Sexual Decision Making for the “Better Than Average” College Student

Abstract

Objectives: To examine the impact of downward social comparison and the “known partner is a safe partner” heuristic on college students’ sexual decisions. Participants: One hundred-eighty heterosexual or bisexual undergraduate college students. Methods: Participants read dating vignettes that varied on perspective and familiarity and then rated the likelihood the couple would engage in sexual intercourse and use a condom. Results: There were no differences in rated likelihood based on familiarity, suggesting that the students did not view the 2 partner types as significantly different. Students rated the likelihood of sexual intercourse lower and condom use higher when the vignette was presented from the second person perspective. Conclusions: The students’ use of downward social comparison is consistent with the “better than average effect,” suggesting that the students perceive their own behavior as safe. The implication is that safer sex messages might be most effective if they focus on what students will gain by practicing safer sex behaviors, not just avoidance of a risk behavior.     

Regularized Gaussian belief propagation

Belief propagation (BP) has been applied in a variety of inference problems as an approximation tool. BP does not necessarily converge in loopy graphs, and even if it does, is not guaranteed to provide exact inference. Even so, BP is useful in many applications due to its computational tractability. In this article, we investigate a regularized BP scheme by focusing on loopy Markov graphs (MGs) induced by a multivariate Gaussian distribution in canonical form. There is a rich literature surrounding BP on Gaussian MGs (labelled Gaussian belief propagation or GaBP), and this is known to experience the same problems as general BP on graphs. GaBP is known to provide the correct marginal means if it converges (this is not guaranteed), but it does not provide the exact marginal precisions. We show that our adjusted BP will always converge, with sufficient tuning, while maintaining the exact marginal means. As a further contribution we show, in an empirical study, that our GaBP variant can accelerate GaBP and compares well with other GaBP-type competitors in terms of convergence speed and accuracy of approximate marginal precisions. These improvements suggest that the principle of regularized BP should be investigated in other inference problems. The selection of the degree of regularization is addressed through the use of two heuristics. A by-product of GaBP is that it can be used to solve linear systems of equations; the same is true for our variant and we make an empirical comparison with the conjugate gradient method.     

Child-Report Data and Assessment of the Social Environment in Schools

OBJECTIVES: This study tested the quality of data collected with the online ESSP for Children from a diverse sample of 1,172 third through fifth graders. METHODS: Mplus confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) procedures for ordinal and clustered data were used. RESULTS: Of 80 original items, 61 loaded on 13 dimensions in a first-order model that had good fit in three random subsamples. Children in grades 3 through 5 may not be reliable reporters about neighborhood adults' caring. However, 12 statistically sound and independent dimensions related to school, peers, family, and well-being were obtained. CONCLUSIONS: The ESSP for Children provides school staff with quality data to use in conjunction with family and teacher ESSP data to guide intervention choices in schools.     

市场导向内涵与执行随企业成长阶段演变的规律——基于中兴通讯的案例研究

基于中兴通讯在竞争激烈的通信设备行业不断克服管理危机从跟随者成长为全球领先者的案例,从动态角度探讨了市场导向内涵及其执行随企业成长阶段演变的规律。研究结论如下:①随着企业成长阶段的变化,市场导向内涵从市场创新与模仿竞争者导向的市场驱动理念向顾客与竞争平衡导向的驱动市场理念转变;②执行市场导向的组织变革特征受企业不同发展阶段管理危机的影响,而在集权与分权、自主与协调间反复,但组织成熟度呈螺旋式上升;③顾客后向影响供应商的主动创新特征使市场导向内涵中的市场驱动理念包括适应市场和"OEM"协作,驱动市场理念包括引导市场和"共生互动"的内容;④市场不确定性对企业市场导向执行结果产生影响,这也解释了同一行业内企业市场导向与经营绩效之间并非简单的线性关系。     

The effect of community organisations’ participation and existence on self-rated health in China: evidence from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

Using the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study cross-sectional survey in 2011 with an 80.51% response rate, an endogenous logit model is adopted to account for the relationship between social capital and self-rated health and the heterogeneity from gender, age and marital status on individual self-rated health status. Consequently, social capital at both individual and community levels is found to be positively correlated with better subjective self-rated health status. Furthermore, the social capital’s marginal effect of the male, high-income groups, the married are larger than that of the female, rural residents, low-income groups and the divorced. In addition, interclass correlation value from the partition of the fixed and random effect of social capital is significantly, ranging from 3.0 to 5.49%, indicating a significant proportion of the total variance in self-rated health that can be explained by community-level differences.     

从系统论看当代中国和谐社会的构建

文章从系统论的角度诠释了和谐社会的内涵和外延,提出了“和谐三角”、“价值三角”、“和谐区间”、“和谐价值链”等关键理念和概念范畴。在此基础上论证了中国社会主义和谐社会建设的必然性和重要性,并针对和谐社会建设的关键领域和关键问题提出了相关建设预想。     

Accuracy of the judgment of facial expression of emotions as a function of sex and level of education

The purpose of this study is to examine the recognition of facial expressions of six emotions as a function of sex and level of education (high school, college, university) of the subjects. Three hundred French-speaking citizens of Quebec had to judge which emotion was expressed in various facial stimuli presented on slides. Results show that overall, the recognition of emotions was very good. However, there were significant and strong differences between emotions and sex and levels of education did not have strong effects on the results.This research was supported by grant EQ-1717 from Fonds FCAC (Gouvernment du Quebec).     

碳达峰、碳中和目标下碳排放权的权利构造与应然理路

我国在碳达峰、碳中和目标下,出台了《碳排放权交易管理办法(试行)》,并将碳排放权定义为分配给控排主体在规定期间的碳排放额度。针对碳排放权的属性界定问题,学界的准物权说、用益物权说、规制权说均难以很好地解释实践。碳排放权在二级市场交易过程中的存在形式是数据,所产生的货币价值决定了其具有新型财产权的法律属性。在权利理论体系中,应当将碳排放权界定为“数据产权”,明确其作为数据财产在交易过程中的收益,厘清“碳排放权”与“碳配额”之间的关系,实现碳排放权作为“数据产权”承载交易主体的生态利益和经济利益,满足碳排放权交易过程中气候正义的价值诉求。     

村干部角色与乡村治理有效性——基于秦甘滇三村的案例分析

村干部作为乡村振兴的“实践者”与“领路人”,在基层村庄治理的过程中发挥着重要作用。运用社会角色理论,以秦、甘、滇三个典型村的实际案例为对象,将村干部角色凝练为应然理想角色、资源汲取角色与宗族势力角色三种类型,并分析村干部角色对村政双向联动、政府资源驱使与宗族权威依赖三种乡村治理模式的影响机理。研究发现:当村干部扮演应然理想角色时,村庄治理呈现村政双向联动的结构模式,并显著促使其治理高效;当村干部扮演资源汲取角色时,村庄治理呈现政府资源驱使的结构模式,并显著促使其治理低效;当村干部扮演宗族势力角色时,村庄治理呈现宗族权威依赖的结构模式,并显著促使其治理无效。提高乡村治理有效性应充分发挥村干部应然理想角色功能,在利用好村庄内生性社会资源的同时重塑干群关系,建立和完善对村干部小微权力的监察机制,在推进村政双向联动的基础上进一步实现乡村有效治理的最终目标。