A port in a storm: Spontaneous volunteering and grassroots movements in Amsterdam. A resilient approach to the (European) refugee crisis

This article seeks to expand knowledge about spontaneous volunteering in Amsterdam during the European refugee crisis in the winter of 2015–16. As formal institutions, which relied on a top–down command and control approach, were unable to handle the relatively large number of refugees who arrived in a short period of time, grassroots social movements based on bottom–up participation emerged. Grassroots volunteers were not only politically engaged, protesting against the strict refugee reception policy, but they also became involved in the crisis response, showing a great deal of flexibility. Although the social movements struggled with their organizational structures, they were able to adapt their missions and structures to changing circumstances. To achieve a resilience‐based response to future refugee influxes, this article advocates for formal response organizations to dismantle their static, top–down approach, and for social movements to find a balance between participation and professionalism. If institutionalized refugee response organizations adapt to the dynamics of local conditions, they could create the conditions for resilient solutions in the crisis context.     

Comparison of preliminary test estimators based on generalized order statistics from proportional hazard family using Pitman measure of closeness

In this article, based on generalized order statistics from a family of proportional hazard rate model, we use a statistical test to generate a class of preliminary test estimators and shrinkage preliminary test estimators for the proportionality parameter. These estimators are compared under Pitman measure of closeness (PMC) as well as MSE criteria. Although the PMC suffers from non transitivity, in the first class of estimators, it has the transitivity property and we obtain the Pitman-closest estimator. Analytical and graphical methods are used to show the range of parameter in which preliminary test and shrinkage preliminary test estimators perform better than their competitor estimators. Results reveal that when the prior information is not too far from its real value, the proposed estimators are superior based on both mentioned criteria.     

Confidence and prediction intervals based on interpolated records

In several statistical problems, nonparametric confidence intervals for population quantiles can be constructed and their coverage probabilities can be computed exactly, but cannot in general be rendered equal to a pre-determined level. The same difficulty arises for coverage probabilities of nonparametric prediction intervals for future observations. One solution to this difficulty is to interpolate between intervals which have the closest coverage probability from above and below to the pre-determined level. In this paper, confidence intervals for population quantiles are constructed based on interpolated upper and lower records. Subsequently, prediction intervals are obtained for future upper records based on interpolated upper records. Additionally, we derive upper bounds for the coverage error of these confidence and prediction intervals. Finally, our results are applied to some real data sets. Also, a comparison via a simulation study is done with similar classical intervals obtained before.     

Analyzing the Dimensionality of Place Attachment and Its Relationship with Residential Satisfaction in New Cities: The Case of Sadra,Iran

Social Indicators Research - During the recent decades, new cities have been set up around Iranian main cities, after exclusive pre-planning and investigations. However, no significant research...     

Ice‐Breaker vs. Standalone: Comparing Alternative Workflow Modes of Mid‐level Care Providers

Capitalizing on the operational concept of division‐of‐labor, clinics often reduce physician service time by off‐loading some of his/her clinical activities to lower‐cost personnel. These personnel, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants, are often collectively referred to as “mid‐level providers” (MLPs) and can perform many patient‐consultation tasks. The common rationale is that using an MLP allows the physician to serve more patients, increase patients’ access to care, and, due to MLPs’ lower salaries, improve the clinic's financial performance. An MLP is typically integrated into the outpatient clinic process in one of two modes: as an “ice‐breaker,” seeing each patient before the physician, or as a “standalone” provider, a substitute for the physician for the entirety of some patients’ visits. Despite both of these modes being widely used in practice, we find no research that identifies the circumstances under which either one is preferable. This study examines these two modes’ effects on operational performance, such as patient flow and throughput, as well as on financial measures. Using queueing and bottleneck analysis, discrete‐event simulation, and profit modeling, we compare these two deployment modes and identify the optimal policies for deploying MLPs as either ice‐breakers or as standalone providers. Interestingly, we also find there exists a range of scenarios where not hiring an MLP at all (i.e., the physician works alone) is likely to be most profitable for the clinic. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Financing Empowerment? How Foreign Aid to Southern Ngos and Social Movements Undermines Grass‐Roots Mobilization

The article examines why many foreign‐funded, resource‐ rich movements in developing countries have been unable to produce the massive mobilization found in other successful social movements with access to fewer resources. While foreign ties have brought substantial benefits to local movements, many such social movements have limited grass‐roots support. The issue of external aid is at the core of an emerging research agenda in the fields of international relations, social movements, and development studies that focuses on the relationship between participatory development, democratization, and the process of transnationalization. Drawing on research work from these different fields, the article argues that by making constituency support irrelevant, internationalization through financial assistance has transformed conflict movements into consensus movements that follow an institutional, resource‐dependent, non‐conflictual strategy with no deep roots in the community. The article specifies the mechanisms by which foreign funding affects grass‐roots mobilization. These arguments are examined with respect to evidence from around the world.     

Closeness of k-records to Progressive Type-II Censored Order Statistics for Location-scale Families

In this article, the Pitman closeness of upper and lower k-records to progressive Type-II censored order statistics for location-scale families is investigated. In each case, the special properties of the probability of Pitman closeness are obtained and the corresponding monotonicity properties are discussed. Moreover, the closest k-record to a specific progressive Type-II censored data is obtained. Finally, for the standard exponential and standard uniform distributions, explicit expressions for the probability of Pitman closeness are derived. For various censoring schemes, the results of the numerical computations are displayed in tables. Most of the results in Ahmadi and Balakrishnan (2013) Ahmadi, J., Balakrishnan, N. (2013). On the nearness of record values to order statistics from Pitman measure of closeness. Metrika 76:521–541.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] can be achieved as special cases.     

On Maximum Likelihood Estimation for the Two Parameter Burr XII Distribution

This article considers three related aspects of maximum likelihood estimation of parameters in the two-parameter Burr XII distribution. Specifically, we first provide further clarification to some limiting results in Wingo (1993 Wingo , D. R. ( 1993 ). Maximum likelihood estimation of Burr XII distribution parameters under Type II censoring . Microelectron. Reliab. 33 : 1251 – 1257 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We then focus on details in a proof of the uniqueness of the maximum likelihood estimators. Finally, we consider using the likelihood approach for data which does not satisfy Wingo's criterion, and show that this results in fitting either a Pareto distribution or an intuitively sensible degenerate distribution to the data. The discussion here is completely general, and not restricted to data obtained under Type II censoring.     

On multivariate truncated generalized Cauchy distribution

In this paper, a multivariate form of truncated generalized Cauchy distribution (TGCD), which is denoted by (MVTGCD), is introduced. The joint density function, conditional density function, moment generating function and mixed moments of order ${b=\sum_{i=1}^{k}b_{i}}$ are obtained. Making use of the mixed moments formula, skewness and kurtosis in case of the bivariate case are obtained. Also, all parameters of the distribution are estimated using the maximum likelihood and Bayes methods. A real data set is introduced and analyzed using three models. The first model is the bivariate Cauchy distribution, the second is the truncated bivariate Cauchy distribution and the third is the bivariate truncated generalized Cauchy distribution. A comparison is carried out between the mentioned models based on the corresponding Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K–S) test statistic to emphasize that the bivariate truncated generalized Cauchy model fits the data better than the other models.