Leveling the playing field: Dishonesty in the face of threat

We examined the effects of framing and perceived vulnerability on dishonest behavior in competitive environments. Participants were randomly matched into pairs and took a short multiple-choice test, the relative score of which determined their merit-based payoffs. After learning about the test scores, participants were asked to report them, thus affecting the final payoffs. Framing was varied as participants could either report their own scores or the scores of their counterparts. The presence of threat, or vulnerability to other players’ dishonesty, was varied as either one or both players in a pair could misreport scores. Participants who reported their counterparts’ scores were more likely to report honestly than participants who entered their own score. Participants, whose payoffs were threatened by their opponents’ misreporting, were more likely to cheat to the fullest extent. Furthermore, we found that framing significantly reduced misreporting in the absence, but not in the presence of threat. Results suggest that when actors feel vulnerable to other people’s dishonesty they would often cheat as much as they can in order to “level the playing field”, even when they strongly disapprove of the behavior.     

Beyond School Spirit: The Effects of Youth‐Led Participatory Action Research in Two Urban High Schools

Prior research highlights the mismatch between adolescents' growing capacities for autonomy and the limited opportunities for influence in U.S. secondary schools. Youth‐led participatory research (YPAR), an approach in which young people research and advocate for change on problems of concern to them, could increase students' autonomy in secondary schools. This qualitative study of YPAR examined whether and how the intervention meaningfully affected the interactions and roles of students and adults in two distinctive urban high school settings, identifying concepts for further empirical investigation. Results suggested that YPAR enabled processes of student professionalization that led to novel student‐adult “collegial” interactions, expansion of domains of student influence, and diversification of students with opportunities to influence policies and practices across these two schools.     

Are Interactional Behaviors Exhibited When the Self-Reported Health Question is Asked Associated with Health Status?

The self-reported health question summarizes information about health status across several domains of health and is widely used to measure health because it predicts mortality well. We examine whether interactional behaviors produced by respondents and interviewers during the self-reported health question-answer sequence reflect complexities in the respondent’s health history. We observed more problematic interactional behaviors during question-answer sequences in which respondents reported worse health. Furthermore, these behaviors were more likely to occur when there were inconsistencies in the respondent’s health history, even after controlling for the respondent’s answer to the self-reported health question, cognitive ability, and sociodemographic characteristics. We also found that among respondents who reported “excellent” health, and to a lesser extent among those who reported their health was “very good,” problematic interactional behaviors were associated with health inconsistencies. Overall, we find evidence that the interactional behaviors exhibited during the question-answer sequence are associated with the respondent’s health status.     

Shaping the zeitgeist: Influencing social processes as the center of gravity for strategic communications in the twenty-first century

We face new dynamics in the world, new problems. Dynamics of social change and the social construction of reality lie at the root of both contemporary security problems and of a clear understanding of the role of strategic communications in resolving them. Success in the current environment is not defined by military victory but by building peaceful social orders, and defeating opponents in the psychological and sociological domain. To understand the role of strategic communications in this new security environment requires an alternative paradigm of sufficient coherence to replace, or supplement, the traditional state-centered security paradigm. We argue that using social change as an alternative paradigm, framed around the theoretical vocabulary of the social construction of reality, generates insights into the role of strategic communications in supporting foreign policy and national security objectives. These are explored in eight lessons learned from our experience of implementing communications for social change in conflict environments.     

Defining autism in Canada: Unfolding the public aspects of neurological disability

Modern disability policy seeks a balance between individual and social responsibility for disability. Striking this balance involves redefining issues related to disability. This article presents an analysis of the issue definition process on autism in Canada. The findings suggest although autism became an increasingly present issue in public discourse in Canada during the last 20 years, no specific aspect of the autism experience became defined as an urgent public problem. Furthermore, public discourse surrounding autism focuses on health care, challenging ongoing development of rights-based disability policy.     

An approach to learning from both good and poor factory performance in a Kanban-based just-in-time production system

In a JIT manufacturing environment it may be desirable to learn from an archived history of data that contains information that reflects less than optimal factory performance. The purpose of this paper is to use rule induction to predict JIT factory performance from past data that reflects both poor (saturated or starved) and good (efficient) factory performance. Inductive learning techniques have previously been applied to JIT production systems (Markham et al. , Computers and Industrial Engineering, 34 , 717-726, 1998; Markham et al. , International Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 11 (4), 239-246, 2000), but these techniques were only applied to data sets that reflected a well-performing factory. This paper presents an approach based on inductive learning in a JIT manufacturing environment that (1) accurately classifies and predicts factory performance based on shop factors, and (2) identifies the important relationships between the shop factors that determine factory performance. An example application is presented in which the classification and regression tree (CART) technique is used to predict saturated, starved or efficient factory performance based on dynamic shop floor data. This means that the relationship between the variables that cause poor factory performance can be discovered and measures to assure efficient performance can then be taken.     

The Impact of Work and Volunteer Hours on the Health of Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Objective: To examine the impact of work and volunteer hours on 4 health issues among undergraduate college students. Participants: Full-time undergraduate students (N = 70,068) enrolled at 129 institutions who participated in the Spring 2011 American College Health Association–National College Health Assessment II survey. Methods: Multiple linear regression and binary logistic regression were used to examine work and volunteer hour impact on depression, feelings of being overwhelmed, sleep, and physical activity. Results: The impact of work and volunteer hours was inconsistent among the health outcomes. Increased work hours tended to negatively affect sleep and increase feelings of being overwhelmed. Students who volunteered were more likely to meet physical activity guidelines, and those who volunteered 1 to 9 hours per week reported less depression. Conclusions: College health professionals should consider integrating discussion of students' employment and volunteering and their intersection with health outcomes into clinical visits, programming, and other services.     

Six Sigma implementation: a qualitative case study using grounded theory

Many organisations have implemented Six Sigma, but successful Six Sigma implementation has not been fully investigated. The purpose of this study is to explore the process of implementing Six Sigma in a manufacturing plant using qualitative case study methodology. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and analysed using grounded theory to identify the main factors that emerged from the interview data and the relationships between them. Consistent with previous studies, the findings emphasise the role of executive commitment, Six Sigma Champions, and training in successful implementation of Six Sigma projects. Furthermore, the study underlines the role of effective project selection and the coexistence of other management initiatives (e.g. lean manufacturing and continuous improvement) on successful implementations of Six Sigma projects. Our findings also suggest that Six Sigma implementation leads to higher levels of customer focus. The study contributes to the existing body of knowledge in effective implementation of Six Sigma. The results include a coding paradigm for the implementation process and implications for managers and practitioners.     

Evaluation of weighted rankings using expected significance level

The use of weighted rankings to analyze complete blocks designs (Quade, 1979) is a practical way of recovering between-block information. A family of old and new test statistics can be generated by this procedure. Selection among these statistics and comparison with parametric and nonparametric competitors are based on expected significance level [ESL] in small designs (3 to 6 blocks, 3 to 5 treatments).