A semi-parametric approach to robust parameter design

Parameter design or robust parameter design (RPD) is an engineering methodology intended as a cost-effective approach for improving the quality of products and processes. The goal of parameter design is to choose the levels of the control variables that optimize a defined quality characteristic. An essential component of RPD involves the assumption of well estimated models for the process mean and variance. Traditionally, the modeling of the mean and variance has been done parametrically. It is often the case, particularly when modeling the variance, that nonparametric techniques are more appropriate due to the nature of the curvature in the underlying function. Most response surface experiments involve sparse data. In sparse data situations with unusual curvature in the underlying function, nonparametric techniques often result in estimates with problematic variation whereas their parametric counterparts may result in estimates with problematic bias. We propose the use of semi-parametric modeling within the robust design setting, combining parametric and nonparametric functions to improve the quality of both mean and variance model estimation. The proposed method will be illustrated with an example and simulations.     

Art therapy as a modality for crisis intervention: Children express reactions to violence in their community

Ten days after the Symbionese Liberation Army's shoot out in Los Angeles in 1974, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Department of Family Child Psychiatry, Thalians Community Mental Health Center, sent a crisis team of three psychotherapists to a school in the black community. The psychotherapists used an art therapy approach with a third grade classroom of 21 black children. The team's procedure helped the children ventilate their reactions to a frightening event which occurred in their neighborhood. This paper describes the art therapy techniques which were utilized, the children's vivid pictorial and verbal expressions accompanied by the psychological aspects of their responses.     

Effects of a single-lesson tobacco prevention curriculum on knowledge, skill identification and smoking intention

One in five students report experimenting with tobacco before the age of 13 and most prevention efforts take place in the school setting. This study measures the effect of a single-lesson tobacco prevention curriculum, conducted by a health education center, focusing on knowledge of tobacco, ability to identify refusal techniques, and intent not to smoke. Data were collected, via electronic keypads, from students visiting a non-school, health education center in Michigan (n = 704 intervention and 85 comparison). Contingency table Chi-squared tests and t-tests demonstrated that a single lesson can improve general knowledge and ability to identify appropriate refusal techniques. Improvement in intent not to smoke was not significant because both groups had very high intent prior to implementation. Similar to results from other programs, multivariate logistic regression of gender, general knowledge, and skill identification revealed that only the skill variable was associated with intent not to smoke at pretest. Recommendations are given for further research and for designing more effective curricula or programs.     

Revisiting the relationship between public relations and marketing: Encroachment and social media

Although public relations and marketing trade presses regularly discuss the conflict between the functions (e.g., Ecker, 2013; Havartin, 2013), academic researchers focused on the issue primarily in the 1980s and 1990s. The drop in public relations and marketing encroachment research does not parallel a drop in encroachment in practice, especially in light of today’s social media environment. In fact, historic tension between public relations and marketing intensified with the incorporation of social media into communication efforts. This paper updates the study of encroachment by reviewing the historical views of the topic, proposes ways that social media use has intensified issues related to role encroachment between public relations and marketing professionals, and outlines questions to guide future study of these topics.     

Diffusion in the Face of Failure: The Evolution of a Management Innovation

Recent work has questioned the institutional model of management innovation by highlighting interactions between the field‐level actors engaged in diffusing innovations and implementation of the innovation at organization level. Focusing on the adaptation of management innovations to their context, rather than their creation, we review this work and use it to analyse the global diffusion of resource planning (RP), counter posing this case with the widely studied example of total quality management. Both of these innovations experienced a high level of failure when implemented by organizations. Total quality management's diffusion was characterized by a ‘boom and bust’ cycle. RP, however, has continued to spread globally in the form of its variants: MRP, MRPII and ERP. Our analysis seeks to account for the long‐run diffusion of RP through a processual model which highlights the interplay between RP's discursive framing at field level, the affordances of the innovation itself and its adaptation within organizations. This demonstrates how objectifying RP in software not only helped to spread the innovation but also allowed field‐level actors to differentiate its development as a successful innovation from the many failures experienced by organizations attempting to adapt it.     

Public opinion surveys as guides to public policy and spending

Public opinion surveys purport to express the public's opinion. The literature on survey techniques has, however, recognized various potential limitations to the validity of survey results. While improved survey methodology may reduce statistical bias and improve validity, it cannot avoid the implicit weighting of preferences. This normative aspect of surveying has often been unrecognized or disguised as a purely technical matter. Such things as sample selection, choice of survey instrument and the method of aggregating results will each contribute to a pattern of preference weights. Several common survey techniques are examined in this light. It is proposed that no single ‘correct’ method of preference aggragation exists. Increased public recognition of, and debate on this normative aspect of surveying is recommended.     

What do lesbians do in the daytime? Recover

This paper examines a narrative taken from an ethnographic interview, for the speaker's conversational construction of lesbian and other identities along with ideologized personal history. To tell her story, Marge shifts to the discourse style used in the meetings of addiction recovery groups. She prioritizes the recovery (twelve-step) program's coherence system, structuring her life story in conformity with its terms while narrating a complexly queered identity. Four analyses are given, beginning with a Labovian formal examination and proceeding with a consideration of three types of discourse echoing: interdiscursivity, intratextuality, and manifest intertextuality. This study demonstrates the analytical linking of nonpublic linguistic discourse to social discourses; individual identity construction to social construction (and its coherence systems); and personal history to historical eras. The paper adds the concept of a metalevel complicating action to narrative theory and develops a means of examining intratextuality for critical discourse analysis. It presents a revised view of essentialism for the sociolinguistic study of gender and sexuality.     

Maximum Value of Hotelling's T 2 Statistics Based on the Successive Differences Covariance Matrix Estimator

In statistical process control applications, the multivariate T ² control chart based on Hotelling's T ² statistic is useful for detecting the presence of special causes of variation. In particular, use of the T ² statistic based on the successive differences covariance matrix estimator has been shown to be very effective in detecting the presence of a sustained step or ramp shift in the mean vector. However, the exact distribution of this statistic is unknown. In this article, we derive the maximum value of the T ² statistic based on the successive differences covariance matrix estimator. This distributional property is crucial for calculating an approximate upper control limit of a T ² control chart based on successive differences, as described in Williams et al. (2006 Williams , J. D. , Woodall , W. H. , Birch , J. B. , Sullivan , J. H. ( 2006 ). On the distribution of T ² statistics based on successive differences . J. Qual. Technol. 38 : 217 – 229 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).     

Tests for the two-sample problem based on empirical probability measures

Tests are proposed for the equality of two unknown distributions. For empirical probability measures that are defined for samples from the two distributions, the proposed tests are based on the supremum of the absolute differences between the corresponding empirical probabilities, the supremum being taken over all possible events (Borel sets). In contrast, competing EDF tests compare only empirical probabilities of a subclass of Borel sets. The proposed tests are compared for simulated samples to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Cramér-von Mises, Kuiper, and Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon tests