The Aging Semantic Differential in Mandarin Chinese: Measuring Attitudes toward Older Adults in China

ABSTRACT

The Aging Semantic Differential (ASD) is the most widely used instrument to measure young people’s attitudes towards older adults. This study translated the ASD to Mandarin and examined its psychometric properties. The Mandarin-ASD contains three latent factors (Personality and Mental Health, Societal Participation, and Physical) that have high internal reliability and reasonable discriminate validity. Social work researchers, practitioners and allied professionals may utilize the ASD-Mandarin instrument to measure young people’s attitudes towards older adults in China. We issue a call for a universal-ASD that can be applied across different cultural contexts.     

The Association Between the New Rural Cooperative Medical System and Health Care Seeking Behavior Among Middle-Aged and Older Chinese

The new rural cooperative medical system (NCMS) is the primary form of social insurance in rural China. This study aims to explore how the NCMS influences the health care seeking behaviors of middle-aged and older Chinese, considering the family and community contexts. A series of multi-level (three-level) models using data from the first wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) are used. We find that the presence of NCMS coverage has a statistically significant association with seeking inpatient and outpatient care but not physical checkups among middle-aged and older rural Chinese: Rural residents insured by NCMS were more likely to seek inpatient and outpatient care than people who were not insured. Other factors at the individual level (such as self-perceived health and number of doctor-diagnosed chronic diseases), the family level (such as living arrangements and household expenditures), and the community level (such as the presence of township hospitals within the community) are also significant predictors of health care seeking behaviors.     

A socio-ecological perspective of urban green networks: the Stockholm case

Landscape fragmentation threatens habitats, biodiversity and other ecosystem services. In tackling this threat, the dynamic processes of social-ecological systems should be recognised and understood. Although network analysis based on graph theory has been recognised as an efficient way of spatially understanding landscape or habitat connectivity, only few studies have offered specific approaches or suggestions for integrating detailed social-ecological values into geographical distributions. As a contribution to bridging this gap, this paper introduces a social-ecological network model for the issue of landscape or habitat fragmentation applied to the case of Stockholm, Sweden. Graph theory was used in combination with sociotope and biotope maps for simple visualisation of network situations in two-dimensional maps. The European crested tit (Lophophanes cristatus), European common toad (Bufo bufo) and human beings were selected as indicator species, based on a landscape ecology analysis in Stockholm Municipality in 2009. Slope, land use and human disturbance maps were assessed in order to decide cost values of travelling from node to node. Lease-cost-path accumulation was used to create ideal reference maps of green networks. Three separate maps were then developed for suggesting efficient routes for three indicators in city scale that mainly connect from the Royal National City Park to the other parts of the city. The model in Hjorthagen neighbourhood to highlight two practical paths that link this fragmented community to its neighbouring park areas. Findings make it possible to address two scales of network improvement strategies, namely first for the city-scale green network that connects geographical habitats (nodes) and the regional green wedges of the city, and the second that of neighbourhood links between habitats in detailed layers of green networks. Strategic improvement potentials are presented based on ideal reference maps of green networks correspondingly.     

Sexual objectification decreases women’s experiential consumption (but not material consumption)

The current investigation examined our prediction that sexual objectification decreases women’s experiential consumption but not material consumption. Three experiments provided converging support for this prediction. In particular, female participants reported lower tendency to engage in experiential consumption after recalling a past experience of objectification (Studies 1 and 3) and chose a material product over an experiential one after receiving objectifying comments (Study 2). Furthermore, Study 3 found that sexual objectification reduced purchase inclination of experiential products, and this effect did not emerge for material products. These findings contribute to the literature on sexual objectification by showing the impact of sexual objectification on women’s economic decisions and behaviors.     

国家级新区发展总部经济的扶持政策比较

总部经济是国家级新区竞相培育发展的一种新型经济形态,也是衡量新区区域竞争力的重要指标。以国家级新区总部经济扶持政策为研究对象,重点梳理分析了上海浦东、天津滨海、重庆两江等8个国家级新区扶持总部经济发展的具体政策,总结了新区在总部经济发展扶持政策的通行做法和基本规律,并在此基础上提出新区应加强总部经济规划、总部经济中央商务区建设以及加大优惠扶持政策力度等相关对策建议。     

连片特困区城镇化进程与农民增收效应的空间计量分析——以武陵山片区为例

基于2000—2012年武陵山片区69县市(区)的面板数据,考虑空间异质性,运用空间统计的ESDA法和空间计量等方法,考察了片区农民收入与城镇化进程的空间相关性及其冷热点格局,比较产业城镇化和人口城镇化的农民增收效应。结果表明:(1)武陵山片区各县市(区)农民人均纯收入呈现出高度的空间正相关性,形成以丰都、彭水、武隆、黔江为中心的热点区及洪江、中方和鹤城为中心的次热点区;人口城镇化和产业城镇化空间相关性显著,热点区主要集中在张家界片区,有向周边蔓延趋势;铜仁地区处于"三低"分布的冷点区。(2)进一步的空间模型估计显示,人口城镇化是片区农民增收效应的主要动力,产业城镇化对农民收入增长亦有正效应,但带动能力偏弱。(3)农业技术水平、物质资本投资和经济密度的提高有利于农民增收,相反,片区金融发展的现状对农民增收存在抑制作用。根据以上结论提出了相关政策建议。     

The expected and unexpected media effects on youth’s (mis)perceptions of peer norms: Chinese college students’ overestimation of peer smoking prevalence

Youth’s perceptions of peer norms have profound effects on their attitudes and behaviors. Unfortunately, their perceptions of peers tend to be biased. To investigate the role of media in the formation of misperceived peer norms, the current study tested and compared two media-effect mechanisms: the direct exemplar mechanism and the indirect influence of presumed influence (IPI) mechanism. The two mechanisms were tested in a sample (n = 1746) that is representative of college students in one large university in China, based on which the actual and perceived campus smoking rates were examined. The individual-level perceived peer smoking prevalence was then analyzed in comparison with the campus-level actual smoking prevalence. The results revealed serious overestimations of peer smoking prevalence. As predicted, pro-smoking media content significantly heightened smoking prevalence estimates through both exemplar and IPI mechanisms. In contrast, anti-smoking messages did not elicit any intended effect through the IPI mechanism, but showed a boomerang effect through the exemplar mechanism. These findings suggest that both pro- and anti-smoking media content may be responsible for inflated perceptions of peer smoking among youth.     

When ERM Met Alma: The Intricacies of Content Management in a Shared Consortia Landscape

ABSTRACT

In 2013, after nearly two decades of operating in a distributed legacy Integrated Library System (ILS) environment on local servers, the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a consortium of public and private academic libraries in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, began a two-year-long process to migrate its 37 members to a shared implementation of Ex Libris's cloud-based Alma library management system (LMS) and Primo discovery interface. Although much has been written on electronic resource management (ERM) functionality at an institution level, little has been written on serials and ERM functionality and workflows within a shared consortial environment. This article discusses the challenges and opportunities of implementing a consortial-based LMS, with particular emphasis on serials and ERM functionality. Key migration issues related to serials control, acquisitions, licensing, administration, cataloging, statistics, and interoperability are examined at the institutional and large-scale networked levels. Benefits and limitations of using a shared consortial cloud-based LMS are explored, and the overall capabilities of the Alma LMS for electronic resource management are reviewed.     

Design two-level factorial experiments in blocks of size four

Recently, many researchers have devoted themselves to the investigation on the number of replicates needed for experiments in blocks of size two. In practice, experiments in blocks of size four might be more useful than those in blocks of size two. To estimate the main effects and two-factor interactions from a two-level factorial experiment in blocks, we might need many replicates. This article investigates designs with the least number of replicates for factorial experiments in blocks of size four. The methods to obtain such designs are presented.