1,720,991 research outputs found
Neighborhood" Influence on the Formation of National Identity in Taiwan: Spatial Regression with Disjoint Neighborhoods"
No full textPartisanship and Institutional Trust: A Comparative Analysis of Emerging Democracies in East Asia
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Modeling teacher effectiveness as a function of student ability
Full text linktextIn 2010, the L.A. Times newspaper used the test results of Los Angeles County elementary students to assess and rank the elementary teachers. They then published the results on their website. Publicly ranking teachers in this manner has important implications on the careers of the teachers being ranked. It is, therefore, important that any model claiming to rank teachers be as accurate as possible. It seems plausible that a teacher's ability to help a student depends upon that student's prior academic ability. Some teachers might be better at teaching gifted students while others might be better at teaching remedial students. The L.A. Times did not account for this in their model. This paper looks at the results of allowing teacher effect to vary with prior student ability and how that interaction affects the relative rankings of the individual teachers. To assess this, the same Value-Added model the L.A. Times used is employed, with the exception that teacher effect is allowed to vary with the prior abilities of the students. New teacher ranks are then calculated and compared with the ranks calculated by the L.A. Times. The results of this analysis show a relatively small number of rank changes between the two models. In general, allowing teacher effect to vary results in a 5% to 12% change in the rankings of both the Math and Reading teachers relative to the L.A Times model. Other research on the same data has resulted in a 20% to 55% change in the rankings of the Math teachers and a 40% to 65% change in the rankings of the Reading teachers relative to the L.A. Times model. Although ranking teachers is a popular idea for determining the distribution of funding, the model shown in this paper as well as the other models reviewed, illustrate that a change in the model results in a change in the rankings of the teachers. A model that allows teacher effect to vary with prior student ability results in a better model fit than a model that does not. Whether or not this is a good thing is hard to say. Two examples are provided in this paper. One shows a teacher whose rank appears to be artificially inflated by this model and the other shows a teacher whose rank appears to be artificially lowered by this method. Although the fit of the model proposed by this paper is better than the model used by the L.A. Times, it does not result in radical changes in the rankings of the teachers. Rather, it seems that teacher rankings are sensitive to the particular model used and there are countless numbers of valid models. For this reason it is not wise to release such sensitive information to the public. It is probably true that the weak teachers are ranked relatively low in this analysis and that the truly good teachers are ranked relatively high. However, these rankings should only be used as one part of a larger metric to rank teachers and too much weight should not be placed on them for the purposes of rewarding or penalizing teachers due to the sensitivity of the model specification.Statistic
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Regression analysis of spatially autocorrelated data : a study of county-level turnout in Texas
Full text linkInterest in spatially weighted regression analysis has increased due to corresponding increases in access to publicly available spatial data. Spatial autocorrelation occurs when the ordering of observations across space produces a relationship between pairs of individual observations. Instances of spatial autocorrelation necessitate the use of alternative approaches to parameter estimation other than ordinary least squares. With a focus on autocorrelation resulting from spatial dependence in the dependent variable or the error term, this report summarizes basic methodology for detecting spatial autocorrelation and spatial autoregressive model selection. The approaches outlined in this report are then applied to an analysis of county-level turnout in Texas.Statistic
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Distributions of sums of binary variables in survey research
Full text linktextIn survey research, researchers often add up a finite number of binary responses to form an index of some political attitude or behavior, such as political knowledge and political participation. Indices of this sort are called grouped binary variables in political science research; they comprise finite and countable binary items that take on only integer values ranging from zero to the total number of survey items. Commonly-used distributions for modeling these kinds of indices are the binomial, beta binomial, and extended beta binomial distributions. But whether these distributions are appropriate depends on the assumptions that the binary responses are identically and independently distributed Bernoulli random variables. If these assumptions are violated, the binomial, beta binomial, and extended beta binomial models are rendered questionable, and it may be more useful to turn to other distributions of sums of Bernoulli variables, called generalized binomial distributions.
To facilitate the use of generalized binomial distributions in political science research, this report is a review of the various probability distributions of grouped binary variables. This report clarifies the nature of the distributions of sums of Bernoulli variables in survey research by considering whether the Bernoulli variables are independently and/or identically distributed, whether there is heterogeneity across survey items and/or across respondents, and the consequences of these considerations for the relative dispersion of each generalized binomial distribution.Statistic
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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Taiwan in cross-Strait relations, 1987-2004
Full text linktextThis dissertation investigates Taiwan's role in the twists and turns in its relationship with China from 1987 to 2004. It employs the methods of both case studies and the VAR (vector autoregression) time-series analysis to assess the impact of the following four factors on Taiwan's actions toward China: (1) the democratic transition in Taiwan, (2) Taiwan's electoral politics, (3) cross-Strait economic exchanges, and (4) U.S. Taiwan Policy. The research conclusions are as follows. First, President Lee Teng-hui's rational calculation in the late 1980s guided him to launch domestic political reforms while continuing former President Chiang Chingkuo's liberalization of Taiwan's China policy. Consequently, Taiwan's democratic transition was accompanied by the appearance of a peaceful policy toward China. Second, in order to win votes from the electorate, which increasingly embraced a Taiwanese identity after the mid-1990s, Taiwanese politicians tended to launch aggressive electoral campaigns against China. Accordingly, domestic elections turned out to be a conducive factor for Taiwan's conflictual actions toward China. Third, politicians' electoral consideration also overrode Taiwanese businessmen's preference for crossStrait stability. As a result, cross-Strait economic interdependence was unable to restrain Taiwan from taking aggressive policies toward China. Fourth, because Taiwanese politicians tended not to give in to U.S. pressures during Taiwan's elections, the U.S. could not successfully stop Taiwan's provocative actions toward China as elections neared in Taiwan. It was only when Taiwanese leaders sought to strengthen U.S.-Taiwan relations after election seasons ended that the U.S. could induce Taiwan to act cooperatively toward China.Governmen
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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