Archival data in program evaluation and policy analysis

Evaluators have typically avoided using existing data sets, choosing instead to collect their own information to maintain control over both the content and quality of the data. As demands on action researchers increase without provision for additional resources, primary data collection may become a luxury and the use of archival data may increase. Though archival data has practical and methodological advantages, there are limitations associated with the utilization of such information. The general problems with secondary data sources include the accuracy, acceptability and accessibility of the information. Following a discussion of these general problems, an example from the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services (CHAMPUS) reimbursement data set is presented to illustrate specific difficulties with using archival data for evaluation research. Strategies are then presented for minimizing these difficulties, including determining the feasibility of utilization of such data sources, methods for assessing their accuracy and factors to consider in the data acquisition process.     

网络交易中信用评价方法研究

信任被认为是影响网络交易发展的关键因素之一.尤其是在C2C网络交易中,网络交易失信行为屡屡发生.本文通过分析建立交易方信用评价的必要性,提出C2C网络交易中的交易方信用评价模型与评价方法,目的在于,在一定程度上防止交易方在交易过程中的欺诈行为,帮助建立一个有信任的网络交易环境.     

英语语法学习中母语负迁移问题探析

语言迁移即母语迁移,是指语言学习者在学习新知识的过程中,对已有知识进行自动的潜意识的利用过程。任何人在第二语言习得过程中都或多或少地受到母语的影响。文章着重研究英语语法学习中的母语负迁移现象及应对策略,旨在帮助人们掌握一些应对母语负迁移的方法,减少母语负迁移,提高英语语法学习的成效。     

Effect of Level of Disaggregation on Conjoint Cross Validations: Some Comparative Findings*

Early formulations of conjoint models focused on part-worth estimation at the individual level. As the methodology's popularity grew so did industry demands for increasingly larger numbers of attributes and levels. In response to these demands, new approaches, based on partial or full data aggregation (such as clusterwise/latent class conjoint and choice-based conjoint), have appeared. This paper suggests that pooled-data models will often be successful in predicting market shares when researchers employ monotonic attributes. In these cases more of a good attribute (or less of a bad attribute) is always more preferred. In the more realistic case, in which some of the attributes may be nonmonotonic, we find that data aggregation does not predict holdout sample preferences as well as individual part-worth models.     

Robust penalized logistic regression with truncated loss functions

The penalized logistic regression (PLR) is a powerful statistical tool for classification. It has been commonly used in many practical problems. Despite its success, since the loss function of the PLR is unbounded, resulting classifiers can be sensitive to outliers. To build more robust classifiers, we propose the robust PLR (RPLR) which uses truncated logistic loss functions, and suggest three schemes to estimate conditional class probabilities. Connections of the RPLR with some other existing work on robust logistic regression have been discussed. Our theoretical results indicate that the RPLR is Fisher consistent and more robust to outliers. Moreover, we develop estimated generalized approximate cross validation (EGACV) for the tuning parameter selection. Through numerical examples, we demonstrate that truncating the loss function indeed yields better performance in terms of classification accuracy and class probability estimation.     

Was the conservative majority predictable?

Canada's $41{\rm st}$ national general election saw the Conservative Party increase its seat count from 143 to 166, thus giving it a majority of the national parliament's 308 seats. By contrast, nearly all of the pre‐election seat count forecasts predicted a Conservative minority only. We examine the extent to which simple statistical models could or could not have predicted the Conservative majority prior to the election. We conclude that, by using data from the previous (2008) election appropriately, the Conservative majority should have been anticipated as the most likely outcome. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 39: 721–733; 2011. © 2011 Statistical Society of Canada     

Second‐order bias‐corrected AIC in multivariate normal linear models under non‐normality

This paper deals with a bias correction of Akaike's information criterion (AIC) for selecting variables in multivariate normal linear regression models when the true distribution of observation is an unknown non‐normal distribution. It is well known that the bias of AIC is $O(1)$ , and there are a number of the first‐order bias‐corrected AICs which improve the bias to $O(n^{-1})$ , where $n$ is the sample size. A new information criterion is proposed by slightly adjusting the first‐order bias‐corrected AIC. Although the adjustment is achieved by merely using constant coefficients, the bias of the new criterion is reduced to $O(n^{-2})$ . Then, a variance of the new criterion is also improved. Through numerical experiments, we verify that our criterion is superior to others. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 39: 126–146; 2011 © 2011 Statistical Society of Canada     

Self‐consistent estimation of mean response functions and their derivatives

Many methods have been developed for the nonparametric estimation of a mean response function, but most of these methods do not lend themselves to simultaneous estimation of the mean response function and its derivatives. Recovering derivatives is important for analyzing human growth data, studying physical systems described by differential equations, and characterizing nanoparticles from scattering data. In this article the authors propose a new compound estimator that synthesizes information from numerous pointwise estimators indexed by a discrete set. Unlike spline and kernel smooths, the compound estimator is infinitely differentiable; unlike local regression smooths, the compound estimator is self‐consistent in that its derivatives estimate the derivatives of the mean response function. The authors show that the compound estimator and its derivatives can attain essentially optimal convergence rates in consistency. The authors also provide a filtration and extrapolation enhancement for finite samples, and the authors assess the empirical performance of the compound estimator and its derivatives via a simulation study and an application to real data. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 39: 280–299; 2011 © 2011 Statistical Society of Canada     

季节调整方法在CPI指数中的应用

文章首先对季节调整方法的发展及应用进行了说明,着重介绍了国际上使用最广泛的两种方法:X-12-ARIMA和TRAMO/SEATS;然后用X-12-ARIMA方法对我国居民消费价格指数序列进行了季节调整,探测了交易日、闰年、异常值和春节对CPI指数的影响,比较了三种季节调整模型之间的优劣并进行调整,得出了我国CPI指数只受春节因素的影响的结论,相应的最优模型也是春节效应模型;最后用这种模型对我国CPI指数进行季节调整,分离出趋势成分、季节成分和不规则成分,得到了最终的季节调整序列。     

A remark on the Bahadur representation of sample quantiles for negatively associated sequences

Under mild conditions, we investigate further the Bahadur representation of sample quantiles for negatively associated sequences, whose convergence rate is faster than the corresponding one in Ling (2008).