The Effects of Threat Type and Duration on Public Relations Practitioner's Cognitive,Affective, and Conative Responses in Crisis Situations

The contingency theory of public relations relies heavily on the concept of threat without fully developing the concept as well as its operationalization. This study addresses this weakness through the exposition of 2 key dimensions of threats in crises as threat type and duration, and empirically testing their effects on public relations practitioners' cognitive appraisal of threats, affective responses to threats, and the stances taken in threat-embedded crisis situations. A Web-based experiment on 116 public relations practitioners was conducted using a 2 (external vs. internal threat type) × 2 (long-term vs. short-term threat duration) within-subjects design. The findings revealed the main effects of threat type and threat duration on threat appraisal, emotional arousal, and degree of accommodation. Interaction effects indicated that external and long-term threat combination led to higher situational demands appraisal and more intensive emotional arousal.     

Tracking national and regional spatial-temporal mortality risk associated with NO2 concentrations in Canada: a Bayesian hierarchical two-level model

The association between daily variations in urban air quality and mortality has been well documented using time series statistical methods. This approach assumes a constant association over time. We develop a space-time dynamic model that relaxes this assumption, thus more directly examining the hypothesis that improvements in air quality translate into improvements in public health. We postulate a Bayesian hierarchical two-level model to estimate annual mortality risks at regional and national levels and to track both risk and heterogeneity of risk within and between regions over time. We illustrate our methods using daily nitrogen dioxide concentrations (NO2) and nonaccidental mortality data collected for 1984-2004 in 24 Canadian cities. Estimates of risk and heterogeneity are compared by cause of mortality (cardio-pulmonary [CP] versus non-CP) and season, respectively. Over the entire period, the NO2 risk for CP mortality was slightly lower but with a narrower credible interval than that for non-CP mortality, mainly due to an unusually low risk for a single year (1998). Warm season NO2 risk was higher than cold season risk for both CP and non-CP mortality. For 21 years overall there were no significant differences detected among the four regional NO2 risks. We found overall that there was no strong evidence for time trends in NO2 risk at national or regional levels. However, an increasing linear time trend in the annual between-region heterogeneities was detected, which suggests the differences in risk among the four regions are getting larger, and further studies are necessary to understand the increasing heterogeneity.     

Public's expectation about an organization's stance in crisis communication based on perceived leadership and perceived severity of threats

Considering the importance of general public support of an organization during a crisis, this study examined how perceived leadership style influences public expectation about an organization's stance in crisis and the relationship between perceived severity of threat and the expected stance of the organization based on leadership perception. The results of the study strongly supported main effects of leadership on public estimation about an organization's stance. Managerial implications were discussed.     

The Relation between Puberty and Psychological Distress in Adolescent Boys

This longitudinal study examined the relation between puberty, as measured by both pubertal status and timing, and adjustment problems, as measured by externalized hostile feelings and internalized distress symptoms, among adolescent males in grades 7 through 10. The results showed that boys who were physically more developed in grade 7, compared with their less physically developed peers, manifested more externalized hostile feelings and internalized distress symptoms in grades 8 through 10. Pubertal timing was significantly related to both internalized distress and externalized hostile feelings. This relation remained statistically significant, even after controlling for grade 7 maladjustment symptoms and concurrent stressful life events. Several significant interaction effects emerged between pubertal timing and concurrent stressful life events. The significant long‐term effect of the pubertal transition, independent of stressful life experiences and symptom continuity, suggests that the past undifferentiated view of the favorable influence of early maturation on males needs to be modified.     

Contingent factors: Modeling generic public relations practice in South Korea

This study identified which contingent variables public relations practitioners perceive as influential to their practice in South Korea. They responded that a number of contingent variables influence public relations activities and emphasized the influence of individual and organizational level variables on their practice. Practitioners at the management level perceived organizational level variables as influential while the staff level indicated PR department variables as dominant to their practice. Public relations practitioners whose main function is government relations tended to acknowledge a greater influence of organizational level variables. Most notably, public relations practitioners cited the constraints of negative information release and conflict situations.     

Ambivalence in the Relationship of Adult Children to Aging Parents and In‐Laws

The concept of ambivalence emphasizes the complexity of family relations and the potential for individuals to evaluate relationships as both positive and negative. Using multilevel models, we investigate ambivalence in adult children's relationships with their aging parents and in‐laws (N= 1,599). We focus on factors predicting adult children's ambivalence toward parents and in‐laws within a gendered kinship structure that shapes these relations. We conclude that ambivalence is a useful concept for representing the complexity of parent‐child relationships and is produced within the context of social relations structured by gender and kinship. Results show greater ambivalence among dyads of women, toward in‐laws, among those in poor health, for daughters providing assistance, and for adult children with poor parental relations in early life.     

Improved Estimation of the Pareto Location Parameter Under Squared Error Loss

Suppose two independent observations are drawn from Pareto distributions with known shape parameters and an order restriction on the unknown location parameters. An isotonic regression estimator of the smaller location parameter dominates a preferred marginal estimator under squared error loss, but fails to dominate under stochastic domination. The results expressed herein advance the theory of order restricted inference.     

Admissible estimation in an one parameter nonregular family of absolutely continuous distributions

Consider the problem of estimating under squared error loss an arbitrarily positive, strictly increasing or decreasing parametric function based on a sample of size n in an one parameter nonregular family of absolutly continuous distributions with both endpoints of the support depending on a single parameter. We first provide sufficient conditions for the admissibility of generalized Bayes estimators with respect to some specific priors and then treat several examples which illustrate the admissibility of best invariant estimators in some location or scale parameter problems.