A robust diagnostic plot for explanatory variables under model mis-specification

A typical added variable plot is a commonly used plot in assessing the accuracy of a normal linear model. This plot is often used to evaluate the effect of adding an explanatory variable into the model and to detect possibly high leverage points or influential observations on the added variable. However, this type of plot is generally in doubt, once the normal distributional assumptions are violated. In this article, we extend the robust likelihood technique introduced by Royall and Tsou [11] to propose a robust added variable plot. The validity of this diagnostic plot requires no knowledge of the true underlying distributions so long as their second moments exist. The usefulness of the robust graphical approach is demonstrated through a few illustrations and simulations.     

The Use and Validation of Preintervention Diagnostic Tools in Organizational Behavior Management

Functional analyses and assessments have become the accepted gold standards in many applied areas of behavior analysis, including Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), in recent years. Despite their acceptance, OBM data on such tools have been largely absent. There are several assessment alternatives in OBM (e.g., ABC, PIC/NIC, Behavior Engineering Model), but two assessment approaches most common in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management are Behavioral Systems Analysis (BSA) and the Performance Diagnostic Checklist (PDC). To date there have been no comprehensive reviews of BSA or the PDC from which one might draw ideas for application, research, and the advancement of the field. The goals of this paper are to (a) provide a review of the BSA and PDC literature within the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM), (b) discuss the implications of the results of the review, and (c) provide suggestions for future research utilizing BSA and the PDC.     

Child Support Enforcement and Sexual Activity of Male Adolescents

Strong child support enforcement requires fathers to take financial responsibility for their children and may also encourage more responsible sexual behavior. Using the 1997 – 2001 waves of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 4,272), this article examines the association between child support enforcement and the sexual activity of male adolescents. Stronger child support enforcement was associated with fewer sexual partners, less frequent sexual intercourse, and a higher likelihood of using contraceptive methods among adolescents who had had sexual intercourse in the 12 months preceding data collection. The effects of child support enforcement were particularly strong for non‐White adolescents and those living in high‐poverty areas. These findings suggest that strengthening child support enforcement may be associated with reductions in some aspects of male adolescents’ sexual activity.     

Participation in Science Service: Factors Influencing Volunteers’ Intentions

In spite of previous researches in large-scale volunteerisms have explored volunteer’s theory of planned behavior (TPB), little has been known concerning the scale development of volunteers’ Satisfaction and Motivation in related to science volunteer service. This study tested an expanded TPB model with a sample of 443 volunteers taken from a project for science volunteers run by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan. To explore volunteers’ perspectives on their involvement in science service, structured questionnaires examined their attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, Satisfaction and motivation via continued observation throughout the duration of the project. The findings from the path analyses suggest that the TPB is a useful tool for understanding event volunteers’ intention. In addition, Satisfaction emerged as the exclusive determinant of sustained volunteering and also as the potential predictor of the effects of other variables on future volunteering behavior. However, it was found that the science volunteers’ motivation had significant negative correlation with behavioral intention. In general, the expanded model of TBP provided an appropriate framework for understanding the factors associated with volunteering. Practical implications and future research directions for science volunteer management are also discussed.     

Perspectives of Taiwanese practitioners on therapeutic reactions to disclosure of childhood sexual abuse

Disclosure of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a difficult decision, because CSA is a traumatic experience. Because of the sensitive nature of CSA in Taiwan, reactions to disclosure of CSA in treatment contexts can be challenging for practitioners. Little is known about Taiwanese practitioners' reactions to disclosure that occurs while they are working with CSA survivors. In-depth, phenomenological interviews were used to fully explore three practitioners' clinical reactions to disclosure of CSA. The significant categories and themes that emerged from the study are discussed. Limitations and implications of the present study and recommendations for future research are addressed.     

A method for combining p-values in meta-analysis by gamma distributions

Combining p-values from statistical tests across different studies is the most commonly used approach in meta-analysis for evolutionary biology. The most commonly used p-value combination methods mainly incorporate the z-transform tests (e.g., the un-weighted z-test and the weighted z-test) and the gamma-transform tests (e.g., the CZ method [Z. Chen, W. Yang, Q. Liu, J.Y. Yang, J. Li, and M.Q. Yang, A new statistical approach to combining p-values using gamma distribution and its application to genomewide association study, Bioinformatics 15 (2014), p. S3]). However, among these existing p-value combination methods, no method is uniformly most powerful in all situations [Chen et al. 2014]. In this paper, we propose a meta-analysis method based on the gamma distribution, MAGD, by pooling the p-values from independent studies. The newly proposed test, MAGD, allows for flexible accommodating of the different levels of heterogeneity of effect sizes across individual studies. The MAGD simultaneously retains all the characters of the z-transform tests and the gamma-transform tests. We also propose an easy-to-implement resampling approach for estimating the empirical p-values of MAGD for the finite sample size. Simulation studies and two data applications show that the proposed method MAGD is essentially as powerful as the z-transform tests (the gamma-transform tests) under the circumstance with the homogeneous (heterogeneous) effect sizes across studies.     

Mindfulness,Emotion and Behaviour: An Intervention Study with Chinese Migrant Children

Migrant children in China who move from rural to urban areas face significantly greater emotional and behavioural challenges than their urban peers. In recent decades, western countries have used mindfulness to enhance child psychosocial and behavioural outcomes. This approach has not yet been applied to rural‐to‐urban migrant children in China. This study utilised one‐group pretest‐posttest design to examine the effects of a 4‐week school‐based mindfulness intervention on Chinese migrant children's emotions and behaviours. The results show that mindfulness training significantly improved participants’ mindfulness. The training was particularly effective for those with lower mindfulness at baseline. There was significant decrease in students’ internalising and externalising problems after mindfulness training, particularly internalising problems.     

External environmental change and transparency in grassroots organizations in China

As the nonprofit sector emerges in China, so too do the concerns about nonprofit transparency. In response to calls for increased nonprofit information disclosure and the lack of related research, this study examines changes in transparency of Chinese grassroots nonprofit organizations. Using the first national Survey of Transparency on Grassroots Organizations (2013–2015), this study finds that Chinese grassroots nonprofit transparency has increased in the past few years. Applying resource dependence theory in China‐specific social contexts, this study highlights the importance of external resource to nonprofit transparency. These findings contribute empirical evidence to the nascent literature on nonprofit transparency and provide implications for enhancing nonprofit transparency in China and beyond.     

Adolescents' Pregnancy Intentions, Wantedness, and Regret: Cross-Lagged Relations With Mental Health and Harsh Parenting

The authors used cross-lagged analyses to examine the across-time influences on and consequences of adolescents' pregnancy intentions, wantedness, and regret. One hundred pregnant Latina adolescents were studied during pregnancy and at 6 and 12 months postpartum. The results revealed 4 main findings: (a) similar to what has been found in adult women, adolescents' lower prenatal pregnancy intendedness and wantedness predicted initial difficulties in parenting; (b) frequent depression symptoms predicted subsequent lower pregnancy intendedness and wantedness; (c) adolescents' poor mental health and harsh parenting of their child predicted subsequent higher childbearing regret, and (d) high childbearing regret and parenting stress were reciprocally related across time. In addition, adolescents' wantedness of their pregnancy declined prenatally to postbirth, and strong pregnancy intendedness and wantedness were not concurrently related to adolescents' poor prenatal mental health. The findings reveal how adolescents' thoughts and feelings about their pregnancies are influenced by and predictive of their mental health and parenting experiences.     

Sleep quality at 3 months postpartum considering maternal age: A comparative study

Background

Poor sleep quality is related to old age among the general population, but few studies have focused on postpartum women of advanced maternal age. The present study aimed to describe and compare sleep quality between women younger or older than 35 years of age at 3 months postpartum, and to examine the related factors.