Flexible Tweedie regression models for continuous data

Tweedie regression models (TRMs) provide a flexible family of distributions to deal with non-negative right-skewed data and can handle continuous data with probability mass at zero. Estimation and inference of TRMs based on the maximum likelihood (ML) method are challenged by the presence of an infinity sum in the probability function and non-trivial restrictions on the power parameter space. In this paper, we propose two approaches for fitting TRMs, namely quasi-likelihood (QML) and pseudo-likelihood (PML). We discuss their asymptotic properties and perform simulation studies to compare our methods with the ML method. We show that the QML method provides asymptotically efficient estimation for regression parameters. Simulation studies showed that the QML and PML approaches present estimates, standard errors and coverage rates similar to the ML method. Furthermore, the second-moment assumptions required by the QML and PML methods enable us to extend the TRMs to the class of quasi-TRMs in Wedderburn's style. It allows to eliminate the non-trivial restriction on the power parameter space, and thus provides a flexible regression model to deal with continuous data. We provide an R implementation and illustrate the application of TRMs using three data sets.     

Identity Work,Techniques of Neutralization,and Deviance: Exploring the Relationship Among Older Adult Gamblers

This study investigates the value of techniques of neutralization in understanding how people involved in marginal to widely deviant behaviors perform identity work. Based on 33 in‐depth interviews with older adult gamblers, we show how techniques of neutralization are used to align personal and social identities. We describe the techniques of neutralizations our participants use along a continuum of gambling involvement, showing how techniques differ in variety and content and are contingent on larger narratives about appropriate behaviors, identities, and selves operating in contemporary society. Our research helps to refine sociologists' understandings of relationships between levels of involvement in deviant behaviors and identity work.     

Watching online videos interactively: the impact of media capabilities in Chinese Danmaku video sites

In China, the implementation of a Danmaku social media system to sustain and raise user interest in online video sites is an increasingly widespread phenomenon. Danmaku technology is used to display users’ messages in written text on the online video stream. Little is known about the effects of this form of interactive enhancement. The aim of this empirical study is to evaluate the evolving media capabilities of the Danmaku system and their effects on users’ perceptions of interactivity and their intentions to continue using Danmaku. We draw on media synchronicity theory and apply it to a stimulus-organism-response model. Using this framework, we hypothesize that the media capabilities of the Danmaku system, namely its transmission velocity, parallelism, symbol sets, rehearsability, and reprocessability, elicit increased interactivity, which influences users’ instantaneous intentions to share and to continue the use of the Danmaku system. The results showed that both users’ instantaneous intention to share and their intention to continue to use were significantly affected by the perceived interactivity. Unlike the results of previous studies, our findings showed that all five media capabilities positively affected the users’ perceptions of interactivity. The potential theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.     

Demography,Education, and Democracy: Global Trends and the Case of Iran

Reconstructions and projections of populations by age, sex, and educational attainment for 120 countries since 1970 are used to assess the global relationship between improvements in human capital and democracy. Democracy is measured by the Freedom House indicator of political rights. Similar to an earlier study on the effects of improving educational attainment on economic growth, the greater age detail of this new dataset resolves earlier ambiguities about the effect of improving education as assessed using a global set of national time series. The results show consistently strong effects of improving overall levels of educational attainment, of a narrowing gender gap in education, and of fertility declines and the subsequent changes in age structure on improvements in the democracy indicator. This global relationship is then applied to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Over the past two decades Iran has experienced the world's most rapid fertility decline associated with massive increases in female education. The results show that based on the experience of 120 countries since 1970, Iran has a high chance of significant movement toward more democracy over the following two decades.     

Relation of Goal Setting and Goal Sharing to Performance and Conflict for Interdependent Tasks

Despite the prevalence of goal setting in organizations, researchers have not thoroughly examined the implications of goal setting to work outcomes in interdependent work settings. A field survey (n= 442) assessed the relation of goal setting and goal sharing, the extent to which others are aware of an individual's work goal, to performance and conflict across varying levels of task interdependence. The results of moderated regression analyses demonstrate that in highly interdependent tasks, the use of goal setting resulted in lower performance levels. Moreover, goal setting and goal sharing in highly interdependent tasks resulted in individuals' reporting more somatic symptoms. The results are discussed in terms of clarifying the role of goal setting for interdependent tasks.     

Social Reporting in the 1970s and in the 1990s

In this paper I give an account of the major welfare conceptsand social reporting concepts of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Inconclusion I discuss possibilities and limits of social reporting today.Quality of life and qualitative growth were the welfare programs of the1970s. The next decade saw a trend to individualization, subjectivewell-being and plurality of life styles. In the last decade the qualityof society once more came into the forefront in concepts likesustainable development, human development and social capital. From thefar-reaching program of the social indicators movement socialreports are the most visible results in many countries whereas ambitiousplans like national goals accounting failed. In the 1980s we watched akind of dissolution by diffusion and in the 1990s a revival inseveral fields. Overall, the monitoring and enlightenment function stillis the most important contribution of social reporting but today on ahigher level of data, methods and international comparisons.