Co-constructing a Conceptual Understanding of System Enactment

Clinical Social Work Journal - System enactments are co-created phenomena characterized by confounding and emotionally charged multi-person interactions that emerge through the convergence of...     

Improved Transferability of Data‐Driven Damage Models Through Sample Selection Bias Correction

Damage models for natural hazards are used for decision making on reducing and transferring risk. The damage estimates from these models depend on many variables and their complex sometimes nonlinear relationships with the damage. In recent years, data‐driven modeling techniques have been used to capture those relationships. The available data to build such models are often limited. Therefore, in practice it is usually necessary to transfer models to a different context. In this article, we show that this implies the samples used to build the model are often not fully representative for the situation where they need to be applied on, which leads to a “sample selection bias.” In this article, we enhance data‐driven damage models by applying methods, not previously applied to damage modeling, to correct for this bias before the machine learning (ML) models are trained. We demonstrate this with case studies on flooding in Europe, and typhoon wind damage in the Philippines. Two sample selection bias correction methods from the ML literature are applied and one of these methods is also adjusted to our problem. These three methods are combined with stochastic generation of synthetic damage data. We demonstrate that for both case studies, the sample selection bias correction techniques reduce model errors, especially for the mean bias error this reduction can be larger than 30%. The novel combination with stochastic data generation seems to enhance these techniques. This shows that sample selection bias correction methods are beneficial for damage model transfer.     

民办幼儿园教师专业素养培训方式实验研究

随着现代教育的发展，提升幼儿园教师专业素养已成为促进学前教育发展的必然要求。以探究民办幼儿园教师专业素养为视角，提出通过干预行为提升教师专业素养水平的构想。实验随机选取成都市某民办幼儿园的20名教师为实验组，再选取与其办园环境、办园背景相似的另一所民办幼儿园的20名教师为对照组，对实验园教师的专业理念与师德、专业知识、专业能力3个维度进行干预。实验结果表明：与对照园相比，实验园教师的专业能力提升显著；与实验园实验前后相比，教师在专业知识、专业能力维度及专业素养总体水平方面均有提升。对教师培训的具体建议为：（1）单一与混合相结合的培训方式对提升民办幼儿园教师专业素养总体水平有现实意义；（2）民办幼儿园教师专业知识的提升需理论培训与自主学习相结合；（3）专家"现场诊断-指导式"培训方式对提升民办幼儿园教师专业能力有显著作用。综上，建议民办幼儿园在了解本园教师专业素养水平的基础上，针对教师专业素养的不同方面，分别采取不同的有效培训方式。     

Multiple event times in the presence of informative censoring: modeling and analysis by copulas

Motivated by a breast cancer research program, this paper is concerned with the joint survivor function of multiple event times when their observations are subject to informative censoring caused by a terminating event. We formulate the correlation of the multiple event times together with the time to the terminating event by an Archimedean copula to account for the informative censoring. Adapting the widely used two-stage procedure under a copula model, we propose an easy-to-implement pseudo-likelihood based procedure for estimating the model parameters. The approach yields a new estimator for the marginal distribution of a single event time with semicompeting-risks data. We conduct both asymptotics and simulation studies to examine the proposed approach in consistency, efficiency, and robustness. Data from the breast cancer program are employed to illustrate this research.

     

Efficacy Foundations for Risk Communication: How People Think About Reducing the Risks of Climate Change

Believing action to reduce the risks of climate change is both possible (self‐efficacy) and effective (response efficacy) is essential to motivate and sustain risk mitigation efforts, according to current risk communication theory. Although the public recognizes the dangers of climate change, and is deluged with lists of possible mitigative actions, little is known about public efficacy beliefs in the context of climate change. Prior efficacy studies rely on conflicting constructs and measures of efficacy, and links between efficacy and risk management actions are muddled. As a result, much remains to learn about how laypersons think about the ease and effectiveness of potential mitigative actions. To bring clarity and inform risk communication and management efforts, we investigate how people think about efficacy in the context of climate change risk management by analyzing unprompted and prompted beliefs from two national surveys (N = 405, N = 1,820). In general, respondents distinguish little between effective and ineffective climate strategies. While many respondents appreciate that reducing fossil fuel use is an effective risk mitigation strategy, overall assessments reflect persistent misconceptions about climate change causes, and uncertainties about the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategies. Our findings suggest targeting climate change risk communication and management strategies to (1) address gaps in people's existing mental models of climate action, (2) leverage existing public understanding of both potentially effective mitigation strategies and the collective action dilemma at the heart of climate change action, and (3) take into account ideologically driven reactions to behavior change and government action framed as climate action.     

Constructing Trustworthy Historical Narratives: Criteria,Principles and Techniques

Organizational scholars increasingly recognize the value of employing historical research. Yet the fields of history and organization studies struggle to reconcile. In this paper, the authors contend that a closer connection between these two fields is possible if organizational historians bring their role in the construction of historical narratives to the fore and open up their research decisions for discussion. They provide guidelines to support this endeavor, drawing on four criteria that are prevalent within interpretive organization studies for developing the trustworthiness of research: credibility; confirmability; dependability; and transferability. In contrast to the traditional use of trustworthiness criteria to evaluate the quality of research, the authors advance the criteria to encourage historians to generate more transparent narratives. Such transparency allows others to comprehend and comment on the construction of narratives, thereby building trust and understanding. Each criterion is converted into a set of guiding principles to enhance the trustworthiness of historical research, pairing each principle with a practical technique gleaned from a range of disciplines within the social sciences to provide practical guidance.