Attitude–behavior consistency in household water consumption

The purpose of this paper is to examine how environmental attitudes and concern about water scarcity translate into water conservation behavior. The study considers whether Oregonians environmental concern measured by the New Environmental Paradigm scale and sociodemographic characteristics influence personal water conservation activities. Using a survey conducted in the spring of 2010 of Oregon residents, the interaction of environmental concern and sociodemographics that predict identified water conservation behaviors are considered.     

Variable selection for multivariate generalized linear models

Generalized linear models (GLMs) are widely studied to deal with complex response variables. For the analysis of categorical dependent variables with more than two response categories, multivariate GLMs are presented to build the relationship between this polytomous response and a set of regressors. Traditional variable selection approaches have been proposed for the multivariate GLM with a canonical link function when the number of parameters is fixed in the literature. However, in many model selection problems, the number of parameters may be large and grow with the sample size. In this paper, we present a new selection criterion to the model with a diverging number of parameters. Under suitable conditions, the criterion is shown to be model selection consistent. A simulation study and a real data analysis are conducted to support theoretical findings.     

On Variational Bayes Estimation and Variational Information Criteria for Linear Regression Models

Variational Bayes (VB) estimation is a fast alternative to Markov Chain Monte Carlo for performing approximate Baesian inference. This procedure can be an efficient and effective means of analyzing large datasets. However, VB estimation is often criticised, typically on empirical grounds, for being unable to produce valid statistical inferences. In this article we refute this criticism for one of the simplest models where Bayesian inference is not analytically tractable, that is, the Bayesian linear model (for a particular choice of priors). We prove that under mild regularity conditions, VB based estimators enjoy some desirable frequentist properties such as consistency and can be used to obtain asymptotically valid standard errors. In addition to these results we introduce two VB information criteria: the variational Akaike information criterion and the variational Bayesian information criterion. We show that variational Akaike information criterion is asymptotically equivalent to the frequentist Akaike information criterion and that the variational Bayesian information criterion is first order equivalent to the Bayesian information criterion in linear regression. These results motivate the potential use of the variational information criteria for more complex models. We support our theoretical results with numerical examples.     

宏观经济政策的时间一致性和商业经济周期的推动力

介绍了2004年度诺贝尔经济学奖获得者芬恩·基德兰德和爱德华·普雷斯科特在宏观经济政策和商业经济周期研究中作出的开创性贡献,阐述了其理论的产生背景和内容,指出他们在宏观经济政策制定以及经济周期的驱动力问题上的独创研究,不仅改变了现代经济学研究的方法,还对世界各国政府在宏观经济政策,尤其是货币政策的制定上产生了广泛的影响。     

我国制造业结构与劳动力素质结构吻合度分析——兼论“民工荒”、“技工荒”与大学生就业难问题

基于要素密集度与受教育程度分别给出了考查制造业结构与劳动力素质结构的方法,测算并分析了2006～2010年全国、东部、中部和西部地区制造业结构与劳动力素质结构变动状况。在合理选择测度方法的基础上,对上述地区制造业结构与劳动力素质结构的吻合度进行了测算。结果表明,全国范围东部和西部地区制造业结构与劳动力素质结构的吻合度是逐步提高的。从制造业结构与劳动力素质结构是否吻合的视角,分析讨论了"民工荒"、"技工荒"与大学生就业难问题产生的原因,提出了促进制造业转型升级和推动职业教育与高等教育改革发展的相关对策建议。     

Robust quasi-likelihood inference in generalized linear mixed models with outliers

It is well known that in a traditional outlier-free situation, the generalized quasi-likelihood (GQL) approach [B.C. Sutradhar, On exact quasilikelihood inference in generalized linear mixed models, Sankhya: Indian J. Statist. 66 (2004), pp. 261–289] performs very well to obtain the consistent as well as the efficient estimates for the parameters involved in the generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs). In this paper, we first examine the effect of the presence of one or more outliers on the GQL estimation for the parameters in such GLMMs, especially in two important models such as count and binary mixed models. The outliers appear to cause serious biases and hence inconsistency in the estimation. As a remedy, we then propose a robust GQL (RGQL) approach in order to obtain the consistent estimates for the parameters in the GLMMs in the presence of one or more outliers. An extensive simulation study is conducted to examine the consistency performance of the proposed RGQL approach.     

Consistent estimation of parameters and quantiles of the three-parameter gamma distribution based on Type-II right-censored data

In this paper, we propose a method of estimation of parameters and quantiles of the three-parameter gamma distribution based on Type-II right-censored data. In the proposed method, under mild conditions, the estimates always exist uniquely, and the estimators have consistency over the entire parameter space. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we further show that the proposed method performs well compared with another prominent method of estimation in terms of bias and root mean-squared error in small-sample situations. Finally, two real data sets are used for illustrating the proposed method.     

Existence,uniqueness and consistency of estimation of life characteristics of three-parameter Weibull distribution based on Type-II right censored data

In this paper, we propose a new method of estimation for the parameters and quantiles of the three-parameter Weibull distribution based on Type-II right censored data. The method, based on a data transformation, overcomes the problem of unbounded likelihood. In the proposed method, under mild conditions, the estimates always exist uniquely, and the estimators are also consistent over the entire parameter space. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we further show that the proposed method of estimation performs well compared to some prominent methods in terms of bias and root mean squared error in small-sample situations. Finally, two real data sets are used to illustrate the proposed method of estimation.     

团体箱庭疗法促升大学生心理健康水平研究

团体箱庭疗法是由团体成员共同制作箱庭作品,促进自我整合及心理成长的一种心理疗法。团体箱庭疗法显著提高低自我和谐个体的自我和谐水平。个体在团体箱庭制作过程中利用团体关系提供的自我成长动力,将习得的新适应方式应用于现实环境,以获得自我发展。在高校心理健康教育方式的改革与探索中,针对特定心理问题的个体可考虑团体箱庭疗法与个体心理辅导相结合的形式来促进个体心理健康状况改善。