Measuring Social “Informatization”: A Factor Analytic Approach*

Some scholars have argued that we are witnessing a new social revolution—social “informatization”—that is comparable in scope and impact to that of the Industrial Revolu‐tion of the eighteenth century. Others have argued that it is a much more modest phase in the ongoing development of communication and information‐processing technology. While there are a number of reasons for disagreement about what exactly “informatization” is, and what its impact will be, two are paramount: (1) conceptual imprecision, and (2) issues of measurement. Using factor analysis, this study aims to clarify its conceptualization, and, then, rather than focusing on a single dimension (e.g., technological or economic), it will develop a comprehensive multiple‐indicator measure that captures the economic, technological, and size (stock) dimensions of social informatization. We find that this measure of social informatization strongly correlates with the general level of socioeconomic development. This result implies that social informatization may be a more continuous and cumulative process than a disjunctive or discontinuous “revolution.”     

Why adult children return home

This article examines the question of why more young adults are living with their parents. The expectation of the 1960s and 1970s that grown children establish separate residence, even before marriage, began to erode in the 1980s. We asked a small, convenience sample of parents and coresident adult children to respond to two possible interpretations of the trend: (1) that children return home due to economic hardship, or (2) that children return home because they feel entitled to a particular standard of living. Parents and children concluded that economic factors drive adult children home again, but few of the adult children in this study had come home because of genuine economic hardship.     

College Students' Money Beliefs and Behaviors: An Asian Perspective

The multidimensionality of money was investigated, using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The respondents, 290 college students from Korea, Japan, and the United States, were administered a survey, which included socio-demographic questions, and Furnham's (1984) Money Beliefs and Behaviors (MBBS) Scale. Through a series of principal components analyses, a three-factor model with 10 MBBS items was identified. The three factors, Power, Security, and Financial Modesty accounted for 53.6% of the variance. The findings have implications for college students and financial management practitioners.     

Men’s Aggression Toward Women: A 10‐Year Panel Study

The present study examined the longitudinal course of men’s physical and psychological aggression toward a partner across 10 years, using a community sample of young couples (N = 194) from at‐risk backgrounds. Findings indicated that men’s aggression decreased over time and that women’s antisocial behavior and depressive symptoms predicted changes in men’s aggression. This suggests the importance of studying social processes within the dyad to have a better understanding of men’s aggression toward a partner.     

FOCUSED SUPERVISION SEEN THROUGH A RECURSIVE FRAME ANALYSIS*

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the literature addressing family therapy training and supervision (Liddle, Breunlin, & Schwartz, 1988; Morris & Chenail, 1995; Selekman & Todd, 1995; Thomas, 1994). Most of this literature, however, focuses on theory rather than prctice. This paper presents a study of solution-focused therapy's model of supervision, which we have labeled focused supervision. This supervisory process is conceptualized as a conversation during which supervisor and supervisee engage in a dialogue that mutually shapes the meaning of the experience. This study attends to the actual words spoken and utilizes recursive frame analysis to get closer to the talk of a focused supervisory session.     

Balanced on the Horns of a Dilemma: Observations on Work with Chronic Depression

There are patients who present in treatment with depression that is chronic and unmoving over many years. This article proposes that this type of patient is attached to and defensively uses the symptom in a way that may be described as narcissistic. The amelioration of the symptom is experienced as a threatened loss that must be defended against, despite the patient's unbearable suffering. This dynamic is illustrated as it appeared in three cases treated at a community-based mental health clinic. In each, modification of the symptom was aggressively resisted, creating an insurmountable impasse in the guise of seeking treatment.     

Momentum and the growth-free segment of a population

In the scenario of a sudden drop in fertility to replacement level. Preston (1986) argued that the population segment under age T, the length of generation, remained growth-free. Here we first present a new relationship for the momentum of any observed population as the ratio of 1) the proportion of the observed population under the mean age at childbearing to 2) the proportion of its life table population under that mean age. We then use that relationship to demonstrate Preston's approximation. Growth factors for other population segments are also presented. When the initial population is stable, momentum can be approximated as a function of the net reproduction rate alone.     

Who is Appointed to What Position? The Politics of Appointment in Quangos of Korea

This study identifies the determinants of appointment of executives in quangos. Using data from 85 quangos in Korea over 15 years between 1993 and 2007, we investigate the degree to which various characteristics of organizational actors affect the choice of executives. Three organizational actors include presidents, sponsoring government departments, and the concerned quangos. Although results vary by executive position, the findings of the empirical analysis with multinomial probit and generalized linear mixed models support the idea that the appointment of quango executives is not the result of presidential choice but that of the interactions among the key organizational actors, with different incentives and resources, on the appointment. Compared to former bureaucrats, presidential allies are more likely to be appointed when presidents have more political support from the National Assembly and it is easier for insiders to be promoted as executives from larger and older quangos with clear legal origins.     

Penalized likelihood regression: General formulation and efficient approximation

The authors consider a formulation of penalized likelihood regression that is sufficiently general to cover canonical and noncanonical links for exponential families as well as accelerated life models with censored survival data. They present an asymptotic analysis of convergence rates to justify a simple approach to the lower‐dimensional approximation of the estimates. Such an approximation allows for much faster numerical calculation, paving the way to the development of algorithms that scale well with large data sets.     

Smoothing spline Gaussian regression: more scalable computation via efficient approximation

Summary.  Smoothing splines via the penalized least squares method provide versatile and effective nonparametric models for regression with Gaussian responses. The computation of smoothing splines is generally of the order O ( n ³), n being the sample size, which severely limits its practical applicability. We study more scalable computation of smoothing spline regression via certain low dimensional approximations that are asymptotically as efficient. A simple algorithm is presented and the Bayes model that is associated with the approximations is derived, with the latter guiding the porting of Bayesian confidence intervals. The practical choice of the dimension of the approximating space is determined through simulation studies, and empirical comparisons of the approximations with the exact solution are presented. Also evaluated is a simple modification of the generalized cross-validation method for smoothing parameter selection, which to a large extent fixes the occasional undersmoothing problem that is suffered by generalized cross-validation.