What are Research Expectations? A Comparative Study of Different Academic Disciplines

This paper is intended to assist professors, administrators, librarians and other members of university level committees that must consider research expectations and research quality in academic fields that they lack. While this is not a problem for field experts, it is a difficulty when people are asked to make decisions in areas of study other than their own. This is commonly the case for senior university professors, librarians and administrators in regards to university wide decisions. The paper investigates this gap, through a study of 27 academic fields in 348 highly regarded universities. We find that there are almost always statistically significant differences in activity between academic fields, regardless of the metric one considers. However, it is possible to understand these differences by comparing the distribution of a known academic field to that of a field that one is not familiar with. Tables and information are provided to assist in the comparison of different fields of study on metrics such as: departmental publications and researcher level metrics of publications, citations, H-index, and total number of co-authors. The information can also be used to support decisions associated with promotion to senior posts such as endowed chairs and professorships. Information regarding specific universities and researchers are included in the data supplement.     

Pre‐procreative ages in population stability and cyclicity

Age‐specific models of population renewal (with and without feedback) which imply convergence to a stable state for some levels of fertility or feedback may imply the presence of long‐term cycling around a constant or exponentially changing equilibrium for other levels of fertility or feedback. The switch from one regime to the other is a “bifurcation.”; The conditions for bifurcation involve the roots of an analogue of Lotka's Equation.

Typically bifurcation is induced by raising the strength of feedback or the level of fertility. It has been known since the early 1980s, however, that this is sometimes impossible. It is sometimes impossible even with the linear renewal equation itself and with the most basic of non‐linear models, Lee's cohort feedback model.

Here it is proved that this typical route to bifurcation does not fail for these basic models in the presence of a condition which always holds for realistic applications with higher organisms: the existence of a span of ages before the onset of fertility.

Specifically, a strictly positive lower bound on ages of procreation is proved to be sufficient to guarantee the existence of a rescaling of Lotka's Equation for which the real part of some complex root vanishes. This result holds for absolutely Lebesgue‐integrable (signed) net maternity functions on the positive real line and for absolutely summable (signed) net maternities on the positive integers.

It follows that Coale's rescaling device for the analysis of approach to stability in stable population theory can be implemented for all realistic human net maternity schedules. It also follows that the many special cases of the cohort feedback model throughout population biology will all generate persistent cycling instead of stability if feedback is sufficiently strong.     

Relationships among JIT practices: an interpretive modeling approach

Abstract

This research develops a model of relationships among components of Total-JIT, including JIT-information, JIT-manufacturing, JIT-purchasing, and JIT-selling, to establish an implementation hierarchy based on relative importance. The data collected relates to the relationships among JIT components and two performance measures, supply chain competency and organizational performance. Two groups are used in the research, one group of five operations management academics and another group of 30 practicing operations managers working in U.S. manufacturing firms. An interpretive structural modelling methodology is used to develop alternative structural models. The academics’ data show JIT-information emerging as lynchpin of relationships, directly impacting all other JIT practices and both performance measures. The practitioners’ data indicates that all JIT practices and performance measures are interactive as components and outcomes. This study is the first to apply interpretive structural modelling to investigate the interplay among total-JIT components and the performance measures of supply chain competency and organizational performance.     

Obesity and hospitalization over the adult life course: does duration of exposure increase use?

Consistent with a new genre of research on life-course analyses of health-service use, this study explores the consequences of long-term exposure to a risk factor. Drawing from cumulative-disadvantage theory, the study examines whether obesity, especially chronic obesity, increases hospitalization admission and length of stay. Analyses make use of hospital records abstracted over 20 years from a national survey of adults 41 to 77 years of age at baseline (n = 4,574). Multiple measures of body weight are used to calculate adult obesity duration. Results reveal that obesity increased hospital admissions and length of stay over the 20 years studied. Among persons obese at any time during the study, years of obesity also led to longer stays. The findings highlight the utility of measures of the duration of risk exposure for both life-course studies of health and tests of cumulative-disadvantage theory.     

Urge to Gamble in Problem Gamblers Exposed to a Casino Environment

Cue-reactivity has received increased attention in addiction research, though not for gambling in particular. We examined cue reactivity in 18 problem gamblers by accompanying them to a gaming casino and measuring their subjective urge to gamble over a 1-h period. Half of the sample was additionally exposed to a gambling-specific negative mood induction (NMI) manipulation via guided imagery. Overall, about two-thirds of the sample reported moderate to high-gambling urges during the casino exposure. Additionally, the NMI reduced cue-reactivity. Finally, gambling urges in both groups decreased over the course of the exposure sessions. These findings suggest that a majority of problem gamblers experience the urge to gamble when exposed to gambling cues and that the intensity of these urges decrease with time, especially in the presence of a gambling-relevant NMI. Cue exposure should be studied further as a potential tool in the treatment of problem gambling.     

Pearls and pitfalls in evaluating a Student Assistance Program: a five-year case study

This article presents data from a five-year evaluation-research case study of a large urban schools district's internal Student Assistance Program (SAP). The district employed specially trained and licensed school-based counselors to implement an internal SAP expanded to include tertiary prevention, and modeled after an employee assistance program established for adults. From the population of more than 10,000 students who received some type of program assistance for at-risk behaviors, a stratified random sample of 2,238 cases, over a five year period, were reviewed. Results indicate a statistically significant decline (p < .05) in students' drug use and a significant improvement in internal locus of control occurred each year. While not statistically significant, the average number of student discipline referrals was less than the year prior to program admission; however, there was no significant change in academic performance. A significant correlation between students' drug use and the amount of time in program, the type of assistance received, and the student's custody status was also found.     

Organizational Computing as a Facilitator of Operational and Managerial Decision Making: An Exploratory Study of Managers' Perceptions*

Much of the current knowledge pertaining to information technology (IT) and decision making is based on decades old technologies that revolved around a central computing function and application-specific systems. The purpose of this research is to examine the IT decision-making relationship within the emerging organizational computing (OC) environment permeated by spontaneous utilization of both application-and nonapplication-specific computing and communication technologies. Specifically, this study seeks to explore managers' perceptions of the emerging OC environment as a facilitator of their decision-making activities. To achieve a higher level of clarity than previous works, a two-dimensional research framework is developed with the IT dimension consisting of computing and communication, and the decision-making dimension differentiated between operational and managerial decisions. A survey instrument was constructed that measured the computing and communication dimensions of information technology use and their perceived effects upon operational and managerial decisions. The major findings of the study confirmed that managers recognize the value of general, nonapplication-specific information technologies in decision making, and that this recognition is highly associated with how intensively these information technologies are used. Additionally, it was found that the two dimensions of IT differ in their relationships to decision making, and that IT usage relates to managerial decisions differently than operational decisions. These study findings have significant implication for practice and research, especially in the context of information resource management in which the primary purpose of the IS function is the delivery of general information service to users rather than the development of specific IS applications.     

Manufacturing Proactiveness and Performance*

Since Skinner's [40] landmark article depicting the manufacturing function as the “missing link” in corporate strategic processes, a portion of the blame for inferior performance in many firms has been attributed to the subordinate strategic position of manufacturing. It has been argued that part of the solution to misalignments between the capabilities possessed by manufacturing and the requirements dictated by customers is for manufacturing to take a more proactive stance. However, little research has been reported which examines manufacturing proactiveness empirically. In this paper, we address this gap by developing an operational definition of manufacturing proactiveness and testing empirically whether a link exists between proactiveness and performance based on data collected from a sample of manufacturers. Based on the manufacturing strategy literature, we identify two major dimensions of manufacturing proactiveness: (1) the degree of manufacturing's involvement in the strategic processes of the business unit; and (2) the degree of commitment to a long-term program of investments in manufacturing structure and infrastructure aimed at building capabilities in anticipation of their need. We develop reliable scales for measuring each of the dimensions of proactiveness and use the data to provide evidence of a clear link between manufacturing proactiveness and business performance. We show that investments in structural programs coupled with either high levels of manufacturing involvement in strategic processes or planned investments in infrastructural programs correlate with higher than average performance.     

Subnational Non-Hispanic White Natural Decrease in the United States

This research is the first to examine the prevalence and dynamics of non-Hispanic white natural decrease in fine scale subregional units of the United States. In 2015, more non-Hispanic Whites died than were born in 65 percent of the US counties. This is the highest incidence of non-Hispanic white natural decrease ever reported. It results from a complex interaction among fertility, mortality, and migration over a protracted period. Spatial regression is used to identify three critical variables (over-65 population, child–women ratio, and women of childbearing age) that are the immediate demographic causes of this natural decrease. The timely, factual information in this paper provides a demographic context for analysis of the social, political, and policy implications of this emergent demographic phenomenon.