Indirect behavioral measures of cognition among sexual offenders

Indirect measures of cognition have become an important tool in research on sexual offending. Such methods allow the exploration and testing of models of cognitive processes that might underpin sexual preferences and, in turn, sexual offending. The article reviews studies that have used a large range of indirect techniques (e.g., Implicit Association Test, Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure, Choice Reaction Times, Stroop Interference, Rapid Serial Visual Presentation, Lexical Decision Priming Task, and Viewing Times), and aims to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this research.     

Women and class – a problematic relationship?

The relationship between gender and class is important and controversial within sociology and has significant theoretical and political dimensions. But how do women experience class?Is it a meaningful dimension of everyday life The experiential aspects of class were explored with two hundred women, A third of them perceived social class m terms perceived of income. Others perceived it in terms of occupation their parents. their partner's or their own type of housing or the need to work to earn a living These different perceptions relate to women's own occupational class and educational background more closely than they relate to the occupational class of their partners. Women occupied full-time as housewives did not appear to differ from those m full or part-time paid employment m terms of their perceptions of class, nor did they experience their situation as marginal to the class structure of society. Although women's class does count there arc problems with assigning individual women to classes solely on the basis of their current position in the occupational hierarchy.     

Reducing data dimension for cluster detection

Clustering high-dimensional data is often a challenging task both because of the computational burden required to run any technique, and because the difficulty in interpreting clusters generally increases with the data dimension. In this work, a method for finding low-dimensional representations of high-dimensional data is discussed, specifically conceived to preserve possible clusters in data. It is based on the critical bandwidth, a nonparametric statistic to test unimodality, related to kernel density estimation. Some useful properties of the aforementioned statistic are enlightened and an adjustment to use it as a basis for reducing dimensionality is suggested. The method is illustrated by simulated and real data examples.     

The five-factor model of personality and smoking: a meta-analysis

This article describes a meta-analysis of the relationship between the Five-Factor Model of personality and smoking. The results, based on nine studies and a total of 4730 participants, show that smoking was associated with the following five-factor traits: low conscientiousness, low agreeableness, and high neuroticism. Smokers outside Canada and the United States had significantly higher extraversion than nonsmokers, while extraversion was not significantly related to smoking in Canada and the United States. The results, which for the first time quantified precisely through meta-analysis the association between the five-factor model of personality and smoking, provide support for the relevance of the Five-Factor Model to an important behavior and for the trait element of Gilbert's (1995) Situation-Trait-Adaptation-Response model of smoking. The results also suggest possible avenues for smoking prevention and treatment and for further smoking research.     

Regional now- and forecasting for data reported with delay: toward surveillance of COVID-19 infections

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - Governments around the world continue to act to contain and mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The rapidly evolving situation compels officials and executives...     

Knowledge Diversity and Venture Growth: The Contingent Effects of Early Planning and Experimentation

Drawing on an information processing perspective, we explore to what extent early venture activities allow founding teams to leverage their diverse knowledge to achieve venture growth. Using data from 103 young ventures, we find that early planning enables founding teams to better exploit the diverse knowledge resulting from their heterogeneity in educational background. However, venture growth is highest when diverse teams simultaneously plan and experiment in the early venture phase. This study challenges extant explanations of when early behaviours shape the efficient usage of existing venture resources. We discuss the contribution of these findings to the literature on founding teams, planning and experimentation, and team diversity.     

Let's stay close: An examination of the effects of imagined contact on behavior toward children with disability

In line with current developments in indirect intergroup contact literature, we conducted a field study using the imagined contact paradigm among high-status (Italian children) and low-status (children with foreign origins) group members (N = 122; 53 females, mean age = 7.52 years). The experiment aimed to improve attitudes and behavior toward a different low-status group, children with disability. To assess behavior, we focused on an objective measure that captures the physical distance between participants and a child with disability over the course of a five-minute interaction (i.e., while playing together). Results from a 3-week intervention revealed that in the case of high-status children imagined contact, relative to a no-intervention control condition, improved outgroup attitudes and behavior, and strengthened helping and contact intentions. These effects however did not emerge among low-status children. The results are discussed in the context of intergroup contact literature, with emphasis on the implications of imagined contact for educational settings.     

Unemployment and Search for Work: Exploratory Analyses of Labour Market Attachment and its Dynamics

This paper deals with measuring unemployment and labour market attachment in Italy, on the basis of Labour Force Survey data. Based on the answers to a set of questions on search for work, a cluster analysis is performed, which yields four groups, clearly characterized as regards their labour market conditions and attachment. Analyses are then carried out on the gross flows between these groups, estimated over a quarterly interval. Results of the dynamic analysis confirm the relevance of the classification established through exploratory techniques. The various groups exhibit a different dynamic behaviour, thus documenting that the exploratory classification has predictive power.