Multivariate rank tests for the two-sample location problem

A multivariate affinc-invariant family of rank tests is proposed for the two sample location problem. The class of statistics introduced is built upon Randles' multivariate one-sample sign statistic based on interdirections and the multivariate one-sample signed-rank statistic of Peters and Randles. Asymptotic relative efficiencies are obtained which indicate that selected members of the class perform very well for a broad class of distributions. Further comparisons are made among several statistics using Monte Carlo results.     

“Fit for Everything”

Women are now the majority of frequent participants of fitness activities in the United States. Despite the visibility of sporting women today, little existing work addresses the interaction between consumers and commercial discourses about female athletic participation, an important task given the contradictory construction of the female athlete in popular media. This essay situates a textual analysis of the marketing discourses of the US-based mail order sportswear company Title Nine (T9) alongside analysis of customer posts to the company's on-line community, “Time Out With Title Nine,” to illuminate some of the ways that consumers construct a self in relation to company content and imagery. The essay argues that while at the same time the catalog's representation of the female athlete is understood by consumers as liberating and empowering, and enables consumers to understand themselves as activists improving the lives of other women, other aspects of T9 discourse are adopted by consumers in their framing of sports as a means to save a naturally pathological self.     

Serials Spoken Here - Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

Abstract

This column includes reports on sessions from the American Library Association Midwinter Conference 2019, with a report on how libraries can be part of a shared community with developers and users through the use of future of libraries, is open (FOLIO) library services platform and a report reflecting on future technological developments. Additionally, conference reports from the 14th Annual Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference, which includes reports on implementing troubleshooting training programs for public services staff and using budget cuts as an opportunity to generate goodwill. The remaining reports are from American Library Association Annual Conference 2019, which includes a report about the parallels between managing campaigns and managing an integrated library system (ILS) migration, how to improve a collection development plan with resources about Cheyenne and Arapaho people, and an exploration of the challenges of hosting student and faculty journals.     

Perceptions of the LGBTQ College Campus Climate Scale: Development and Psychometric Evaluation

ABSTRACT

This article reports the development and psychometric properties of scores on a new scale designed to assess views of the university/college campus climate concerning LGBTQ students and issues: Perceptions of the LGBTQ College Campus Climate Scale. This 6-item scale includes two subscales: College Response to LGBTQ Students and LGBTQ Stigma. We provide evidence for structural validity (via exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses) and reliability for scores on this new measure. Supporting construct validity, Perceptions of the LGBTQ College Campus Climate full scale and subscales were each positively correlated with experiences of LGBTQ victimization on campus, anxiety, and depression and negatively correlated with satisfaction with college and intention to persist in college. Relationships with mental health and academic outcomes held true, even after controlling for LGBTQ victimization experiences, providing support for incremental validity. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Sociological Conceptualisations of ‘Career’: A Review and Reorientation

In the last decades, the use and meaning of the concept of career has profoundly changed, shaped by a ‘new career’ literature rhetoric and a move away from mainstream sociological debate. Our aim in this article is to provide a critical assessment of the concept, and to make a productive contribution to the current debate on careers, and work more generally. Specifically, we seek to: (i) critique the lack of elaboration of the concept within the discipline of sociology in recent years; (ii) reposition the concept of careers as a key sociological category; and (iii) assess and reorient the current meanings of career. After tracing the history of career from linear to boundaryless, we situate the concept in a broader sociological understanding of gender and habitus and structure and agency, and through a methodological discussion of narrative approaches for studying careers. These concepts and approaches are especially effective for understanding careers. Having showed the added value of the concept of career for sociology, we conclude with a research agenda which attempts to overcome the voluntaristic pitfall of its use in recent years and opens up a more thoughtful and articulated understanding of careers for both teaching and research.     

Social gerontology as public sociology in action

Burawoy (2005) argues that sociology needs to re-establish a public sociology oriented toward society’s problems and the practice of its unique knowledge if it is to again be taken seriously by the public, policymakers, and others. Yet, it is unclear how best to achieve these goals. We argue that the relatively young field of social gerontology provides a useful model of successful public sociology in action. As a multidisciplinary field engaged in basic and applied research and practice, social gerontology’s major aim is to improve the lives of older people and to ameliorate problems associated with age and aging. Thus social gerontology has routinely reached beyond the academy to engage with its publics. We review the field’s historical and theoretical development and present four examples of public sociology in action. Several factors have contributed to social gerontology's success in achieving the goals of public sociology: (1) Working in multidisciplinary teams which promote collaboration and respect for diverse perspectives. (2) Its ability to advocate “professionally” for its publics without favoring one group at the expense of another. (3) The unique affinity of its theories and practices with its disciplinary values. (4) The constructive effects of its ongoing questioning of values and ethics. Working in a multidisciplinary field with multiple publics, social gerontologists have been able to blend professional, critical, policy, and public sociologies to a considerable degree while contributing toward improvements in well-being.     

Differences in Audiotaped Versus Videotaped Physician-Patient Interactions

Most medical interaction studies have been conducted on audiotaped recordings of physician-patient encounters. Empirical studies have not previously demonstrated whether coders' scores differ on audio-only versus videotaped data. Data from a convenience sample of forty-seven physician-patient interactions were analyzed using the same coding systems to judge audio-only versus video-based data formats. All coding conditions demonstrated acceptable reliability, using intraclass correlation coefficients. However, MANOVA analyses show that ratings of audiotaped physician-patient interactions are not equivalent to ratings of videotaped encounters. Exploratory factor analyses show differences in the underlying structures of the data derived from the audio-only versus the video information. The differences in the video-based factor solutions account for more total variance and are more consistent with theoretical expectations.     

Competition, Race, and the Measurement of Female Labor Activity

Not all groups compete equally in the labor market. Here, we focus on women's competition with men for jobs. This competition assumes that women's employment is affected by men's, and vice versa. We use two statistics—female labor force participation and share—to uncover this competition. 1990 U.S. census data on 281 metropolitan statistical areas were analyzed using weighted least squares regression. Supply-side explanations of female labor activity (education, children, household headship, and government assistance) receive more support than demand-side explanations (poverty, industrial mix, and region). Evidence of competition along gender and race lines is found. Men's employment is buttressed in metropolitan areas by higher wages, less poverty, and more women with children. Welfare benefits (AFDC) and deindustrialization lower black women's employment, while only white women benefit from advanced education and a "feminized" occupational structure. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.     

Meta‐analysis of QTc interval – pooling data from heterogeneous trials

A diverse range of non‐cardiovascular drugs are associated with QT interval prolongation, which may be associated with a potentially fatal ventricular arrhythmia known as torsade de pointes. QT interval has been assessed for two recent submissions at GlaxoSmithKline. Meta‐analyses of ECG data from several clinical pharmacology studies were conducted for the two submissions. A general fixed effects meta‐analysis approach using summaries of the individual studies was used to calculate a pooled estimate and 90% confidence interval for the difference between each active dose and placebo following both single and repeat dosing separately. The meta‐analysis approach described provided a pragmatic solution to pooling complex and varied studies, and is a good way of addressing regulatory questions on QTc prolongation. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The many (distinctive) faces of leadership: Inferring leadership domain from facial appearance

Previous research has shown that people form impressions of potential leaders from their faces and that certain facial features predict success in reaching prestigious leadership positions. However, much less is known about the accuracy or meta-accuracy of face-based leadership inferences. Here we examine a simple, but important, question: Can leadership domain be inferred from faces? We find that human judges can identify business, military, and sports leaders (but not political leaders) from their faces with above-chance accuracy. However, people are surprisingly bad at evaluating their own performance on this judgment task: We find no relationship between how well judges think they performed and their actual accuracy levels. In a follow-up study, we identify several basic dimensions of evaluation that correlate with face-based judgments of leadership domain, as well as those that predict actual leadership domain. We discuss the implications of our results for leadership perception and selection.