Cristina Balboa: The Paradox of Scale: How NGOs Build,Maintain, and Lose Authority in Environmental Governance

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Wie fühlt man sich in einer virtuellen Arbeitsgruppe?

Participants of a virtual seminar have been examined and compared with participants of a real-life seminar using a questionnaire by Ardelt-Gattinger and Schlögl (1998) which measures emotions as well as norms within groups. In both settings, participants scored higher on positive than on negative emotions and group norms were perceived in a similar way. A closer look at means and standard deviations reveals a high inner-group-variance for items dealing with rivalry or anger, which shows that some students were less satisfied than others. ?Free riders“ and ?drop-outs“ seemed to be responsible for feelings of insecurity and anger of the others. Participants of the virtual seminar liked their group members more and showed lower variance on that dimension than real-life participants. Intensive social contacts may have not been expected before and so afterwards they were valued higher (than they would in a real-life-setting). Participants of the virtual setting rated group conformity of medium intensity, which could be responsible for a reduced feeling of commitment or security, leading to varying intensities of involvement in the group.     

‘Intercultural Training’ in exchange situations for experts and management: a critical reflection

In this paper, developments in the area of ‘intercultural communication’ are described to shed light on the pitfalls that the author has discovered in her analysis of some of the more popular intercultural training programs, through practical applications of communication training programs and through her own personal experiences in exchange situations. Recommendations are given for the creation of more appropriate intercultural training programs.     

Wer Wind s?t, wird Sturm ernten

The present study deals with the theoretical and empirical analysis of the intergenerational transmission of violence. Within the framework of a systematic theory comparison, the self-control theory (Gottfredson und Hirschi 1990) and the social learning theory (Bandura 1979a, b) are used to analyze the mechanisms relating the experience of parental violence in childhood to the use of violence in adolescence (the so-called cycle of violence). The analyses are based on a survey of ninth-graders from schools in Dortmund and Stuttgart (n?=?4583) conducted by the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN) in 2005. Data analyses are carried out based on linear structural equation modeling. The results reveal that both self-control and social learning processes mediate between the experience of violent parenting and the prevalence of juvenile violence; however, a greater relative share of the cycle of violence can be traced back to social learning processes. The systematic theory comparison points out that the social learning theory provides the superior explanation of the cycle of violence. The results of the study are discussed with regard to their implications for further theory development.     

Posterior likelihood ratios for evaluation of forensic trace evidence given a two-level model on the data

In forensic science, in order to determine whether sets of traces are from the same source or not, it is widely advocated to evaluate evidential value of similarity of the traces by likelihood ratios (LRs). If traces are expressed by measurements following a two-level model with random effects and known variances, closed LR formulas are available given normality, or kernel density distributions, on the effects. For the known variances estimators are used though, which leads to uncertainty on the resulting LRs which is hard to quantify. The above is analyzed in an approach in which both effects and variances are random, following standard prior distributions on univariate data, leading to posterior LRs. For non-informative and conjugate priors, closed LR formulas are obtained that are interesting in structure and generalize a known result given fixed variance. A semi-conjugate prior on the model seems usable in many applications. It is described how to obtain credible intervals using Monte Carlo Markov Chain and regular simulation, and an example is described for comparison of XTC tablets based on MDMA content. In this way, uncertainty on LR estimation is expressed more clearly which makes the evidential value more transparent in a judicial context.     

On likelihood ratio testing for penalized splines

Penalized spline regression using a mixed effects representation is one of the most popular nonparametric regression tools to estimate an unknown regression function $f(\cdot )$ . In this context testing for polynomial regression against a general alternative is equivalent to testing for a zero variance component. In this paper, we fill the gap between different published null distributions of the corresponding restricted likelihood ratio test under different assumptions. We show that: (1) the asymptotic scenario is determined by the choice of the penalty and not by the choice of the spline basis or number of knots; (2) non-standard asymptotic results correspond to common penalized spline penalties on derivatives of $f(\cdot )$ , which ensure good power properties; and (3) standard asymptotic results correspond to penalized spline penalties on $f(\cdot )$ itself, which lead to sizeable power losses under smooth alternatives. We provide simple and easy to use guidelines for the restricted likelihood ratio test in this context.     

A century of population aging in Germany

The population of Germany is becoming progressively more elderly, and this article focuses on the causes and implications of that trend. We discuss the demographic processes that occurred in Germany in the second half of the 20th century and describe the developments that the population of Germany will undergo in the next 50 years, which promise to exert a profound influence on the economic and social future of the country.