Designing Response Categories of Agreement Scales for Cross-national Surveys in East Asia: The Approach of the Japanese General Social Surveys

The existing cross-national surveys use various types of scales including 2-point, 3-point, 4-point, and 5-point scales, and the translations of response statements vary depending on responsible organizations even within the same country. This paper examines how differences in response categories of the agreement scale may impact the distribution of responses in cross-national surveys and reports the strategies for designing the agreement scale for the East Asian Social Survey (EASS) project. Among the four EASS countries and region, the response pattern of the Japanese is somewhat different from that of Taiwanese, Korean, and Chinese people; the Japanese prefer to give a mid-point or close-to-the-middle response instead of a definite expression of agreement or disagreement. Social surveys in Japan often handle this tendency by avoiding the use of strong adverbs and excluding mid-point and off-scale options from agreement scales. Based on examinations of existing surveys results and conducting pretests, the following strategies to ensure procedural equivalence as well as interpretive equivalence in the EASS project were contrived: (i) The agreement scale was designed to have a sufficient variability in response distributions for all countries and the region; a 7-point scale with the adverb "strongly" at both ends and a mid-point was adopted. (ii) The translations of response statements as well as questions for all teams were carefully checked and adjusted through several languages.     

猿投神社的汉籍

猿投神社是一所位于日本爱知县丰田市的古老神社,以保存古代汉籍写本而广为人知。该神社所保存的汉籍共计有八种,分别是《古文孝经》《春秋经传集解》《论语集解》《帝范》《臣轨》《史记》《文选》及《白氏文集》,这些汉籍写本皆已被指定为重要文化遗产。然而,这些汉籍写本在当时并非罕见的版本,而是极为普通的读本。日本镰仓时代以后,京都的学问逐渐影响至关东及其他地区,镰仓时代武家学问的精髓以金泽文库及足利学校的藏书为代表。不过,我们对地方寺院与民间的实际状况未必能够从上述藏书得到充分的了解。若欲探讨镰仓时代至室町时代初期汉学的平均水平、阅读内容及所使用的文本等问题,猿投神社收藏的汉籍写本将不失为宝贵的资料。     

Model analysis of the effect of environmental fluctuation on the species replacement pattern of pelagic fishes under interspecific competition

Summary There are two factors affecting long-term fluctuation of planktotrophic pelagic fish: environmental fluctuation and interspecific competition. Long-term catch data of planktotrophic pelagic fishes in Japan suggest that the chub mackerel (species B) was replaced by the sardine (A), A was replaced by the anchovy, Pacific saury and horse mackerel (Group C), and species in group C were replaced by species B. If species A defeats B, B defeats C, and C defeats A in interspecific competitive ability, then the abundance of these three groups fluctuate forever and dominate in the same order. We call this cyclic advantage hypothesis for species replacement. In this model, environmental fluctuation affects the species replacement as a trigger. Environmental fluctuation does not determine the next dominant species but greatly affects when the next replacement occurs.     

Alternative models for species replacement of pelagic fishes

Summary It is well known that the stock abundance of a pelagic fish usually fluctuates and a species of pelagic fish which was dominant in abundance is often taken over by another species. Several alternative models for species replacement among pelagic fishes are presented and analyzed: (A) environmental fluctuation, (B) strong density-dependent reproduction rate, (C) a two-species system with phase variation (density-dependent change of life history traits), (D) a two-species competition system with environmental fluctuation, (E) cyclic advantage relationship among three competitive species, and (F) a two-prey, one-predator system. Different model requires different number of species for the occurrence of species replacement. Three criteria to test each hypothesis from qualitative properties of species replacement are proposed. Possible management policies to decrease the amplitude of stock fluctuations are discussed. As a result, if the catching effort to mackerels which is rare now is large, or if the catching effort to the sardine is still large when it begins to decline in stock abundance, fisheries may be strong destabilizing effect on the stock abundance.