The role of time perspective in predicting Iranian farmers’ participatory-based water conservation attitude and behavior

ABSTRACT

In current perspective, farmers’ participatory behavior toward conservation of water resources (FPBCWR) is one of the most important strategies under water resource management in rural Iran. In this regard, understanding the predictors of farmers’ participatory-based water conservation behaviors and attitudes is gaining more importance than earlier. Among different dimensions of farmers’ participatory behavior, the potential of temporal frames was examined rarely. Thus, 322 Iranian farmers were investigated to examine the potential of their time perspectives in predicting their participatory-based water conservation behavior and attitude. According to the study results, the effects of present orientation on attitude and behavior were negatively significant, while the effects of future orientation on attitude and behavior were positively significant, whereas its effects (path coefficients) were stronger than present orientation effects. Past orientation did not have a significant effect on attitude, though attitude positively and significantly affected farmers’ participatory behavior. The results of causal analysis revealed that presented model accounted for 58% of variance in farmers’ ‘behavior’ and 42% of variance in “attitude.” In conclusion, a few demonstrable illustrations of policy implications are presented to enable utilizing the important findings and concluding results of this study that is linked further with water resource management domain.     

Developing a measure of contentment in an Arab Muslim country: implications for cross-cultural research in social work

This is one in a series of papers that report on a programme of research focusing on the psychosocial consequences of Kuwaitis in the wake of the 1990 invasion and occupation by Iraq. The research team chose to focus on contentment as the obverse of trauma effects and develop a new measure that more closely represents Kuwait society due to cultural sensitivity. The paper briefly discusses the programme of research and the need for a new measure of Kuwaiti contentment. The Kuwaiti Raha Scale (KRS), was developed to serve as the primary dependent variable for a post-war national survey of mental health in Kuwait. The KRS emerged from a multi-method approach first administered to a convenience sample of 560 undergraduate university students enrolled in eight different classes. The results reported here note that no differences were found according to the variable of gender, as was expected. Four factors emerged, with Cronbach's Alphas ranging from 0.850 to 0.709 after eliminating three items. The total twenty-eight-item KRS measure yielded a Cronbach's Alpha of 0.906. Conclusions: The present findings suggest that the four subscales are a psychometrically sound measure of contentment, and would be useful in studies of Arabic-speaking cultures by social workers, and other investigators, concerned about culture-based well-being. Implications for European social professions are discussed.     

Testing Normality Using Transformed Data

In this article, we first present a characterization of the normal distribution and then we introduce an exact goodness of fit test for normal distribution. The power of the proposed test under various alternatives is compared with the existing tests, by simulation.     

General treatment of goodness-of-fit tests based on Kullback–Leibler information

This paper introduces a general goodness-of-fit test based on the estimated Kullback–Leibler information. The test uses the Vasicek entropy estimate. Two special cases of the test for location–scale and shape families are discussed. The results are used to introduce goodness-of-fit tests for the uniform, Laplace, Weibull and beta distributions. The critical values and powers for some alternatives are obtained by simulation.     

The impact of short-term exposure to ambient air pollution on test scores in Iran

Population and Environment - Air pollution in urban centers has become a key public concern around the world. Apart from its adverse health effects, air pollution could impact less visible outcomes...     

Goodness-of-Fit Tests Based on Correcting Moments of Entropy Estimators

In this article, we consider the entropy estimator introduced by Alizadeh Noughabi and Arghami (2010) and derive the nonparametric distribution function corresponding to our estimator as a piece-wise uniform distribution. We use the results to introduce goodness-of-fit tests for the normal and the exponential distributions. The critical values and powers for some alternatives are obtained by simulation. The powers of the proposed tests under various alternatives are compared with the competitors.     

On a multivariate Lindley distribution

This article proposes a multivariate extension of the generalized Lindley distribution introduced by Abouammoh et al. (2015 Abouammoh, A.M., Alshangiti Arwa, M., Ragab, I.E. (2015). Reliability estimation of the generalized Lindley distributions. J. Stat. Comput. Simul. 85(17):3662–3678.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The proposed model is based on a probabilistic construction in which several Lindley random variables are connected by a common shock. Many statistical properties of this new distribution are explored. In particular, explicit forms of product moments, moment-generating function, and conditional moments are derived. Explicit expressions of moment-based estimators of the underlying parameters of the proposed model are established. Estimation using the maximum likelihood procedure is also investigated. Simulations attesting to the quality of the proposed estimators are presented. Application of the proposed model in reliability is also discussed.     

Integrationstandems und Supervised Networking mit geflüchteten Menschen in studentischen Gruppen durch Service LearningIntegration Tandems and Supervised Networking with Refugees in Student Groups through Service Learning

This contribution reports on a pilot project which took place during the winter semester 2015/16 at the University of Göttingen based on the concept of Service Learning. As part of service learning, students assume practical tasks from the social environment and apply academic knowledge. With this new didactical approach, personality development of the students as well as civil and democratic values in society should be enhanced.