Organization, Specialization, and Desires in the Big Men's Movement: Preliminary Research in the Study of Subculture-Formation

Histories and dynamics of the big men's movement are examined, largely through the methodology of studying the publications that have shaped and contextualized the movement. Themes and subjects addressed include the history of the big men's movement, the recontextualization of masculinity as shaped by gay men since the 1970s, relationships between the big men's movement and the bear subculture, HIV/AIDS, the role of the internet and cyberspace, social class, the counter-gauge of lesbian and feminist body politics, and models of desire structuring representations of fat men within the big men's magazine media. The essay focuses largely on political organizing and mobilization within the United States.     

The Effects of Imputing the Missing Standard Deviations on the Standard Error of Meta Analysis Estimates

A common problem in the meta analysis of continuous data is that some studies do not report sufficient information to calculate the standard deviation (SDs) of the treatment effect. One of the approaches in handling this problem is through imputation. This article examines the empirical implications of imputing the missing SDs on the standard error (SE) of the overall meta analysis estimate. The simulation results show that if the SDs are missing under Missing Completely at Random and Missing at Random mechanism, imputation is recommended. With non random missing, imputation can lead to overestimation of the SE of the estimate.     

Effect of a workplace design and training intervention on individual performance, group effectiveness and collaboration: the role of environmental control

The effects of a workplace design and training intervention and the relationships between perceived satisfaction of office workplace design factors (layout and storage) and work performance measures (individual performance, group collaboration and effectiveness) were studied with 120 office workers using the Workplace Environment Questionnaire. Further, we examined whether environmental control had a direct effect on work performance, and then explored whether environmental control mediated or moderated the relationship between workplace design factors and work performance. Results showed a significant, positive impact of the intervention on environmental satisfaction for workstation layout. Satisfaction with workstation layout had a significant relationship with individual performance, group collaboration and effectiveness; and satisfaction with workstation storage had a significant relationship with individual performance and group collaboration. Environmental control had a direct impact on individual performance and group collaboration; whereas, the mediating and moderating effects of environmental control on the relationship between workplace design factors and outcome variables were not significant.     

The Role of Students

This article describes the experience of one school's change in curriculum direction with emphasis on the issues and concerns regarding parallel changes in the field instruction program. The process observed by the Task Force on the Practicum at Fordham in maximizing involvements of and communication with the cooperating agencies is outlined as is t he program projected for engaging the field instructors in considering the implications for them of a generic field instruction course for first year students. The article also contains the paradigm developed by the Task Force to sample the nature of the field assignments and the analysis of the findings from the data.     

Assessing safety at the end of clinical trials using system organ classes: A case and comparative study

Recent approaches to the statistical analysis of adverse event (AE) data in clinical trials have proposed the use of groupings of related AEs, such as by system organ class (SOC). These methods have opened up the possibility of scanning large numbers of AEs while controlling for multiple comparisons, making the comparative performance of the different methods in terms of AE detection and error rates of interest to investigators. We apply two Bayesian models and two procedures for controlling the false discovery rate (FDR), which use groupings of AEs, to real clinical trial safety data. We find that while the Bayesian models are appropriate for the full data set, the error controlling methods only give similar results to the Bayesian methods when low incidence AEs are removed. A simulation study is used to compare the relative performances of the methods. We investigate the differences between the methods over full trial data sets, and over data sets with low incidence AEs and SOCs removed. We find that while the removal of low incidence AEs increases the power of the error controlling procedures, the estimated power of the Bayesian methods remains relatively constant over all data sizes. Automatic removal of low-incidence AEs however does have an effect on the error rates of all the methods, and a clinically guided approach to their removal is needed. Overall we found that the Bayesian approaches are particularly useful for scanning the large amounts of AE data gathered.     

Reputation in Rupture: Broken Alliances and Relational Politics in the Roosevelt-Taft Split

Under what circumstances do close allies sacrifice their unity? By what process do bonds break? Although it might be argued that political ruptures are determined by incommensurable ideas (policies, philosophies) or by contentious personalities (temperament, character), we argue that neither explanation is sociologically sufficient. Extending the theories of interpersonal ruptures of Diane Vaughan and Robert Emerson to political domains, we take a relational approach to politics by emphasizing the centrality of the availability of reputational information, networks of supporters, and public displays of antagonism in response to affronts within systems of institutional power. Our approach to public ruptures draws on a detailed case study: the broken alliance between presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, a dramatic instance of changing master-protégé relationship. The transition from close interpersonal alliance to public distaste typically involves four stages that expand a relational breach to an irreparable rupture: (1) personal grievance, (2) substantive disagreement, (3) public awareness, and (4) network activity. While every detailed case has limits, we note comparable instances and contend that this model applies broadly to broken partnerships in politics or other public domains.     

Brokering International Education and (re)producing Class in Mumbai

This article discusses the role that education brokers play in the decision‐making processes of international students in Mumbai, India. Drawing on 80 interviews with students and education brokers, the analysis reveals how the services that brokers provide, and who accesses them, are shaped by the class status of prospective international students within the localized and granular hierarchies of Mumbai's upper‐middle‐class. Brokers are divided into agents and counsellors, who offer different service models and draw their clientele from two distinct segments of the upper‐middle‐class: “South Mumbai elites” and “suburban strivers”. Within these subtly differentiated landscapes of brokerage, advice from brokers can make certain students vulnerable, or hierarchise specific study destinations and trajectories. This article argues that attending to granular class differentiation within international education brokerage illuminates inequalities that exist within student cohorts from the same locality. It also outlines the policy implications of these inequalities in both sending and receiving countries.     

Estimation of river and stream temperature trends under haphazard sampling

Long-term temporal trends in water temperature in rivers and streams are typically estimated under the assumption of evenly-spaced space-time measurements. However, sampling times and dates associated with historical water temperature datasets and some sampling designs may be haphazard. As a result, trends in temperature may be confounded with trends in time or space of sampling which, in turn, may yield biased trend estimators and thus unreliable conclusions. We address this concern using multilevel (hierarchical) linear models, where time effects are allowed to vary randomly by day and date effects by year. We evaluate the proposed approach by Monte Carlo simulations with imbalance, sparse data and confounding by trend in time and date of sampling. Simulation results indicate unbiased trend estimators while results from a case study of temperature data from the Illinois River, USA conform to river thermal assumptions. We also propose a new nonparametric bootstrap inference on multilevel models that allows for a relatively flexible and distribution-free quantification of uncertainties. The proposed multilevel modeling approach may be elaborated to accommodate nonlinearities within days and years when sampling times or dates typically span temperature extremes.     

Behavior Analytic Concepts and Change in a Large Metropolitan Research University: The Graduation Success Initiative

The Graduation Success Initiative is a complex, organization-wide application of behavior analytic concepts to improving undergraduate student retention and on-time graduation at a large metropolitan research university. The behavior analytic concepts discussed here include culture, supraorganismic phenomena, selecting environments, macrobehaviors, macrocontingencies, interlocking behavioral contingencies, metacontingencies, and rule-governed behavior. We introduce a change template that includes all pertinent agents in the university system and that focuses change efforts specifically on desired behaviors, targeted behaviors, strategic interventions, and reinforcing contingencies for each of the categories of agents. The Graduation Success Initiative produced a 16-point increase in on-time graduation in 4 years.