And … action? Gender,knowledge and inequalities in the UK screen industries

This article explores how a knowledge ecology framework can help us better understand the production of gender knowledge, especially in relation to improving gender equality. Drawing on Law, Ruppert, and Savage, it analyses what knowledge of gender inequality is made visible and actionable in the case of the UK screen sector. We show: (i) that the gender knowledge production for the UK screen sector operated with reductionist understandings of gender and gender inequality, and presented gender inequality as something that needed evidencing rather than changing; and (ii) that gender knowledge was circulated in two relatively distinct circuits, a policy‐ and practice‐facing one focused on workforce statistics and a more heterogeneous and critical academic one. We then discuss which aspects of gender inequality in the UK screen industry remained invisible and thus less actionable. The article concludes with a critical appreciation of how the knowledge ecology framework might help better understand gender knowledge production, in relation to social change in the UK screen sector and beyond.     

When Is a Risk Assessment Deficient According to an Uncertainty‐Based Risk Perspective?

The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA‐N) has recently adopted a new definition of risk: “the consequences of an activity with the associated uncertainty.” The PSA‐N has also been using “deficient risk assessment” for some time as a basis for assigning nonconformities in audit reports. This creates an opportunity to study the link between risk perspective and risk assessment quality in a regulatory context, and, in the present article, we take a hard look at the term “deficient risk assessment” both normatively and empirically. First, we perform a conceptual analysis of how a risk assessment can be deficient in light of a particular risk perspective consistent with the new PSA‐N risk definition. Then, we examine the usages of the term “deficient” in relation to risk assessments in PSA‐N audit reports and classify these into a set of categories obtained from the conceptual analysis. At an overall level, we were able to identify on what aspects of the risk assessment the PSA‐N is focusing and where deficiencies are being identified in regulatory practice. A key observation is that there is a diversity in how the agency officials approach the risk assessments in audits. Hence, we argue that improving the conceptual clarity of what the authorities characterize as “deficient” in relation to the uncertainty‐based risk perspective may contribute to the development of supervisory practices and, eventually, potentially strengthen the learning outcome of the audit reports.     

The thrill of bullying. Bullying,humour and the making of community

Humour can be utilised to mark out the boundaries of social groups, to produce and restore dignity, but also to produce contempt, marginalise and exclude. Humour and ridicule can be used to influence hierarchies and positioning among children in the classroom and it can have strong effects in school groups saturated with bullying practices. Ridicule appears to be widespread, very much feared, and not easily amenable to adult interventions. With this article, I look into the many and frequently subtle ways humour intertwines itself in relational practices among children, with a particular focus on children in groups plagued by bullying and social tension. I focus on the entanglement of humour in the complex manoeuvrings that characterise children's worlds, and the subtle mechanisms involved in the self‐regulation of their communities in and outside schools. The analyses and analytical understanding that I develop are grounded in qualitative data such as interviews with children and extensive observation in schools and in after school care.     

To Cue or Not to Cue: Toddlers’ Use of Beacons and Associative Cues in Object‐displacement Tasks

Two experiments examined 24‐ and 30‐month‐olds' use of different forms of landmark information in an object‐displacement task involving a car rolling down a ramp whose trajectory was occluded by a screen containing doors. A pompom attached to the car, visible through a transparent window running across the screen, served as a cue for the car's location and functioned either as a beacon cue, directly guiding search to a given location, or an associative cue, indirectly marking target location. Interestingly, one way in which the cue information was modified from a beacon to an associative cue was in terms of the structure of the search apparatus, and not necessarily the cue information itself. Consistent with previous literature, 24‐month‐olds' search was significantly influenced by the shift from beacon to associative cue information, whereas 30‐month‐olds, although affected by the shift from one to the other, were less affected by this variation. These findings suggest that the cue drives attention to specific locations in space, with search behavior being more accurate when the cue directly marks the hiding location (i.e., beacon) than when the cue indirectly marks it (i.e., associative cue).     

Always doing your best? Effort and performance in dynamic settings

Theory and Decision - Achieving an ambitious goal frequently requires succeeding in a sequence of intermediate tasks, some being critical for the final outcome, and others not. However, individuals...     

Omnibus tests for the error distribution in the linear regression model

Test procedures are constructed for testing the goodness-of-fit of the error distribution in the regression context. The test statistic is based on an L ²-type distance between the characteristic function of the (assumed) error distribution and the empirical characteristic function of the residuals. The asymptotic null distribution as well as the behavior of the test statistic under contiguous alternatives is investigated, while the issue of the choice of suitable estimators has been particularly emphasized. Theoretical results are accompanied by a simulation study.     

Distribution of asymmetric trimmed means

The empirical distribution of asymmetrically trimmed means is investigated by means of Monte Carlo studies. It is shown that if the trimming is done as suggested in the paper, the resulting standardized statistic has an approximate Student's t-distribution. The power of these trimmed means is demonstrated by means of a Monte Carlo study comparing a statistic which is a function of the trimmed means to the usual two-sample t-test.     

Generalized portmanteau statistics and tests of randomness

This paper considers the problem of testing the randomness of Gaussian and non–Gaussian time series. A general class of parametric portmanteau statistics, which include the Box–Pierce and the Ljung–Box statistics, is introduced. Using the exact first and second moments of the sample autocorrelations when the observations are i.i.d. normal with unknown mean, the exact expected value of any portmanteau statistics is obtained for this case. Two new portmanteau statistics, which exploit the exact moments of the sample autocorrelations, are studied. For the nonparametric case, a rank portmanteau statistic is introduced. The latter has the same distribution for any series of exchangeable random variables and uses the exact moments of the rank autocorrelations. We show that its asymptotic distribution is chi–squate. Simulation results indicate that the new portmanteau statistics are better approximated by the chi–square asymptotic distribution than the Ljung–Box statistics. Several analytical results presented in the paper were derived by usig a symbolic manipulation program.     

CRIME AND POLICE RESOURCES: THE STREET CRIME INITIATIVE

In this paper we look at the connection between police resources and crime by focussing on a large‐scale policy intervention—the Street Crime Initiative—that was introduced in England and Wales in 2002. This allocated additional resources to some police force areas to specifically target street crime, whereas other forces did not receive any additional funding. Estimates derived from several empirical strategies show that robberies fell significantly in SCI police forces relative to non‐SCI forces after the initiative was introduced. Moreover, the policy seems to have been a cost effective one, even after extensively testing for possible displacement or diffusion effects onto other crimes and into adjacent areas. Overall, we reach the conclusion that increased police resources can be used to generate falls in crime, at least in the context of the SCI program we study. (JEL: H00, H5, K42)