Public Attitudes Toward Reporting Partner Violence Against Women and Reporting Behavior

Drawing from attitude‐behavior research tradition, this study used a national probabilistic sample of the Spanish adult population (N= 2,432) to test hypotheses regarding correlates of public attitudes toward reporting partner violence against women, and the relationship between attitudes toward reporting and actual reporting behavior. Results show the importance of several correlates of public attitudes toward reporting. Also, our results have suggested a potential disconnect between attitudes and behavior because failure to intervene appears to be a common response of those aware of incidents of partner violence against women.     

Multidimensional Child Poverty: From Complex Weighting to Simple Representation

Within the debates on poverty measurement among experts as well as the discussions about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) an interesting shift has taken place in recent years, away from uni-dimensional measurements (based on a poverty line) and towards multi-dimensional approaches. Any multi-dimensional approach is, by definition, dealing with the complexity of poverty across a range of aspects which need to be assessed separately before they can be combined (weighted) to produce an overall, synthetic measure. This measure, in turn, if it is going to be more than a theoretical curiosum, must be translated for and presented to the public at large and decision-makers in order to impact programs and policies to reduce and eliminate poverty. In this paper, all the steps involved in the last two sentences are explored. This is done in the context of the measurement of Child Poverty that was initiated over a decade ago by UNICEF. After a brief review of the history and evolution of the measurement of Child Poverty, three consecutive sections dealing with the issues raised above are introduced. First, based on the experience of over 70 countries from all developing continents, the selection of indicators is discussed. This is followed by a simple simulation showing the pitfalls of endogenous weights. The third of these sections explores the challenges in presenting these results to a wide, lay audience which are shown to be less intractable than the issues faced by weighted composite indexes and the “dollar-a-day” uni-dimensional metric. An additional section deals with the problem of embedding the Child Poverty measurement within the larger poverty picture of the country (i.e. comparing and complementing metrics of adult and overall poverty). The final section summarizes the main results and conclusions of the paper.     

Career,Culture, and Compromise: Career Development Experiences of Latinas Working in Higher Education

The purpose of this exploratory ethnographic research project was to investigate the career development experiences of Latinas employed in counseling and faculty positions in higher education. The research reveals strong images of an inhospitable and nonsupportive place to work and suggests that Latina women are inhibited from achieving the same levels of success as men or other women in higher education. Implications for career development practitioners are provided.     

A dependent fatigue lifetime model

An ARMA(p,q) Box-Jenkins fatigue model which allows to take into account the dependence between the strengths of neighbouring pieces of material for constant stress range is presented and the asymptotic convergence, for large lengths of materials, to a Gumbel distribution is shown. When the stress range varies, a regression model, compatible with Gumbel result, is derived. This model is based on a functional equation which is solved and a three parameter family is obtained as the only solution. Finally, an example of application with real fatigue data is included. Monte Carlo simulations give the distribution functions of the fatigue strength of wires of different lengths and allow their design. In this way, the influence of dependence is analyzed.     

Validez de las teorías implícitas de personalidad de profesores de Educación General Básica

Resumen

Cuatro muestras análogas de profesores ayudaron a comprobar las hipótesis sobre la validez de sus teorías implícitas de personalidad (TIP). El criterio de validez estuvo basado en juicios emitidos inmediatamente después de observar varias secuencias de conductas grabadas en vídeo. En un nivel agregado de análisis, las TIP demostraron poseer fidelidad estructural al correlacionar con las covariaciones reales entre las categorías, al mismo tiempo que contribuyeron a la validez de los juicios sociales. Por otra parte, la semántica no demostró ser un factor distorsionador de las TIP ni de los juicios, sino que correlacionó positiva y significativamente con ambos y con las covariaciones reales entre las categorías. En un nivel individualizado de análisis, se encontró una variabilidad interindividual significativa en todas las posibles asociaciones de las variables estudiadas, destacando las diferencias entre los sujetos en cuanto al grado de influencia de la TIP sobre los juicios retrospectivos, y el componente semántico de los juicios.     

The synanthropic flora in the Mendoza (Argentina) urban area

The synanthropic flora in the Mendoza urban area was studied in terms of its three most relevant sub-environments: house and school gardens, parks and borders of narrow ditches used to irrigate the whole city. The current synanthropic flora comprises 487 species, 8 native and 479 alien species. Neophytes include 282 genera and 104 families, with the dominant families being Fabaceae, comprising 41 species, Myrthaceae (38 spp), Rosaceae and Oleaceae (24 spp), all of which together represent 26% of the total richness recorded. Ephemerophytes, non-naturalized plants, represent 25.4% of the urban flora. Xenoergasiophytes and ergasiophytes are dominant in gardens and parks, whereas xenophytes grow in irrigation ditches across the city. Considering life forms, nanophaerophytes are prevalent in all three sub-environments, but succulents and therophytes are absent from ditches. The number of non-native plant species is increasing in the urban area of Mendoza, especially in the suburbs, and many of them at times become invasive.     

Comparison of the accuracy of multiple binary tests in the presence of partial disease verification

In the presence of partial disease verification, the comparison of the accuracy of binary diagnostic tests cannot be carried out through the paired comparison of the diagnostic tests applying McNemar's test, since for a subsample of patients the disease status is unknown. In this study, we have deduced the maximum likelihood estimators for the sensitivities and specificities of multiple binary diagnostic tests and we have studied various joint hypothesis tests based on the chi-square distribution to compare simultaneously the accuracy of these binary diagnostic tests when for some patients in the sample the disease status is unknown. Simulation experiments were carried out to study the type I error and the power of each hypothesis test deduced. The results obtained were applied to the diagnosis of coronary stenosis.     

The effect of verification bias on the comparison of predictive values of two binary diagnostic tests

The comparison of the accuracy of two binary diagnostic tests has traditionally required knowledge of the disease status in all of the patients in the sample via the application of a gold standard. In practice, the gold standard is not always applied to all patients in a sample, and the problem of partial verification of the disease arises. The accuracy of a binary diagnostic test can be measured in terms of positive and negative predictive values, which represent the accuracy of a diagnostic test when it is applied to a cohort of patients. In this paper, we deduce the maximum likelihood estimators of predictive values (PVs) of two binary diagnostic tests, and the hypothesis tests to compare these measures when, in the presence of partial disease verification, the verification process only depends on the results of the two diagnostic tests. The effect of verification bias on the naïve estimators of PVs of two diagnostic tests is studied, and simulation experiments are performed in order to investigate the small sample behaviour of hypothesis tests. The hypothesis tests which we have deduced can be applied when all of the patients are verified with the gold standard. The results obtained have been applied to the diagnosis of coronary stenosis.