A COVINDEX based on a GAM beta regression model with an application to the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

Statistical Methods & Applications - Detecting changes in COVID-19 disease transmission over time is a key indicator of epidemic growth. Near real-time monitoring of the pandemic growth is...     

US Public Universities' Compliance With Recommended Tobacco-Control Policies

Abstract

To address the rise in tobacco use among college students, several national health organizations, including the American College Health Association, recommend that colleges enact smoking bans in and around all campus buildings, including student housing, and prohibit the sale, advertisement, and promotion of tobacco products on campus. Key informants at 50 US public universities, one from each state, were interviewed during the 2001/2002 academic year to assess the prevalence of these recommended policies. More than half (54%) of the colleges banned smoking in all campus buildings and student residences, 68% had no tobacco sales on campus, and 32% of the schools' newspapers did not accept tobacco advertising. Regional differences in adoption of these campus tobacco-control policies were present. Although this national sample of public universities had implemented some of the recommended policies, they must take further actions to comply fully with campus tobacco-control guidelines.     

Are We Educating Creative Professionals? The Results of Some Experiments on the Education of Social Work Students in Italy

Creativity is a competence crucial for the practice of social work. In particular, it is associated with a greater ability to solve complex problems and to learn, and it is considered to be an integral element of the professional identity of social workers. Nevertheless, in the past 20 years, neoliberal policies and bureaucratization have promoted models of education focused more on technical skills than on imaginative and ideational capacities. This article presents the results of two experiments conducted to determine the effects on creativity and imagination of the technical education of social workers. The results show that creativity is not a variable independent of the type of education delivered to students and that educational programmes which emphasise only the technical dimension of social work can have a direct influence on the creative abilities of students. It is therefore necessary to strike the right balance between education aimed at the acquisition of technical skills and education that promotes creativity.     

Preverbal Infants' Ability to Encode the Outcome of Distributive Actions

This research examined whether 10‐month‐old infants expect agents to perform equal distribution of resources. In Experiment 1, infants saw a distributor performing either an equal distribution where one strawberry was given to each of two recipients, or an unequal distribution that favored one of the recipients. Infants looked longer at the unequal test event, suggesting that they expected the strawberries to be distributed equally. In Experiment 2, the potential recipients were replaced with inanimate objects to rule out a lower‐level alternative explanation of the results in Experiment 1 based on symmetric movement of the distributor. Infants' looking times did not reveal a preference for one of the two outcomes of the test events (i.e., symmetric or asymmetric movement). Experiment 3 controlled for the role of the distributive action, that is, here the distributors only removed barriers revealing strawberries that the recipients already had. No preference was observed when an equal or unequal initial allocation of resources was revealed. Experiment 4 assessed whether infants relied on affiliative information provided by the distributor's movements. The distributor made the same movements as in Experiment 1, but without distributing any strawberries, and no difference in looking times was observed. These findings support the view that preverbal infants expect agents to behave according to a simple principle: Resources are to be distributed equally among equivalent recipients. We discuss the possible links between such reactions and the emergence of an early sense of fairness.     

A note on transformed likelihood approach in linear dynamic panel models

The transformed likelihood approach to estimation of fixed effects dynamic panel data models is shown to present very good inferential properties but it is not directly implemented in the most diffused statistical software. The present paper aims at showing how a simple model reformulation can be adopted to describe the problem in terms of classical linear mixed models. The transformed likelihood approach is based on the first differences data transformation, the following results derive from a convenient reformulation in terms of deviations from the first observations. Given the invariance to data transformation, the likelihood functions defined in the two cases coincide. Resulting in a classical random effect linear model form, the proposed approach significantly improves the number of available estimation procedures and provides a straightforward interpretation for the parameters. Moreover, the proposed model specification allows to consider all the estimation improvements typical of the random effects model literature. Simulation studies are conducted in order to study the robustness of the estimation method to mean stationarity violation.     

Help-seeking behaviors and attitudes of emerging adults: How college students reporting recent suicidal ideation utilize the internet compared to traditional resources

Abstract

Objective: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among emerging adults, yet little is known regarding their online help-seeking. Participants: The National Research Consortium of Counseling Centers in Higher Education's dataset (N=26,292). Methods: Students across the United States were recruited from 73 four-year institutions to participate during the 2010–2011 school year. Results: Observed the effectiveness of online and traditional help-seeking stratified by recent suicidal ideation related to their most distressful period in the past year. Females and younger students endorsed both types of help-seeking, yet those with recent ideation were less likely to disclose any help-seeking. Among those reporting recent ideation, only females reported that traditional supports were more than moderately helpful. Regardless of whether students endorsed ideation, students who were younger, engaged in risky behaviors and identified as females reported that online resources were more than moderately helpful. Conclusions: Online resources could potentially bridge barriers to traditional help-seeking for those reluctant to seek out care, yet traditional resources were reported to be the most effective among this sample.     

A unifying view on some problems in probability and statistics

Statistical Methods & Applications - Let $$L$$ be a linear space of real random variables on the measurable space $$(\varOmega ,\mathcal {A})$$ . Conditions for the existence of a probability...     

Experiments with the Traveler��s Dilemma: welfare, strategic choice and implicit collusion

This article investigates behavior in the Traveler??s Dilemma game and isolates deviations from textbook predictions caused by differences in welfare perceptions and strategic miscalculations. It presents the results of an experimental analysis based on a 2?×?2 design where the own and the other subject??s bonus?Cpenalty parameters are changed independently. We find that the change in own bonus?Cpenalty alone entirely explains the effect on claims of a simultaneous change in one??s own and the other??s bonus?Cpenalty. An increase in the other subject??s bonus?Cpenalty has a significant negative effect on claims when the own bonus?Cpenalty is low, whereas it does not have a significant effect when the own bonus?Cpenalty is high. We also find that expected claims are inconsistent with actual claims in the asymmetric treatments. Focusing on reported strategies, we document substantial heterogeneity and show that changes in choices across treatments are largely explained by risk aversion.