior categories (enhancing understanding, strengthening motivation and facilitating implementation) and three relation-oriented behavior categories (fostering coordination, promoting cooperation and activating resources), each of which is further specified by a number of distinct behaviors. While the task-oriented behaviors are directed towards the accomplishment of shared objectives, the relation-oriented behaviors support this process by increasing the coordinated engagement of the team members. Our model contributes to the advancement of leadership behavior theory by (1) consolidating current taxonomies, (2) sharpening behavioral concepts of leadership behavior, (3) specifying precise relationships between those categories and (4) spurring new hypotheses that can be derived from existing findings in the field of psychology. To test our model as well as the hypotheses derived from this model, we advocate the development of new measurements that overcome the limitations associated with questionnaire and interview studies.     

Improving the detection of unusual observations in high‐dimensional settings

Multivariate control charts are used to monitor stochastic processes for changes and unusual observations. Hotelling's T² statistic is calculated for each new observation and an out‐of‐control signal is issued if it goes beyond the control limits. However, this classical approach becomes unreliable as the number of variables p approaches the number of observations n, and impossible when p exceeds n. In this paper, we devise an improvement to the monitoring procedure in high‐dimensional settings. We regularise the covariance matrix to estimate the baseline parameter and incorporate a leave‐one‐out re‐sampling approach to estimate the empirical distribution of future observations. An extensive simulation study demonstrates that the new method outperforms the classical Hotelling T² approach in power, and maintains appropriate false positive rates. We demonstrate the utility of the method using a set of quality control samples collected to monitor a gas chromatography–mass spectrometry apparatus over a period of 67 days.     

Missing item imputation for quality-of-life instruments with application to asthma quality-of-life questionnaires

There has been increasing use of quality-of-life (QoL) instruments in drug development. Missing item values often occur in QoL data. A common approach to solve this problem is to impute the missing values before scoring. Several imputation procedures, such as imputing with the most correlated item and imputing with a row/column model or an item response model, have been proposed. We examine these procedures using data from two clinical trials, in which the original asthma quality-of-life questionnaire (AQLQ) and the miniAQLQ were used. We propose two modifications to existing procedures: truncating the imputed values to eliminate outliers and using the proportional odds model as the item response model for imputation. We also propose a novel imputation method based on a semi-parametric beta regression so that the imputed value is always in the correct range and illustrate how this approach can easily be implemented in commonly used statistical software. To compare these approaches, we deleted 5% of item values in the data according to three different missingness mechanisms, imputed them using these approaches and compared the imputed values with the true values. Our comparison showed that the row/column-model-based imputation with truncation generally performed better, whereas our new approach had better performance under a number scenarios.     

Environmental Risk Exposure,Risk Perception,Political Ideology and Support for Climate Policy

The degree to which risk perceptions are socially constructed versus the result of actual exposure to risk is highly contested; how risk exposure and risk perception influence policy attitudes is also poorly understood. We examine how personal exposure to risk factors impacts risk perceptions and policy support related to air pollution and climate change. Our selection of risk exposure variables is informed by the “mental models” literature, and we employ an array of variables to capture subjective risk perceptions using novel survey data. We find that exposure to risk does little to predict risk perception and has a small influence on policy support. Overall, our findings lend support to a constructionist understanding of risk perception and support for policies related to environmental risks.     

The Chinese Cashmere Industry: A Global Value Chain Analysis

Growth and internationalisation of the Chinese economy have reconfigured the global value chains of many commodities with important implications for industry and rural and regional development both in and outside China. This article analyses the chain for cashmere, all stages of which have gravitated to China, and the impacts on rural development, especially for herders in remote pastoral regions. Traditionally a high‐value product, cashmere has become increasingly generic and adulterated over the past decade. More formal and closer integration of Chinese actors into the global industry and re‐orienting policy from supply‐side intervention to the enforcement of standards would enhance the competitiveness of Chinese cashmere in international fibre markets.     

Rethinking Families Over the Life Course Development Perspective: Including the Lives of Same‐Sex Families

This paper has three objectives. The first goal is to summarize the literature on same‐sex families relating to the major life transitions of relationship formation, marriage, parenting, relationship dissolution, and old age. For the most part, this literature remains scant, with many areas completely ignored. Second, reasons why there is relatively little known about the life course of same‐sex families will be examined. In particular, we argue that the life course’s focus on marriage as a marker for transitions, including whether or not transitions are on or off time, works to exclude same‐sex families since they are not legally able to marry in most countries. The third objective is to explore if, and how, the family life course development perspective can be adapted or modified so that it can account for the diversity of both same and opposite‐sex families.     

Efficacy of Risk-Based, Culturally Sensitive Ogaa (Walleye) Consumption Advice for Anishinaabe Tribal Members in the Great Lakes Region

The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) has produced Ogaa (walleye— Sander vitreus ) consumption advisories since 1996 for Anishinaabe from GLIFWC member tribes in the 1837 and 1842 ceded territories of Wisconsin. GLIFWC's advisory maps were revised in 2005 to address cultural sensitivities (to protect tribal lifeways), to utilize recent mercury exposure information, and to incorporate changes in advisory levels for methyl mercury. Lake-specific, risk-based, culturally sensitive consumption advice was provided on color-coded maps for two groups: children under age 15 years and females of childbearing age, and males 15 years and older and females beyond childbearing age. The maps were distributed to, and a behavioral intervention program developed for, the six GLIFWC member tribes in Wisconsin as well as member tribes in Minnesota and the 1842 ceded territory of Michigan. Tribal fish harvesters, tribal health care providers, women of childbearing age or with young children, tribal leaders, elders, and children were targeted specifically for the behavioral intervention. The efficacy of the behavioral intervention was assessed using surveys of 275 tribal fish harvesters from Wisconsin, 139 tribal harvesters from Michigan and Minnesota, and 156 Wisconsin women of childbearing age. Significant increases in the percentage of survey participants who indicated awareness of advisory maps occurred among Wisconsin harvesters (increase from 60% to 77%), Michigan and Minnesota harvesters (29% to 51%), and women of childbearing age in Wisconsin (40% to 87%). A significant increase in preference for smaller Ogaa occurred among tribal harvesters in Wisconsin (41% to 72%) and tribal harvesters in Michigan and Minnesota (49% to 71%), although not among women of childbearing age. The GLIFWC map-based advisory program did not adversely affect tribal harvest of Ogaa, which increased from 63,000 to 88,000 fish in the three states after the intervention.     

Australia's Social Wage

Public Expenditure and Social Policy in Australia By R.B. SCOTTON & HELEN FERBER (eds.)
Poor Policies: Australian Income Security 1972–77 By PATRICIA TULLOCH.