“It's practical, but no more controllable”: Social representations of the electronic purse in Austria

The electronic purse (chip-card) is promoted as an option offering consumers an easy means of payment. It also offers advantages to traders and banks by reducing transaction costs. However, successful launching of the electronic purse depends mainly on consumers' acceptance, which in the past was very low in Austria. We study consumers' acceptance of the electronic purse, cash and established non-cash payment systems by analysing social representations of payment facilities. Semantic contents of associations raised in response to the stimulus words “means of payment in general”, “cash”, “cheque”, “ATM-card”, “credit-card” and “electronic purse” have been analysed. Overall, 264 people were studied applying two techniques: the “associative network” and the “conceptual network”. It is shown that means of payment are categorised on two dimensions: cash and non-cash. Non-cash payment facilities are characterised by high abstraction levels, and loss of subjective control over expenditures. The electronic purse is perceived as highly dissimilar to other means of payments.     

Simultaneous Over- and Underconfidence: Evidence from Experimental Asset Markets

In this paper we investigate individual overconfidence within the context of an experimental asset market. Overall, 72 participants traded one risky asset on six markets of 12 participants each. Our results indicate that participants are not generally prone to overconfidence. A comparison of two different measures of overconfidence, (i) subjective confidence intervals and (ii) differences between objective accuracy and subjective certainty, lead to a different classification of behavior in our data-set. We observe well-calibration as well as over- and underconfidence.     

Teamfähigkeit und Performance

Relationship between team competence and the group performance is analyzed in this paper. The underlying question is whether it is possible to create an ideal group, when focussing on personality characteristics of group members. For this purpose, the paper first describes that the performance of a group is influenced by its composition. The team competence concept is then described based upon team concept sub-components like communication and cooperation competencies. Integrating the concept of team competence into the “five factors personality model” shows that the personality characteristics of ‘agreeableness’ and ‘extraversion’ have the highest coverage towards the team competence concept. The studies cited in this paper do not show significant positive relations between these two team competence related personality characteristics and the performance of a team. Implications for the understanding of team competence are shown.     

Age-Friendly Neighbourhoods as Civic Participation: Implementation of an Active Ageing Policy in Hong Kong

In response to challenges brought by population ageing, Hong Kong has adopted an active ageing policy framework and built age-friendly neighbourhoods to encourage the participation of older people. This article distinguishes between the civic and political participation and emphasizes active involvement in community and neighbourhood activities as a way to encourage the civic engagement of older adults. The promotion of age-friendliness is set at two levels: concerning policy and practical/operational issues, both of which are interrelated with the purpose of offering civic engagement opportunities for older people. The experiences of Hong Kong reflect both top-down and bottom-up approaches, where civic participation is promoted by encouraging life-long learning and developing caring communities, as well as carrying out a variety of neighourhood programmes. It is suggested that different stakeholders, such as older adults, NGOs and other social organizations, shall all be included and play important roles in promoting civic participation of the elderly through creating a conducive environment. The initiatives, whether these are in policy or at operational levels, should be integrated into actions that are aimed to enhance quality of life for all residents and create a more age-friendly neighbourhood.     

The ethics of deception in social research: A case study

Using data from a study on courtship through personal advertisements, I argue that Kai Erikson's classic case against disguised observation is flawed. Certain kinds of deception are necessary to gather certain data in certain settings. I placed bogus ads in a personal column to obtain and analyze responses. The data would have remained inaccessible—indeed, many of the responses would not have existed in the first place—without some measure of deception. While deception was used, no risk whatsoever was posed to respondents. I further argue that several of Erikson's criteria of risk do not separate ethical from empirical questions; informants use very different criteria in evaluating the risk of harm to them posed by social research that sociologists use. The question of exploitation is more complex, since it has to be weighed against how much of an effort my respondents made and hence, what it is exactly that I took from them. A “panel of judges” decided that most of my male (but not my female) respondents would not have gotten dates with my hypothetical ad placers, and that the research method I used was not especially unethical.     

Testing for programme effects in a regression discontinuity design with imperfect compliance

Summary. The administrators of an office automation training programme in Italy enrolled applicants on the basis of their score in an attitudinal test, with low scoring subjects mandated out of the programme. Some of the applicants who were mandated out resorted to an alternative programme. To identify the effect of the programme by comparing participants with non-participants we need to account properly for both the selection by the score and the contamination of the comparison group by a number of non-complying subjects. The estimand resulting from using the mandated status as an instrumental variable for the actual status identifies the effect of the programme on complying subjects exhibiting a score in the attitudinal test in the neighbourhood of the threshold for selection. Simple nonparametric instrumental variable estimators based on the work of Robinson and Hahn and co-workers reveal that the programme had no effect on the probability of being in work several months after its completion. Simulation results show that in spite of the small sample size the test for the no-impact hypothesis has non-negligible power even at small departures from the null hypothesis. As a side-result Robinson's test turns out to be appreciably more powerful than the other test.     

The equivalence of united states census data for persons of Russian stock or descent with American Jews: An evaluation

While the U.S. Bureau of the Census has had a long-standing policy of abstaining from enumerating the religious beliefs or backgrounds of the American people, at least two-thirds of the Jewish population of the United States has been enumerated in decennial censuses and sample surveys in the guise of persons of Russian stock or origin. This has come about through the migration policy of the old Russian Empire and the statistical categories utilized by American immigration authorities and by the U. S. Bureau of the Census for immigrants and their children. Comparisons between the returns from an ethnic survey and a survey on the religious composition demonstrate the close congruence between persons of Russian stock or descent and American Jews on the national level.     

Constructing a Quality of Life Scale for Older Chinese People in Hong Kong (HKQoLOCP)

This paper reports a multi-stagestudy carried out between 1999 and 2001 whichaimed to develop an instrument to address theneed for a culturally relevant measure ofquality of life for Chinese older persons inHong Kong and similar communities. The firststage of the research involved a focus groupstudy conducted in August 1999 which it washoped would reflect how quality of life maybe interpreted by older persons themselves. Thenext stage, a content analysis of the focusgroups, enabled the construction of aquestionnaire containing over 100 items onvarious aspects of quality of life (QoL). Thequestionnaire was reviewed by a panel ofexperts and the items were refined and reducedto 86 to which were added a further 25 itemsfor socio-demographic background. This formedthe initial instrument. The final stage was avalidation study based on a representativecommunity survey, with a sample of 3,000respondents drawn for the research team by theCensus and Statistics Department of the HongKong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)Government. The survey yielded 1,616 successfulinterviews with older persons aged 60 or above.The careful stratification of the sampleenabled us to say that subjects in all thestages of the survey had broadly similarcharacteristics to the general Hong Kongelderly population in sex and age distribution.After a rigorous process of validation, theresearch team recommended the adoption of bothan index and six domains for measuring HongKong older persons QoL. The new scale containsa total of 21 items which can be grouped intovarious domains: subjective well-being, with 4items; health with 5 items; interpersonalrelationships with 6 items; achievement-recognition with 4 items, finance and livingconditions (1 item each). The overall QoL scalehas a Cronbachs alpha of 0.72 with its domainsranging from 0.65 to 0.77 which indicates ahigh degree of statistical reliabilities. Thename recommended for the scale was Hong KongQuality of Life for Older Persons Scale-abbreviated as HKQoLOCP.