美国项目管理评量表概况及其对我国托幼机构评估的启示

由美国伊利诺伊州惠灵市国立路易斯大学幼儿教育部的教授保拉·约德·布鲁姆和副教授泰瑞·N·塔兰研发并修订的项目管理评量表旨在衡量项目或机构管理的质量,包含人力资源开发、人员成本与配置、中心运营、儿童评估、财务管理、项目策划与评估、家庭伙伴关系、市场营销与公共关系、技术、员工资格等10个子量表,下含25个项目,每个项目有具体指标和赋分规则,使用者按照不充分到优秀7级赋分方式给每个指标进行评分。项目管理评量表整体具有重视管理中人的因素、重视过程性评价、重视儿童权利的保护、重视评估引领作用等特点,在培训、认定评估者,丰富、细化评估内容,规范评估步骤与方法,完善评估支持系统等四个方面给予我国托幼机构评估工作以启示。     

The value of improved road safety

We report the results of a contingent valuation study for finding a conservative estimate of the value-of-statistical-life in an urban road safety context in Sweden. We estimate the value of both a private-good device and a public-good safety program. The reduction of risk is communicated with a “community analogy” representation of the “Vision Zero” target of the national traffic-safety policy. According to this target, the road-traffic system should be designed so as to prevent accidents when they happen to lead to fatalities or severe injuries. We use the “certainty approach” for ex-post correction of results to remove or mitigate hypothetical bias of responses. As expected we find insensitivity of responses in the full sample to the size of the risk reduction being valued. By our approach we can compute a conservative estimate, based on answers from fully confident respondents, of the value of the largest possible safety enhancement (i.e. fulfilment of the “Vision Zero”). This lower bound estimate indicates a higher average willingness-to-pay for public safety-improving measures than currently assumed in benefit-cost assessments. We also find that the willingness to pay is considerably lower within a public-good than a private-good framework and a weak indication of sensitivity to scale among the most confident respondents. JEL Codes H43 · I18 · Q51     

Effects of Parental Divorce on Children's Financial Support for College Students

No-fault divorce laws, and the lowering of the age of minority from 21 to 18 years have combined to have unintended negative impact on the children of divorce. Previous research has shown that children whose parents are divorced are at increased risk for emotional problems and a reduced standard of living. This study was conducted to learn more about the effects of parental divorce on a young person's access to a college education. A questionnaire was developed to learn how students pay for college, and what non-financial support they receive from parents. The questionnaire was administered to a randomly selected sample 9 of 19 students at a state university. Findings indicated that young people whose parents were divorced received higher Pell grants, were more likely to provide more of their own necessities, and were more likely to repay their college loans themselves. Further, young people whose parents were divorced were much more likely to have their material and fnancial needs met by their custodial parents rather than their noncustodial parents. Implications are that young people with divorced parents may have less financial support for college from their family, and the support they receive is much more likely to come from their custodial than noncustodial parent. Changes in child support laws and financial aid policies are recommended.     

Are environmental attitudes influenced by survey context? An investigation of the context dependency of the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale

General environmental attitudes are often measured with questions added to surveys about specific environmental or non-environmental issues. Using results from a large-scale national survey on the protection of threatened and endangered marine species, we examine whether the context of the survey in which New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale items are asked influence measured environmental concern. In this application the role that specific threatened or endangered species play in affecting responses to NEP Scale items is explored using a combination of non-parametric and parametric approaches. The results in this case suggest that context does influence stated general environmental attitudes, though the effects of context differ across NEP items.     

On Progressively Type-II Censored Two-parameter Rayleigh Distribution

Recently, Rayleigh distribution has received considerable attention in the statistical literature. In this article, we consider the point and interval estimation of the functions of the unknown parameters of a two-parameter Rayleigh distribution. First, we obtain the maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) of the unknown parameters. The MLEs cannot be obtained in explicit forms, and we propose to use the maximization of the profile log-likelihood function to compute the MLEs. We further consider the Bayesian inference of the unknown parameters. The Bayes’ estimates and the associated credible intervals cannot be obtained in closed forms. We use the importance sampling technique to approximate (compute) the Bayes’ estimates and the associated credible intervals. For comparison purposes, we have also used the exact method to compute the Bayes’ estimates and the corresponding credible intervals. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to compare the performances of the proposed method, and one dataset has been analyzed for illustrative purposes. We further consider the Bayes’ prediction problem based on the observed samples, and provide the appropriate predictive intervals. A data example has been provided for illustrative purposes.     

云南省食品安全监管效率评价指标体系构建

国内外学者对食品安全问题的已有研究主要侧重于现状、原因、策略和方法等方面,而缺乏政府监管视角下具有区域特征的食品安全监管效率评价指标体系的构建。就云南省食品监管现状而言,存在法规不健全、惩治力度小,经费缺口明显、检测能力弱,监管体制机制不完善,特色食品管制存在盲点等问题。可依据科学性、系统性、可操作性和可比性、导向性原则,结合已有研究成果和云南省食品安全监管成效,通过系统认知“监管主体—利益相关者—监管客体”三者关系,采用五级李克特量表法进行指标体系筛选,构建一个包括19个投入指标和5个产出指标的评价指标体系。该评价指标体系为云南省食品安全监管工作的有效开展提供了理论借鉴,并为该项指标体系的进一步完善奠定了技术基础。     

Lévy Processes,Phase-Type Distributions,and Martingales

Lévy processes are defined as processes with stationary independent increments and have become increasingly popular as models in queueing, finance, etc.; apart from Brownian motion and compound Poisson processes, some popular examples are stable processes, variance gamma processes, CGMY Lévy processes (tempered stable processes), NIG (normal inverse Gaussian) Lévy processes, and hyperbolic Lévy processes. We consider here a dense class of Lévy processes, compound Poisson processes with phase-type jumps in both directions and an added Brownian component. Within this class, we survey how to explicitly compute a number of quantities that are traditionally studied in the area of Lévy processes, in particular two-sided exit probabilities and associated Laplace transforms, the closely related scale function, one-sided exit probabilities and associated Laplace transforms coming up in queueing problems, and similar quantities for a Lévy process with reflection in 0. The solutions are in terms of roots to polynomials, and the basic equations are derived by purely probabilistic arguments using martingale optional stopping; a particularly useful martingale is the so-called Kella-Whitt martingale. Also, the relation to fluid models with a Brownian component is discussed.     

Minimax Asymptotic Mean-Squared-Error of L-Estimators of Scale Parameter

We derive the AMSE (maximal asymptotic mean-squared-error) of the general class of L-estimators of scale that are location-scale equivariant and Fisher consistent. For non-normal error distributions, we determined estimators that have minimum AMSE over the subclass of (i) α-interquantile ranges and (ii) mixtures of at most two α-interquantile ranges. Finally, the L-estimators of scale symmetrized about the median were found to have the same AMSE as their nonsymmetrized counterparts, thus yielding the same results as in the symmetrized case.     

Generalized Confidence Interval for the Scale Parameter of the Power-Law Process

The power-law process is widely used in the analysis of repairable system reliability. In this article, interval estimation for the scale parameter is investigated under some general conditions. A procedure to derive a generalized confidence interval for the scale parameter is presented. We also study the accuracy of the generalized confidence interval by Monte Carlo simulation. Finally, two examples are shown to illustrate the proposed procedure.     

Hodges-Lehmann Scale Estimator for Cauchy Distribution

We draw here on the relation between the Cauchy and hyperbolic secant distributions to prove that the MLE of the scale parameter of the Cauchy distribution is log-normally distributed and to study the properties of a Hodges-Lehmann type estimator for the scale parameter. This scale estimator is slightly biased but performs well even on small samples regardless of the location parameter. The asymptotic efficiency of the estimator is 98%.