The Planned Happenstance Career Inventory: A Cross‐Cultural Comparison

This study examined the measurement invariance and latent mean difference of an English version (J. H. Lee et al., 2017) of the Planned Happenstance Career Inventory (PHCI; B. Kim, Jung, et al., 2014) across cultures. Participants were 262 American and 291 South Korean undergraduates. Measurement invariance results indicated that the 5‐factor structure was adequate for both groups and that conditions for configural, metric, and partial intercept invariance were met. Latent mean analysis was used to compare the mean scores of the PHCI skills (curiosity, flexibility, persistence, optimism, and risk taking). The latent means of curiosity, flexibility, persistence, and optimism were higher among South Korean undergraduates, but no significant difference was found regarding risk taking. Career counselors should consider differences in planned happenstance perceptions across cultures to provide better career guidance. Future studies are needed to verify the distinctive nature of flexibility by replicating the factor structure of the PHCI with other samples.     

André Dabrowski's work on limit theorems and weak dependence

André Robert Dabrowski, Professor of Mathematics and Dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Ottawa, died October 7, 2006, after a short battle with cancer. The author of the present paper, a long‐term friend and collaborator of André Dabrowski, gives a survey of André's work on weak dependence and limit theorems in probability theory. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 37: 307–326; 2009 © 2009 Statistical Society of Canada     

Comparison of Urban Housing Satisfaction in Modern and Traditional Neighborhoods in Edirne,Turkey

Numerous cross-cultural studies have focused on certain aspects of urban housing conditions and their social consequences. However, most data on housing satisfaction is restricted to Western countries. Relatively little comparison has been made between these findings and those in developing areas where rapid urbanization is occurring and where concomitant problems in urban housing are emerging. Moreover, since primary cities of developing countries in the initial stage of economic development have received extensive attention in urban housing research, it would be interesting to examine a non-primary city where relatively good standards of living have been achieved. Thus, this study investigates people’s housing satisfaction in modern and historical neighborhoods. This paper addresses some conceptual and measurement issues related to the study of housing satisfaction. We build a conceptual model, which links the multiple dimensions of housing satisfaction, measured by a modified version of Bardo and Dokmeci’s (1992, Genetic, Social and General Psychology Monographs 118(3)) housing satisfaction scale, in a causal sense. An empirical examination of the model in traditional and modern neighborhoods reveals that social and environmental living conditions positively influence overall housing satisfaction. The results also indicate that the drivers of the social and environmental living conditions constructs differ between traditional and modern neighborhoods.     

Invariance and factorial models

Two factors having the same set of levels are said to be homologous. This paper aims to extend the domain of factorial models to designs that include homologous factors. In doing so, it is necessary first to identify the characteristic property of those vector spaces that constitute the standard factorial models. We argue here that essentially every interesting statistical model specified by a vector space is necessarily a representation of some algebraic category. Logical consistency of the sort associated with the standard marginality conditions is guaranteed by category representations, but not by group representations. Marginality is thus interpreted as invariance under selection of factor levels ( I -representations), and invariance under replication of levels ( S -representations). For designs in which each factor occurs once, the representations of the product category coincide with the standard factorial models. For designs that include homologous factors, the set of S -representations is a subset of the I -representations. It is shown that symmetry and quasi-symmetry are representations in both senses, but that not all representations include the constant functions (intercept). The beginnings of an extended algebra for constructing general I -representations is described and illustrated by a diallel cross design.     

Unified Conditional Frequentist and Bayesian Testing of Composite Hypotheses

Testing of a composite null hypothesis versus a composite alternative is considered when both have a related invariance structure. The goal is to develop conditional frequentist tests that allow the reporting of data-dependent error probabilities, error probabilities that have a strict frequentist interpretation and that reflect the actual amount of evidence in the data. The resulting tests are also seen to be Bayesian tests, in the strong sense that the reported frequentist error probabilities are also the posterior probabilities of the hypotheses under default choices of the prior distribution. The new procedures are illustrated in a variety of applications to model selection and multivariate hypothesis testing.     

Conditional and unconditional tests with historical controls

Score statistics utilizing historical control data have been proposed to test for increasing trend in tumour occurrence rates in laboratory carcinogenicity studies. Novel invariance arguments are used to confirm, under slightly weaker conditions, previously established asymptotic distributions (mixtures of normal distributions) of tests unconditional on the tumor response rate in the concurrent control group. Conditioning on the control response rate, an ancillary statistic, leads to a new conditional limit theorem in which the test statistic converges to an unknown random variable. Because of this, a subasymptotic approximation to the conditional limiting distribution is also considered. The adequacy of these large-sample approximations in finite samples is evaluated using computer simulation. Bootstrap methods for use in finite samples are also proposed. The application of the conditional and unconditional tests is illustrated using bioassay data taken from the literature. The results presented in this paper are used to formulate recommendations for the use of tests for trend with historical controls in practice.     

A Strong Invariance Theorem of the Tail Empirical Copula Processes

We study the behavior of bivariate empirical copula process 𝔾 _n (·, ·) on pavements [0, k _n /n]² of [0, 1]², where k _n is a sequence of positive constants fulfilling some conditions. We provide a upper bound for the strong approximation of 𝔾 _n (·, ·) by a Gaussian process when k _n /n↘γ as n → ∞, where 0 ≤ γ ≤1.     

Testing high-dimensional normality based on classical skewness and Kurtosis with a possible small sample size

Abstract

By using the idea of principal component analysis, we propose an approach to applying the classical skewness and kurtosis statistics for detecting univariate normality to testing high-dimensional normality. High-dimensional sample data are projected to the principal component directions on which the classical skewness and kurtosis statistics can be constructed. The theory of spherical distributions is employed to derive the null distributions of the combined statistics constructed from the principal component directions. A Monte Carlo study is carried out to demonstrate the performance of the statistics on controlling type I error rates and a simple power comparison with some existing statistics. The effectiveness of the proposed statistics is illustrated by two real-data examples.     

Examining the Heterotypic Continuity of Aggression Using Teacher Reports: Results from a National Canadian Study

This study examined the heterotypic continuity of aggression hypothesis (physical to indirect) using independent teacher reports of aggression drawn from a nationally representative sample of 749 Canadian girls and boys. Confirmatory factor analysis using an accelerated longitudinal design confirmed a two-factor model of physical and indirect aggression that was stable across time, but not sex. Mean levels of indirect aggression were highest for girls whereas mean levels of physical aggression were highest for boys. Results of a series of path analyses indicated statistically significant cross-lagged effects that varied by sex. Physical aggression at Time 1 (T1; aged six to nine years) significantly predicted increased levels of indirect aggression at Time 2 (T2; girls only) and Time 3 (T3; boys and girls). Indirect aggression at T1 predicted decreased physical aggression at T2 (boys only) and at T3 (boys and girls). These results offer support for the heterotypic continuity of aggression and underscore the usefulness of teacher reports in studies of childhood aggression.