Anthropic Shadow: Observation Selection Effects and Human Extinction Risks

We describe a significant practical consequence of taking anthropic biases into account in deriving predictions for rare stochastic catastrophic events. The risks associated with catastrophes such as asteroidal/cometary impacts, supervolcanic episodes, and explosions of supernovae/gamma‐ray bursts are based on their observed frequencies. As a result, the frequencies of catastrophes that destroy or are otherwise incompatible with the existence of observers are systematically underestimated. We describe the consequences of this anthropic bias for estimation of catastrophic risks, and suggest some directions for future work.     

Creating a Cohesive Discovery Service

Presenting at the 2014 North Carolina Serials Conference, Ginny Boyer and Virginia Bacon of East Carolina University (ECU) discuss how the three libraries on campus—Joyner Library, the Music Library, and Laupus Health Sciences Library—created a brand and an accompanying web framework to transform previously disparate user experiences into a unified whole. They begin by explaining some of the roadblocks that historically had stopped collaboration and then outline what techniques and circumstances helped overcome these issues. Of these techniques, they devote the most attention to the creation and gradual adoption of an official ECU Libraries brand via the development of a logo and a consistent template for all web pages. Finally, they detail the future of this project, including plans for in-depth user assessment.     

Lean Production Practices: International Comparisons in the Auto Components Industry1

In recent years the application of lean production principles has been forcefully expounded as the route to high-performance manufacturing. This paper examines the relationship between lean production and performance empirically, using data from a benchmarking study of 71 plants in the international automotive components industry. The top performing plants (and their suppliers and customers) showed consistently better process control than did the lower performing plants. UK plants did not perform very well in terms of either quality or productivity, and links between economic context and manufacturing performance are discussed in relation to the UK.     

Trust, the Asymmetry Principle, and the Role of Prior Beliefs

Within the risk literature there is an ongoing debate on whether trust is vulnerable or enduring. Previous research on nuclear energy by Slovic in 1993 has shown that negative events have much greater impact on self-reported trust than do positive events. Slovic attributes this to the asymmetry principle: specifically, that trust is much easier to destroy than to create. In a questionnaire survey concerning genetically modified (GM) food in Britain (n= 396) we similarly find that negative events have a greater impact on trust than positive events. Because public opinion in Britain is skewed in the direction of opposition toward GM food, the pattern of results could either be caused by the fact that negative information is more informative than positive information (a negativity bias) or reflect the influence of people's prior attitudes toward the issue (a confirmatory bias). The results were largely in line with the confirmatory bias hypothesis: participants with clear positive or negative beliefs interpreted events in line with their existing attitude position. However, for participants with intermediate attitudes, negative items still had greater impact than the positive. This latter finding suggests that, congruent with the negativity bias hypothesis, negative information may still be more informative than positive information for undecided people. The study also identified the labeling of GM products, consulting the public, making biotechnology companies liable for any damage, and making a test available to detect GM produce as being particularly important preconditions for maintaining trust in the regulation of agricultural biotechnology.     

Techniques for the analysis of geographic data in evaluation

Although geographic relationships are often an important aspect of a program or system under evaluation, these relationships have frequently been ignored by evaluators. Standard techniques do exist, however, for the analysis of geographic data. This paper presents three such techniques, Geocode Analysis, Trend Surface Analysis, and Social Area Analysis, and discusses their use in evaluation. With these techniques, evaluators can more adequately deal with the questions of geographic relationships which arise in many studies.     

Construal level theory and escalation of commitment

Escalation of commitment causes people to continue a failing course of action. We study the role of construal level in such escalation of commitment. Consistent with the widely held view of construal level as a primed effect, we employed a commonly used prime for manipulating this construct in a laboratory experiment. Our findings revealed that the prime failed to produce statistically significant differences in construal level, which was measured using the Behavior Identification Form (BIF). Furthermore, there was no effect of the prime on escalation of commitment, or on constructs that have previously been linked to construal level such as the perceived importance of feasibility considerations relative to desirability considerations, and the number of pros and cons that subjects can think of.

Interestingly, however, subjects’ actual construal level scores on the BIF were found to significantly affect escalation. Specifically, our findings show that people with a low construal level are less willing to continue a failing project. This relation is mediated by the perceived importance of the feasibility of the project relative to its desirability. For people with a low construal level, the perceived importance of feasibility relative to desirability is higher, which in turn makes escalation of commitment less likely.

Our findings are consistent with prior research suggesting that priming construal level may not always be effective. Thus, while construal level has typically been regarded as a state-like variable that can be primed, in this study, we show that construal level may also be considered as a trait.

     

Evidence-based programs in children's services: A critical appraisal

Evidence-based programs (EBPs) are increasingly being implemented in children's services agencies in developed countries. However, this trend is meeting resistance from some researchers, policy makers and practitioners. In this article we appraise the main critiques, focusing on scientific, ideological, cultural, organizational and professional arguments. We contend that some of the resistance stems from misconceptions or an oversimplification of issues, while others represent valid concerns that need to be addressed by proponents of EBPs. We set out implications for the development and evaluation of programs and how they are introduced into service systems, and conclude with broader recommendations for children's services.