Construction,Co‐production,and Beyond. Academic Disputes and Public Concerns in the Recent Debate on Nature and Society

The debate on realism and constructionism has transferred to environment and science studies a long‐standing philosophical controversy over the constitution of, and human cognitive access to, nature. Quite lively years ago, the dispute has been gradually sidestepped by approaches that, without merging into a full‐fledged theory, counter the subject/object dichotomy and argue about the mutual constitution of knowledge and reality. As earlier, analysis and critique, academic questions and ‘public’ concerns, are closely intertwined. Co‐production scholarship has addressed a number of issues at the crossroads of science and policy, offering a reply to the alleged weaknesses of constructionism. Cutting‐edge approaches, with special reference to ‘new materialism’, are now moving forward, making a case for the liveliness and full agential role of matter. They build on different areas of scientific inquiry, where distinctions between living and non‐living and material and symbolic entities are increasingly blurring. They tend, however, also to align with an emergent way of regulating the interface with the material world, which can be ascribed to the neoliberal rationality of government.     

A permutation test for umbrella alternatives

There is a wide variety of stochastic ordering problems where K groups (typically ordered with respect to time) are observed along with a (continuous) response. The interest of the study may be on finding the change-point group, i.e. the group where an inversion of trend of the variable under study is observed. A change point is not merely a maximum (or a minimum) of the time-series function, but a further requirement is that the trend of the time-series is monotonically increasing before that point, and monotonically decreasing afterwards. A suitable solution can be provided within a conditional approach, i.e. by considering some suitable nonparametric combination of dependent tests for simple stochastic ordering problems. The proposed procedure is very flexible and can be extended to trend and/or repeated measure problems. Some comparisons through simulations and examples with the well known Mack & Wolfe test for umbrella alternative and with Page’s test for trend problems with correlated data are investigated.     

Choosing monetary sequences: theory and experimental evidence

We formulate and investigate experimentally a model of how individuals choose between time sequences of monetary outcomes. The model assumes that a decision maker uses, sequentially, two criteria to screen options. Each criterion only permits a decision between some pairs of options, while the other options are incomparable according to that criterion. When the first criterion is not decisive, the decision maker resorts to the second criterion to select an alternative. We find that: (1) traditional economic models based on discounting alone cannot explain a significant (almost 30%) proportion of the data no matter how much variability in the discount functions is allowed; (2) our model, despite considering only a specific (exponential) form of discounting, can explain the data much better solely thanks to the use of the secondary criterion; (3) our model explains certain specific patterns in the choices of the “irrational” people. We reject the hypothesis that anomalous behavior is due simply to random “mistakes” around the basic predictions of discounting theories: deviations are not random and there are clear systematic patterns of association between “irrational” choices.     

Behavioural Addictions in Adolescents and Young Adults: Results from a Prevalence Study

Our study aims to assess the prevalence of behavioural addictions in an adolescent population, evaluating the effects of gender and age, and to assess the correlations among different behavioural addictions. 2853 high school students were assessed in order to evaluate the prevalence of behavioural addictions such as Pathological Gambling (PG), Compulsive Buying (CB), Exercise Addiction (EA), Internet Addiction (IA), and Work Addiction (WA), in a population of Italian adolescents. The South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised Adolescent (SOGS-RA), the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS), the Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI), the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), and the Work Addiction Risk Test (WART), were compiled anonymously by the students. Overall prevalence was 7.0% for PG, 11.3% for CB, 1.2% for IA, 7.6% for WA, 8.5% for EA. PG and EA were more common among boys, while gender had no effect on the other conditions. CB was more common among younger (<18 years old) students. The scores of all of these scales were significantly correlated. The strong correlation among different addictive behaviours is in line with the hypothesis of a common psychopathological dimension underlying these phenomena. Further studies are needed to assess personality traits and other clinical disorders associated with these problems behaviours.     

Beyond Employment Rate: A Multidimensional Indicator of Higher Education Effectiveness

This paper proposes a multidimensional indicator of higher education effectiveness that aims at going beyond the limits of measuring university effectiveness merely through employment rates. The units of analysis are the study programmes. Eleven indicators related to external effectiveness are selected, and their reliability for and relevance to the representation of the concept of effectiveness are empirically evaluated. The data are drawn from a longitudinal survey administered to graduates of the University of Padua, Italy, from 2008 to 2011. From our analyses, effectiveness appears to be a multidimensional concept composed by professional empowerment, employability and personal fulfilment. The right time for collecting relevant data on educational outcomes varies according to the types of indicators: indicators of professional empowerment assessed 1 year after graduation are most suitable, while for personal fulfilment measurement both short- and long-term evaluation are relevant, and, for employability, data collected 3 years after graduation cannot discriminate among study programmes.     

Robustness of Parameter Estimation Procedures in Multilevel Models When Random Effects are MEP Distributed

In this paper we examine maximum likelihood estimation procedures in multilevel models for two level nesting structures. Usually, for fixed effects and variance components estimation, level-one error terms and random effects are assumed to be normally distributed. Nevertheless, in some circumstances this assumption might not be realistic, especially as concerns random effects. Thus we assume for random effects the family of multivariate exponential power distributions (MEP); subsequently, by means of Monte Carlo simulation procedures, we study robustness of maximum likelihood estimators under normal assumption when, actually, random effects are MEP distributed.     

Measures of Association and Visualization of Log Odds Ratio Structure for a Two Way Contingency Table

The odds ratio (OR) is a measure of association used for analysing an I × J contingency table. The total number of ORs to check grows with I and J. Several statistical methods have been developed for summarising them. These methods begin from two different starting points, the I × J contingency table and the two‐way table composed by the ORs. In this paper we focus our attention on the relationship between these methods and point out that, for an exhaustive analysis of association through log ORs, it is necessary to consider all the outcomes of these methods. We also introduce some new methodological and graphical features. In order to illustrate previously used methodologies, we consider a data table of the cross‐classification of the colour of eyes and hair of 5387 children from Scotland. We point out how, through the log OR analysis, it is possible to extract useful information about the association between variables.     

DESENSITIZING HERBERT BLUMER'S WORK ON RACE RELATIONS

Recent applications of Herbert Blumer's group position model to the study of contemporary race prejudice have misrepresented the ongoing process of definition and accommodation that, according to Blumer, mediates race relations. By conforming to the canons of research design and using standard sample surveys, public opinion polls, variables analysis, and statistical techniques to study perceptions of group threat, group hostility, and prejudicial attitudes, Blumer's dynamic social imagery, as well as the socially grounded methodology he sought to promote, are undermined. The result is a static depiction of race relations that has nothing to do with the variegated experiential complexities that Blumer claimed underlie all human group life.