The Opposition

Although social workers have an ethical and professional mandate to address inequity, theoretical and treatment approaches usually fail to address historical and structural contexts. In opposition, radical social work bridges individual and community practice by acknowledging that macro forces have micro consequences; micro practices are reflective of macro socio-political processes; and, by opposing the socio-structural forces underlying individual problems. By adopting transformative, anti-oppressive frameworks and practices, radical social workers make visible the invisible social-ecological factors that hurt people, including institutionalized white privilege; transform systems to help individuals rather than helping individuals cope with oppressive systems by reinforcing marginalized roles in accordance with inferior treatment; and develop transformative potential in self and others.     

Critical mass and voice: Board gender diversity and financial reporting quality

Based on the notion that a diverse board takes a more balanced perspective and pays greater attention to financial reporting oversight, this paper examines the association between board gender diversity and financial reporting quality. Specifically, we study the enablers that allow women to add value to the monitoring activities in the context of limited affirmative actions to promote women on boards. We provide evidence that increased share of women on boards is associated with improved financial reporting quality proxied by reporting timeliness, earnings management, and auditor opinions. We find that in companies that do not have a sufficient number of women on boards, the critical mass effect can be replaced by the “voice” effect, i.e., it is still possible to improve financial reporting quality by having a woman chair the board.     

Critical Values for the Robust Rank-Order Test

ABSTRACT

The nonparametric Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney test is commonly used by practitioners for detecting differences in location (mean, median) between two samples. Earlier work has shown this test to have a number of disadvantages, most of which are remedied by use of the alternative robust rank-order test. Use of the robust rank-order test has been limited, perhaps partly because exact critical values have up to now been available for only a small number of sample-size values, and not for all of the commonly used levels of significance. This article expands what is known about the distribution of the robust rank-order test statistic; critical values are given for more sample sizes and for more levels of significance.     

A Systems‐Based Risk Assessment Framework for Intentional Electromagnetic Interference (IEMI) on Critical Infrastructures

Modern infrastructures are becoming increasingly dependent on electronic systems, leaving them more vulnerable to electrical surges or electromagnetic interference. Electromagnetic disturbances appear in nature, e.g., lightning and solar wind; however, they may also be generated by man‐made technology to maliciously damage or disturb electronic equipment. This article presents a systematic risk assessment framework for identifying possible, consequential, and plausible intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI) attacks on an arbitrary distribution network infrastructure. In the absence of available data on IEMI occurrences, we find that a systems‐based risk assessment is more useful than a probabilistic approach. We therefore modify the often applied definition of risk, i.e., a set of triplets containing scenario, probability, and consequence, to a set of quadruplets: scenario, resource requirements, plausibility, and consequence. Probability is “replaced” by resource requirements and plausibility, where the former is the minimum amount and type of equipment necessary to successfully carry out an attack scenario and the latter is a subjective assessment of the extent of the existence of attackers who possess the motivation, knowledge, and resources necessary to carry out the scenario. We apply the concept of intrusion areas and classify electromagnetic source technology according to key attributes. Worst‐case scenarios are identified for different quantities of attacker resources. The most plausible and consequential of these are deemed the most important scenarios and should provide useful decision support in a countermeasures effort. Finally, an example of the proposed risk assessment framework, based on notional data, is provided on a hypothetical water distribution network.     

‘I’m not being offensive but…’: intersecting discourses of discrimination towards Muslim children in school

This article examines forms of implicit discrimination towards Muslim children in children’s discourses of Otherness. Findings in this paper draw on qualitative data exploring the discourses of 17 children from a Year 6 class in a culturally diverse primary school in the East of England. Building on Critical Race Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis, this article shows that children’s discourses of Otherness acted in tacit discriminatory ways by constructing difference as problematic, which positioned Muslim children as the ‘bad Other’. These findings show the intersectionality of discrimination experienced by Muslim children in school, and offer a reflection on the role of multiculturalism in schools and the limitations of uncritical discourses of tolerance in fostering an understanding of difference and Otherness.     

Tests for Multiple Outliers in an Exponential Sample

By applying the recursion of Huffer (1988 Huffer, F. 1988. Divided differences and the joint distribution of linear combinations of spacings. Journal of Applied Probability, 25: 346–354. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) repeatedly, we propose an algorithm for evaluating the null joint distribution of Dixon-type test statistics for testing discordancy of k upper outliers in exponential samples. By using the critical values of Dixon-type test statistics determined from the proposed algorithm and those of Cochran-type test statistics presented earlier by Lin and Balakrishnan (2009 Lin, C. T. and Balakrishnan, N. 2009. Exact computation of the null distribution of a test for multiple outliers in an exponential sample. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, 53: 3281–3290. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), we carry out an extensive Monte Carlo study to investigate the powers and the error probabilities for the effects of masking and swamping when the number of outliers k = 2 and 3. Based on our empirical findings, we recommend Rosner’s (1975 Rosner, B. 1975. On the detection of many outliers. Technometrics, 17: 221–227. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) sequential test procedure based on Dixon-type test statistics for testing multiple outliers from an exponential distribution.     

Rejoinder

Abstract

In this article several formulae for the approximation of the critical values for tests on the actual values of the process capability indices CPL, CPU, and C_pk are provided. These formulae are based on different approximations of the percentiles of the noncentral t distribution and their performance is evaluated by comparing the values assessed through them from the exact critical values, for several significance levels, test values, and sample sizes. As supported by the obtained results, some of the presented techniques constitute valuable tools in situations where the exact critical values of the tests are not available, since one may approximate them readily and rather accurately through them.     

A Measure of Multivariate Kurtosis with Principal Components

Srivastava (1984 Srivastava , M. S. ( 1984 ). A measure of skewness and kurtosis and a graphical method for assessing multivariate normality . Statist. Probab. Lett. 2 ( 5 ): 263 – 267 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) defined a measure of multivariate kurtosis and derived its asymptotic distribution for samples from a multivariate normal population. Some new results are obtained by generalizing Srivastava's theorem to an asymptotic expansion up to higher order. Finally, two numerical examples are presented.     

On a Multiple Three-Decision Problem for Comparing Several Treatments with the Best Control

In this article, a multiple three-decision procedure is proposed to classify p (≥2) treatments as better or worse than the best of q (≥2) control treatments in one way layout. Critical constants required for the implementation of the proposed procedure are tabulated for some pre-specified values of probability of no misclassification. Power function of the proposed procedure is defined and a common sample size necessary to guarantee various pre-specified power levels are tabulated under two optimal allocation schemes. Finally the implementation of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through numerical examples based on real life data.     

Two-sided Confidence Bands with the Inferential Sensitivity of One-Sided Bands

In this article, we consider investigating whether any of k treatments are better than a control under the assumption of each treatment mean being no less than the control mean. A classic problem is to find the simultaneous confidence bounds for the difference between each treatment and the control. Compared with hypothesis testing, confidence bounds have the attractive advantage of telling more information about the effective treatment. Generally, the one-sided lower bounds are provided as it's enough for detecting effective treatment and the one-sided lower bounds has sharper lower bands than two-sided ones. However, a two-sided procedure provides both upper and lower bounds on the differences. In this article, we develop a new procedure which combines the good aspects of both the one-sided and the two-sided procedures. This new procedure has the same inferential sensitivity of the one-sided procedure proposed by Zhao (2007 Zhao , H. B. ( 2007 ). Comparing several treatments with a control . J. Statist. Plann. Infer. 137 : 2996 – 3006 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) while also providing simultaneous two-sided bounds for the differences between treatments and the control. By our computation results, we find the new procedure is better than Hayter, Miwa and Liu's procedure (Hayter et al., 2000 Hayter , A. J. , Miwa , T. , Liu , W. ( 2000 ). Combining the advantages of one-sided and two-sided procedures for comparing several treatments with a control . J. Statist. Plann. Infer. 86 : 81 – 99 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), when the sample size is balanced. We also illustrate the new procedure by an example.