Educational inequality across three generations in Australia

The transfer of advantage and disadvantage across multiple generations is receiving increasing attention in the international literature; however, transfers of resources across multiple generations in Australian families are less well understood. Using a longitudinal dataset of Australian children, we have the opportunity to not only investigate the transfer of educational resources across three generations in Australia, but also investigate the gendered nature of these transfers, which has been a limitation of other studies. We find no evidence of individual grandparent education effects on numeracy and reading scores for grandchildren in Year 3, independent of parent educational attainment and other covariates. However, significant effects on numeracy and reading scores were observed for children in families where both the grandmother and grandfather in maternal and paternal grandparent sets had high educational attainment (a diploma or university qualification), and where either or both the mother and father had a university qualification. These results suggest that the contribution of grandparents to the academic achievement of grandchildren cannot be fully explained by the parent generation and that the concentration of human capital in families contributes to educational inequalities across multiple generations that can be observed by eight years of age.     

The Role of Evaluator-Victim Relationships in Children's Evaluations of Peer Provocation

Second-, third-, fifth-, and sixth- grade children evaluated two hypothetical target peers in three provocation scenarios which differed as to the intent of a provocative act (Ambiguous, Accidental, Hostile). In addition to age and gender, evaluator-victim relationship was manipulated with children portrayed as being in a best friend, an acquaintance, or an enemy relationship with the victim, while the agent of the provocation was an unfamiliar peer. Evaluations were assessed in terms of attributions of aggressor's intentions, behavior response of the victim, evaluator's liking for victim, and evaluator's affect. Results indicated that older children evaluated aggressor's intentions and victim's behavior response more negatively than did younger children. Further, attributions of aggressor's intent significantly predicted the victim's subsequent behavioral response. Evaluator's affect was reported to be more negative when evaluating hostile provocation compared to accidental or ambiguous provocation and evaluators in acquaintance and enemy relationships with the victim reported liking the victim more after the provocation than before it occurred. Results are discussed in terms of the social relational and social situational influences on children's evaluations of peer interactions and the need to integrate these contextual factors in children's person perception research.     

Information management support for international negotiations

This paper examines the information processing requirements that surround the international negotiations process. General problem-solving models and generic task taxonomies are explored to provide insight into this process, a process that can be characterized as iterative options analysis. The paper also identifies a set of existing and emerging information technologies that can support the negotiation process, technologies that range from electronic mail to group decision support systems. The premise of the paper is that cost-effective information technology can support many important negotiation tasks and that existing technology has been vastly under-exploited by negotiators and their staffs. A program for introducing and evaluating information technology is also proposed.     

We are not walking wave functions. A response to “Quantum Mind and Social Science” by Alexander Wendt

Alexander Wendt raises many interesting questions in this book, but to get to the answers he wants, he relies on a misunderstanding of the nature of the quantum states of macroscopic objects.     

Auditing biochemical research data: A case study

There is little documentation in the literature of how to conduct a data audit of laboratory research. The purpose of such an audit is to verify the extent to which the published data agree with the corresponding laboratory notebook data and whether the data thus examined appear to be sufficient to justify the published conclusions. A case study is presented, which demonstrates a step by step approach towards conducting a data audit of a published research study.     

Consumer Privacy: Balancing Economic and Justice Considerations

Consumer privacy is at the center of an ongoing debate among business leaders, privacy activists, and government officials. Although corporations face competitive pressures to collect and use personal information about their customers, many consumers find some methods of collection and use of their personal information unfair. We present a justice theory framework that illustrates how consumer privacy concerns are shaped by the perceived fairness of corporate information practices. We describe a set of global principles, fair information practices, which were developed to balance consumer privacy concerns with an organization's need to use personal information. We conclude by discussing three alternatives for implementing fair information practices with particular attention to the Internet: government regulation, industry self-regulation, and technological solutions .     

Comparing several independent correlations with a standard correlation

The Dunnett procedure for comparing several treatments with a control is applied to the problem of comparing several independent correlations with a standard correlation. Appropriate critical values are specified and an example is provided.