Quality of Life in South Africa: Post-Apartheid Trends

During the apartheid era black South Africans indicated markedly lower levels of happiness and satisfaction in all spheres of life than their white counterparts. The gap between black and white subjective well-being closed temporarily after the first universal franchise elections held on April 27, 1994 only to widen again eighteen months later. The paper presents data on subjective well-being collected during the 1980s and 1990s in four nationwide cross-sectional attitude surveys and a multipurpose household survey. Possible explanations for the shifting levels of happiness are explored. These include levels of living, income inequality, rising expectations and new anxieties experienced in the post-apartheid era.     

South Africa's 'Rainbow People', National Pride and Happiness

Since the first free elections were held in April 1994, South Africans are popularly known as the 'rainbow people'. The paper inquires whether South Africans who experienced pride in their nation in the first years of democracy also perceived a greater sense of subjective well-being. It is proposed that national pride in post-apartheid South Africa might be fused with or work through self-esteem to lift levels of happiness. The paper traces the history of the new integrating civil religion of the rainbow people and the acceptance of the rainbow as a political symbol of unity among the diverse people of South Africa immediately after the 1994 elections and two years later. The proposed link between national pride and happiness was explored with data from two independent national surveys, the 1995 South African World Values Survey conducted by Markinor and a June 1996 MarkData syndicated omnibus survey. The study found that the appeal of the rainbow as political symbol was inclusive of all groups in society and that feelings of national pride and support for the rainbow ideal were positively associated with subjective well-being. As indicated by intensity and frequency measures, the majority of South Africans were proud of their country and could name a national achievement that inspired pride. Better-off South Africans tended to be happier and more satisfied with life but less proud, while the poor were less happy but fiercely proud of their country. Results suggest that belief in South Africa's 'rainbow nation' ideal may have assisted in boosting happiness during the transition to a stable democracy, thereby preventing alienation among the losers under the new political dispensation. Supporters of the ideal of the rainbow nation were more optimistic than others about the future of their country.     

Quantile estimation and comparing two independent groups with an approach based on percentile bootstrap

Although the most common approach for comparing two independent groups is on the basis of some measure of location, determination of the differences in the tails of the groups is often of interest. In this study, Harrell–Davis estimator, Sfakianakis–Verginis estimators and default quantile estimator of R are used in conjunction with a percentile bootstrap method with the aim of comparing two independent groups via the quantiles, and the relative efficiencies of Harrell–Davis and Sfakianakis–Verginis estimators are compared. General performance of Sfakianakis–Verginis estimators was much better than Harrell–Davis estimator in terms of both saving actual type I error and relative efficiency.     

Modelling columnarity of pyramidal cells in the human cerebral cortex

For modelling the location of pyramidal cells in the human cerebral cortex, we suggest a hierarchical point process in that exhibits anisotropy in the form of cylinders extending along the z-axis. The model consists first of a generalised shot noise Cox process for the xy-coordinates, providing cylindrical clusters, and next of a Markov random field model for the z-coordinates conditioned on the xy-coordinates, providing either repulsion, aggregation or both within specified areas of interaction. Several cases of these hierarchical point processes are fitted to two pyramidal cell data sets, and of these a final model allowing for both repulsion and attraction between the points seem adequate. We discuss how the final model relates to the so-called minicolumn hypothesis in neuroscience.     

Metrics and barycenters for point pattern data

We introduce the transport–transform and the relative transport–transform metrics between finite point patterns on a general space, which provide a unified framework for earlier point pattern metrics, in particular the generalized spike time and the normalized and unnormalized optimal subpattern assignment metrics. Our main focus is on barycenters, i.e., minimizers of a q-th-order Fréchet functional with respect to these metrics. We present a heuristic algorithm that terminates in a local minimum and is shown to be fast and reliable in a simulation study. The algorithm serves as a general plug-in method that can be applied to point patterns on any state space where an appropriate algorithm for solving the location problem for individual points is available. We present applications to geocoded data of crimes in Euclidean space and on a street network, illustrating that barycenters serve as informative summary statistics. Our work is a first step toward statistical inference in covariate-based models of repeated point pattern observations.     

Supply chain relationship quality and its impact on firm performance

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of supply chain relationship quality (SCRQ) on firm performance (FP) through the mediators of supply chain management processes (SCMP) and supply chain performance (SCP). In the literature, these linkages have been examined separately; in contrast, this study takes a holistic perspective on the antecedents of FP. The model was tested using survey data from manufacturing companies. Variance-based structural equation modelling revealed that both SCMP and SCP lead to FP, unlike SCRQ. On the other hand, SCRQ affects SCMP. Drawing on the resource-based view, consistency in SCRQ can lead to not only efficient and effective supply chain management but also improvements in FP and SCP. This research has practical implications, providing supply chain decision makers with insights on enhancing FP. Supply chain decision makers will be able to benefit from the findings of our study by improving supply chain relationships with supply chain members and ensuring FP. This research also highlights how effective management of SCRQ, SCMP and SCP can provide better FP and a competitive advantage.     

Separating trend and cyclical dynamics in state space models with exogenous inputs

In the present study we compare three state rotation methods in modelling the impact of the US economy on the Finnish economy, i.e. Schur decomposition, eigenvalue analysis and singular value decomposition. Singular value decomposition is seen to provide a robust approximation of the state rotation in most cases studied, irrespective of whether the characteristic roots of the state transition matrix are complex. Thus, singular value decomposition seems to be a viable computational device not only in estimating the system matrices of the state space model, but also in state rotation, as compared to the more involved techniques based on eigenvalue analysis or Schur decomposition.     

Role of motives and attributes in consumer motion picture choice

The study focuses on consumer motion picture motives and choice criteria. Its purpose can be specified into the following objectives: (1) to examine the motivational basis of cinema attending. (2) to examine the predictive ability of movie motives and consumers' attribute importances in preference regressions of four types of movie, (3) to carry out a motion picture choice analysis by predicting audience membership with discriminant analysis. The data is based on a convinience sample of Finnish consumers (N = 228) attending one of the following types of movie: adventures/ thrillers, human/ social dramas, sex movies, entertainment movies.The results of a group of multivariate analyses (factor analysis, canonical correlation, preference regression, and discriminant analysis) indicate that consumers attending different types of films have distinctly separate motivation bases, as well as attribute importance profiles, underlying their movie choices. Each movie type had a specific preference structure, expressed by the regression coefficients. Finally, the discriminant analysis suggests that the general motive and attribute variables are effective also in predicting motion picture choice. On balance, the results were mutually supportive and exemplify the managerial usefulness of quantitative consumer analysis also in the case of such abstract leisure products as motion pictures.     

Sozialer Einfluss in Chat-Gruppen: Geschlechtsspezifische Auswirkungen auf konversationale Partizipation und Kohärenz

This study examines gender specific differences in chat groups. It is assumed that men participate more in communication than women, that women will be perceived as less influential and will use different communication mechanisms to exert social influence. In addition, the effects of a coherence training for women will be evaluated. A 2 × 2 experimental design (topic, training) with gender as quasi-experimental variable was used to investigate 99 students in 33 triads discussing a career-choice dilemma via chat. Statistical analyses show that men participated more in the discussion and women were perceived as less influential independently from topic and training. Trained women communicated more coherently compared to untrained women. Analysis of communication mechanisms show that women differed from men in ways how to exert social influence. Practical implications as well as methodical limitations are discussed.