When Nonverbal Greetings “Make It or Break It”: The Role of Ethnicity and Gender in the Effect of Handshake on Social Appraisals

Despite previous evidence identifying the role of ethnic and gender differences in nonverbal communication, few studies have comprehensively investigated the role of these factors in the effect of handshake on appraisals of social interactions. Here, 88 young adults (with equal proportions of Caucasians and East Asians, and women and men) observed and evaluated a series of movies illustrating guest–host interactions in a business setting. Each interaction started with a greeting protocol initiated by the host, which, in half of the trials, involved a handshake. The greeting was followed by a display of behaviors either encouraging (approach) or discouraging (avoidance) further interaction. Ethnicity and gender of the hosts were manipulated to depict the same categories represented by participants. First, the effect of handshake on appraisals of social interactions was more positive in Caucasian than in East Asian participants. Second, the effect of handshake on appraisals of social interactions was more positive for male than for female hosts in male participants, whereas such differences were not observed in female participants. Third, appraisals of social interactions involving approach and avoidance behaviors were more positive in Caucasian than in East Asian participants. Finally, appraisals of social interactions involving approach behaviors were more positive in female than in male participants. Overall, these findings shed light on the role of ethnic and gender differences in the appraisal of nonverbal behaviors, and extend our understanding of factors that may lead to successful social interaction in the context of growing diversity in our society.     

Optimal designs for regional bridging studies using the Bayesian power prior method

As described in the ICH E5 guidelines, a bridging study is an additional study executed in a new geographical region or subpopulation to link or “build a bridge” from global clinical trial outcomes to the new region. The regulatory and scientific goals of a bridging study is to evaluate potential subpopulation differences while minimizing duplication of studies and meeting unmet medical needs expeditiously. Use of historical data (borrowing) from global studies is an attractive approach to meet these conflicting goals. Here, we propose a practical and relevant approach to guide the optimal borrowing rate (percent of subjects in earlier studies) and the number of subjects in the new regional bridging study. We address the limitations in global/regional exchangeability through use of a Bayesian power prior method and then optimize bridging study design with a return on investment viewpoint. The method is demonstrated using clinical data from global and Japanese trials in dapagliflozin for type 2 diabetes.     

A Measure Whose Time has Come: Formalizing Time Poverty

Poverty remains a primary public policy issue, and a large literature has discussed the limitations of an income poverty measure. Using income as an indicator of poverty is a helpful simplification designed to capture ability to meet consumption needs. We argue that time is a basic economic resource allocated to create well-being along with income. Time is a scarce resource that individuals and households must allocate to produce goods, obtain services, and pursue rest and relaxation. Time poverty has been proposed as a complement to income poverty, yet it remains a relatively unknown measure in both policy and research spheres. The many ways time poverty is conceptualized and measured across studies has limited its adoption. To help familiarize readers with time poverty, we apply basic tenets of income poverty measurement to time. We conduct a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature discussing similarities, differences, and the pros and cons of different approaches to time poverty. In particular, inconsistent definition and categorization of necessary and discretionary time has been a barrier to the transparent application of time poverty in the literature, and we outline guidance on defining necessary and discretionary time for future studies. Finally, we outline future research directions for time poverty.     

Pictorial Approaches for Measuring Time Use in Rural Ethiopia

Time use researchers working in least developed countries (LDCs) face difficulties collecting data from illiterate populations who may conceptualize time differently than those in industrialized countries. We identify existing gaps in time use data collection methods and discuss two novel, pictorial methods to collect time use data from these populations. The first method is a modified recall interview modeled on participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods that asks respondents to place macaroni on pictures of activity categories in proportion to the amount of time spent on that activity during the previous day. The second is a simplified pictorial time diary that uses a timer and sequentially-numbered stickers to re-create the temporal order of activities in 30-min increments. The latter method also avoids recall bias problems. We present time use data collected in 2009 using these methods in a study examining the impacts of water infrastructure on women and children’s time use in rural Ethiopia. In total, we collected information using the first method from 263 household members over age 10, including 167 water collectors, and pilot-tested the pictorial diary approach with 10 adult respondents.     

An estimator for the cumulative co‐volatility of asynchronously observed semimartingales with jumps

In this paper, we consider two semimartingales sampled at stopping times in an asynchronous manner. We are interested in estimating their cumulative co‐volatility separately from the sum of their co‐jumps. For this purpose, we combine the Hayashi–Yoshida method (to deal with the asynchronicity) with the threshold technique (to separate the jumps) and consider a class of statistics called the truncated Hayashi–Yoshida estimator. We prove the consistency and the asymptotic mixed normality of the truncated Hayashi–Yoshida estimator under some mild conditions allowing the presence of infinite activity jumps.     

Longitudinal assessment of social attention in preterm and term infants: Its relation to social communication and language outcome

Preterm birth has been reported to be associated with an increased risk of social communication and language problems. Recently, we found that preterm infants showed atypical patterns of social attention compared with term infants. However, it is still unknown how social attention develops and whether the individual differences are associated with developmental outcomes for social communication and language in preterm infants. The social attention of preterm and term infants at 6, 12, and 18 months was investigated using two types of social attention tasks (human-geometric preference task and gaze-following task). The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) and the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory adapted for Japanese were measured at 18 months. We found that compared with term infants, preterm infants spent less time looking toward dynamic human images and followed another's gaze directions less frequently through 6, 12, and 18 months. Moreover, hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that less preference for dynamic human images and gaze-following abilities was associated with high M-CHAT and low language scores in preterm and term infants, respectively. These findings suggest that birth status affects development of social attention through 18 months and individual differences in social attention reflect differences in social communication and language outcomes.     

Theorizing disaster communitas

Theory and Society - Disaster scholars have long complained that their field is theory light: they are much better at doing and saying than analyzing. The paucity of theory doubtless reflects an...