More flexible sequential and non-sequential designs in long-term clinical trial

In this paper, we describe decision making procedures as they exist in most clinical trials,review some recently suggested approaches to monitoring and clarify how these methods allow greater flexibility in monitoring and explicit specification of data monitoring methods in the protocol.     

Comparison of conditional and unconditional confidence intervals for the double exponential distribution

Conditional confidence intervals for the location parameter of the double exponential distribution based on maximum likelihood estimators conditioned on a set of ancillary statistics and the corresponding unconditional confidence intervals based on the maximum likelihood estimators alone are compared in two ways. Monte Carlo techniques are used and the conditional approach appears to give slightly better results although agreement as n becomes larger is noted     

An Interesting Property of the Sample Mean under a First-Order Autoregressive Model

The unweighted sample mean is examined as an estimator of the population mean in a first-order autoregressive model. It is demonstrated that the precision of this estimator deteriorates as the number of equally spaced observations taken within a fixed time interval increases.     

American Statistical Association Style Guide

This article contains the American Statistical Association Style Guide published in The American Statistician volume 40 issue 1, in 1986. To see the current version of the style guide please click here.     

Channeling advocacy? Assessing how funding source shapes the strategies of environmental organizations

ABSTRACT

All non–governmental organizations (NGOs) rely on funding to support their work. But how does the source of funding shape the types of advocacy groups engage in? Using novel panel data collected by the Environmental Funders Network, this research examines how funding from government, foundations, business, and members shape the advocacy work of environmental NGOs (ENGOs) in the UK. Past research suggests that elite funding sources channel groups into institutional advocacy, such as lobbying or litigation, and away from public advocacy, such as protesting. This paper confirms previous research while also showing that all types of funding channel group actions. Foundation and business funding is associated with more institutional advocacy, government funding is associated with non–political advocacy such as species conservation, and member funding is associated with public advocacy. By comparing across funding types, this study demonstrates the ways in which groups are both helped and hindered by funding from different sources.     

Leisure Time in Modern Societies: A New Source of Boredom and Stress?

The increase in leisure time over the last century is well documented. We know much less, however, about the quality of the use of leisure time. Quite divergent predictions exist in this regard: Some authors have argued that the new, extensive free time will lead to new forms of time pressure and stress; others have foreseen an expansion of boredom. This is the first paper that systematically investigates the quality of leisure time in 36 countries around the world. It uses the 2007 ISSP-survey “Leisure Time and Sport”. We investigate stress and boredom during leisure time by making use of four general theories about international and intercultural differences. The theories relate to the level of socio-economic development, religious–cultural systems, types of welfare states, and to the emergence of specific “time regimes”. In addition, we control for the effect of relevant individual level variables. At the macro level, significant differences emerge concerning the level of development, the dominant religion, and the extent of welfare benefits. The most interesting finding, however, was that a typology of leisure time regimes is the most suited to explain the considerable differences between the 36 countries compared. Implications of this finding for time policy and further research are discussed in the concluding section.     

Inventory Policy with Parametric Demand: Operational Statistics,Linear Correction,and Regression

In this paper, we consider data‐driven approaches to the problem of inventory control. We first consider the approach of operational statistics and review related results which enable us to maximize a priori expected profit uniformly over all parameter values, when the demand distribution is known up to the location and scale parameters. For the case of the unknown shape parameter, we first suggest a heuristic approach based on operational statistics to obtain improved ordering policies and illustrate the same for the case of a Pareto demand distribution. In more general cases where the heuristic is not applicable, we suggest linear correction and support vector regression approaches to better estimate ordering policies, and illustrate these using a Gamma demand distribution. In certain cases, our proposed approaches are found to yield significant improvements.     

Technological change and sociocultural models in China: A case study of train commuters in Beijing

ABSTRACT

China’s mobility turn has created the world’s largest public rail system, contributing extensively to citizens’ economic, social, and spatial mobility. Concurrently, this technological transformation has introduced many opportunities for individuation, which could potentially challenge the social, collectivistic, and Confucian foundations of China’s sociocultural and political ideology. While the notion that ‘mobility produces culture’ is readily accepted, research on train mobility in China is rare. In this study, we use Albert Bandura’s Model of Triadic Reciprocal Causation to conceptualize mobility as agency. We employ Hermeneutic Content Analysis, a mixed methods framework, to study how this rapidly evolving mobility environment connects to the lives of 31 regular train users living in Beijing. Studying agency in China enables us to systematize the sociocultural models within which mobility practices are embedded and how they manifest. We find that our interviewees embed agentive practices in a cultural model that is intertwined with collectivistic aspirations of the country. Technological developments are thus integrated into existing sociocultural models and political expectations, contradicting existing debates on the fracturing impact of disruptive technologies.     

Larkin Street Youth Services: helping kids get off the street for good (1982-2007)

Larkin Street Youth Services is a pioneering nonprofit organization that was established in 1981 to serve the growing urban homeless and runaway youth population. What began as a neighborhood effort has evolved into a $12 million organization over the course of its 25-year history. Larkin Street Youth Services delivers a continuum of services to homeless youth including counseling, housing, education, employment, and HIV services. The agency has received significant local and national attention for the success of its targeted program model and continuum of care services. The history of Larkin Street Youth Services provides an example of the important role of internal operations in an agency's ability to re-invent itself and respond to a larger community need.     

Thematic elements underlying the delivery of services in high-contact public service encounters

Earlier research alludes to the fact that enhanced information and systems (IS/IT) functionalities coupled with a lower degree of interaction with customers, the so-called zero- touch, real- time, self-service enhance services engagement. In this article, utilising a series of thematic elements drawn from two exploratory case studies, the authors suggest that the real enhancement of service delivery and increase in customer satisfaction, especially in frontline public service encounters, are not necessarily achieved through infusions of IS/IT, but from the adoption of a service philosophy which allows such organisations to de-emphasise IS/IT and instead focus on significant organisational factors in the area of enhanced human interaction.