The Impact of Sound in Modern Multiline Video Slot Machine Play

Slot machine wins and losses have distinctive, measurable, physiological effects on players. The contributing factors to these effects remain under-explored. We believe that sound is one of these key contributing factors. Sound plays an important role in reinforcement, and thus on arousal level and stress response of players. It is the use of sound for positive reinforcement in particular that we believe influences the player. In the current study, we investigate the role that sound plays in psychophysical responses to slot machine play. A total of 96 gamblers played a slot machine simulator with and without sound being paired with reinforcement. Skin conductance responses and heart rate, as well as subjective judgments about the gambling experience were examined. The results showed that the sound influenced the arousal of participants both psychophysically and psychologically. The sound also influenced players’ preferences, with the majority of players preferring to play slot machines that were accompanied by winning sounds. The sounds also caused players to significantly overestimate the number of times they won while playing the slot machine.     

Comparison of Poverty and Income Disparity of Single Mothers and Fathers Across Three Decades: 1990–2010

As the potential for more children being raised by single parents increases, so does the societal need to examine this phenomena of single parent earnings and the impact it will have on the ability to support a family above the poverty line. Research suggests a substantial pay gap between men and women, but most research is limited to individuals in traditional families. This study explores income disparity and poverty between single mothers and single fathers across three decades (1990–2010), using a US nationally representative sample. Based on human capital theory, our analysis reveals that single mothers were more likely to be in poverty at far greater rates than single fathers, after controlling for a host of demographic, human capital, and work related variables. We also found that a contributing factor to this disparity is that single mothers were penalized for having more children while single fathers were not. We find that gendered poverty and the gender pay gap narrowed between 1990 and 2000, but have stayed stable since. Overall, human capital decreases the gender income and poverty gap, but a substantial gap still remains. Implications for policy-makers are discussed.     

One-cluster sampling designs for an autocorrelated population

The variance of the sampling distribution of the sample mean is derived for two sampling designs in which a single cluster is randomly drawn from an autocorrelated population. The derivations are motivated by potential applications to statistical quality control, where a "one-cluster" sampling design may often be used because of ease of implementation, and where it is likely that process output is autocorrelated Scenarios in statistical process control for which either non-overlapping or overlapping clusters are appropriate are described The sampling design variance under non-overlapping clusters is related to the sampling design variance under overlapping clusters through the use of a circular population.     

Winding Stairs: A sampling tool to compute sensitivity indices

Sensitivity analysis aims to ascertain how each model input factor influences the variation in the model output. In performing global sensitivity analysis, we often encounter the problem of selecting the required number of runs in order to estimate the first order and/or the total indices accurately at a reasonable computational cost. The Winding Stairs sampling scheme (Jansen M.J.W., Rossing W.A.H., and Daamen R.A. 1994. In: Gasman J. and van Straten G. (Eds.), Predictability and Nonlinear Modelling in Natural Sciences and Economics. pp. 334–343.) is designed to provide an economic way to compute these indices. The main advantage of it is the multiple use of model evaluations, hence reducing the total number of model evaluations by more than half. The scheme is used in three simulation studies to compare its performance with the classic Sobol' LP. Results suggest that the Jansen Winding Stairs method provides better estimates of the Total Sensitivity Indices at small sample sizes.     

Estimating DEA confidence intervals with statistical panel data analysis

This paper describes a statistical method for estimating data envelopment analysis (DEA) score confidence intervals for individual organizations or other entities. This method applies statistical panel data analysis, which provides proven and powerful methodologies for diagnostic testing and for estimation of confidence intervals. DEA scores are tested for violations of the standard statistical assumptions including contemporaneous correlation, serial correlation, heteroskedasticity and the absence of a normal distribution. Generalized least squares statistical models are used to adjust for violations that are present and to estimate valid confidence intervals within which the true efficiency of each individual decision-making unit occurs. This method is illustrated with two sets of panel data, one from large US urban transit systems and the other from a group of US hospital pharmacies.     

Reports of Conferences, Institutes, and Seminars

This quarter's column features reports from the New England Library Association Annual Conference; the Pennsylvania Library Association Annual Conference; the Potomac Technical Processing Librarians Annual Meeting; the Charleston Conference; the Brick and Click Libraries Symposium; a NISO Webinar entitled “The Case of the Disappearing Journal: Solving the Title Transfer and Online Display Mystery;” and the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting.     

A Diagnostic for Association in Bivariate Survival Models

We propose exploratory, easily implemented methods for diagnosing the appropriateness of an underlying copula model for bivariate failure time data, allowing censoring in either or both failure times. It is found that the proposed approach effectively distinguishes gamma from positive stable copula models when the sample is moderately large or the association is strong. Data from the Womens Health and Aging Study (WHAS, Guralnik et al., The Womenss Health and Aging Study: Health and Social Characterisitics of Older Women with Disability. National Institute on Aging: Bethesda, Mayland, 1995) are analyzed to demonstrate the proposed diagnostic methodology. The positive stable model gives a better overall fit to these data than the gamma frailty model, but it tends to underestimate association at the later time points. The finding is consistent with recent theory differentiating catastrophic from progressive disability onset in older adults. The proposed methods supply an interpretable quantity for copula diagnosis. We hope that they will usefully inform practitioners as to the reasonableness of their modeling choices.     

Presenting Results from Model Based Studies to Decision-Makers: Can Sensitivity Analysis be a Defogging Agent?

The motivation of the present work is to provide an auxiliary tool for the decision-maker (DM) faced with predictive model uncertainty. The tool is especially suited for the allocation of R&Dresources. When taking decisions under uncertainties, making use of the output from mathematical or computational models, the DM might be helped if the uncertainty in model predictions be decomposed in a quantitative-rather than qualitativefashion, apportioning uncertainty according to source. This would allow optimal use of resources to reduce the imprecision in the prediction. For complex models, such a decomposition of the uncertainty into constituent elements could be impractical as such, due to the large number of parameters involved. If instead parameters could be grouped into logical subsets, then the analysis could be more useful, also because the decision maker might likely have different perceptions (and degrees of acceptance) for different kinds of uncertainty. For instance, the decomposition in groups could involve one subset of factors for each constituent module of the model; or one set for the weights, and one for the factors in a multicriteria analysis; or phenomenological parameters of the model vs. factors driving the model configuratiodstructure aggregation level, etc.); finally, one might imagine that a partition of the uncertainty could be sought between stochastic (or aleatory) and subjective (or epistemic) uncertainty. The present note shows how to compute rigorous decomposition of the output's variance with grouped parameters, and how this approach may be beneficial for the efficiency and transparency of the analysis.     

UK International Joint Ventures with the Triad: Evidence for the 1990s

This paper identifies and analyses some basic trends and patterns in international joint venture activity between UK firms and partner firms located in the Triad (North America, Western Europe and Japan) over the 1990–96 period. Several dimensions of UK international joint venture activity are examined: trends over time, geographic distribution of foreign partners, industry characteristics, the purpose of the venture, the number of partners and the UK partners' equity shareholding. The study serves to update and extend previous analyses of UK international joint venture activity with partners from developed market economies.     

Consent requires a relationship: rethinking group consent and its timing in ethnographic research

ABSTRACT

Activist groups in ethnographic research re-negotiated our Ethics Committee’s expected order of securing consent before data collection, demonstrating the importance of researchers taking time to build relationships first. Although the Ethics Committee expected us to obtain group consent, the literature provides little guidance on how to do this. We developed a Memorandum of Understanding to summarize what forms of participant observation each group agreed to and how we would reciprocate. In this article, we (re)conceptualize consent, using analogies to consent in social contract theory and sexual relations to offer a critical perspective on what constitutes consent. We argue that taking time to build relationships before expecting research participants to consent and replacing informed consent with a negotiated agreement is a more ethical approach. We advocate for Ethics Committees to expand the meaning of ‘informed consent’ and review its timing, especially for ethnographic research with groups.