Online platforms such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) are increasingly used by researchers to collect survey and experimental data. Yet, such platforms often represent a tumultuous terrain for ...both researchers and reviewers. Researchers have to navigate the complexities of obtaining representative samples from online participant cohorts, ensuring data quality, ethically incentivizing participant engagement, and maintaining transparency. Reviewers, on the other hand, have to navigate the complexities of evaluating the efficacy of such data collection and execution efforts in answering important research questions. In order to provide clarity to these issues, this article provides researchers and reviewers with a series of recommendations for effectively executing and evaluating data collection via online platforms, respectively.
Red tape is a salient societal problem but there is a dearth of research on how perceived red tape can be reduced. Building on the transparency literature, we hypothesize that higher levels of ...rationale and process transparency will result in lower levels of perceived red tape. We test our reasoning using a survey experiment. Specifically, we have US citizens rate the level of red tape associated with the burdensome process of obtaining a driver’s license at the Department of Motor Vehicles. We find that providing rationale and process transparency to citizens does not influence perceived red tape. Hence, organizations are advised to look for more fine-grained approaches to reduce perceptions of unnecessarily burdensome rules, while realizing that a certain level of perceived red tape is likely an unavoidable part of bureaucratic functioning.
Points for practitioners
The findings from this study show that merely being transparent about the rationale and process of a burdensome rule is not enough to reduce perceived red tape. Rather, policymakers and managers are advised to gain a better understanding of the different causes of red tape (disentangling genuine concerns from unfounded rhetoric), develop coherent strategies that adequately balance the trade-offs between organizational goals and citizen red tape, and be transparent about these trade-offs.
Data analysis often entails a multitude of heterogeneous steps, from the application of various command line tools to the usage of scripting languages like R or Python for the generation of plots and ...tables. It is widely recognized that data analyses should ideally be conducted in a reproducible way. Reproducibility enables technical validation and regeneration of results on the original or even new data. However, reproducibility alone is by no means sufficient to deliver an analysis that is of lasting impact (i.e., sustainable) for the field, or even just one research group. We postulate that it is equally important to ensure adaptability and transparency. The former describes the ability to modify the analysis to answer extended or slightly different research questions. The latter describes the ability to understand the analysis in order to judge whether it is not only technically, but methodologically valid.
Here, we analyze the properties needed for a data analysis to become reproducible, adaptable, and transparent. We show how the popular workflow management system Snakemake can be used to guarantee this, and how it enables an ergonomic, combined, unified representation of all steps involved in data analysis, ranging from raw data processing, to quality control and fine-grained, interactive exploration and plotting of final results.
Birefringent crystals are requisite optical devices in laser and modern opto‐electronic fields. Development of excellent birefringent materials is still challenging. Herein, the linear or chain‐like ...Sx (x=2–6) species were theoretically proved to be the origin of the large birefringence, and could be regarded as birefringent genes. Besides, the metal polysulfide family was first proposed to be rich birefringent materials source, among which Cs2S6 realizes giant birefringence 0.58@1064 nm together with a wide band gap of 1.70 eV (based on the generalized gradient approximation). Moreover, the first dual‐anion group polysulfide Na4Ba3(S2)4S3 was obtained, showing wide infrared transmission range (0.5–6.2 μm), wide band gap (2.3 eV), and large birefringence (0.37 at 1064 nm). This work provides a new guiding thought for exploring large birefringence crystals in the future.
The chain‐like Sx (x=2–6) species are shown to be excellent birefringent “genes”. The metal polysulfide family is a rich birefringent crystal source, realizing birefringence as large as 0.58, and wide band gaps of approximately 2.0 eV.
Although the effect of government transparency on trust is heavily debated, our theoretical and empirical understanding of this relationship is still limited. The basic assumption tested in this ...article is whether transparency leads to higher levels of perceived trustworthiness. This article uses theories from social psychology to advance our understanding of the effects and mechanism of the relationship between transparency and the perceived trustworthiness of a government organization. Based on these theories, we propose two alternative hypotheses: (1) the general predisposition to trust government, and (2) prior knowledge about the specific issue moderates the relationship between transparency and trust. These assumptions are tested by online experimental research, which demonstrates that these factors indeed affect the relationship between transparency and perceived trustworthiness: changes in perceived competence occur mainly in the group of citizens with high trust and little knowledge, whereas changes in perceived benevolence occur predominantly in the group of citizens with low knowledge and low trust. These findings highlight that prior knowledge and general predisposition to trust should be incorporated in our theoretical models of the relationship between transparency and perceived trustworthiness.
The text explores the production of statistics on public sector governance in Brazil both by the official statistical office (IBGE) and other producers, most of them control agencies. The article ...gives details about the main data sources. Some challenges and perspectives related to regular and comprehensive production are explored. There is also an example of analysis with data on transparency in municipal government collected using different methodologies. This exercise shows some issues faced when one tries to put together different data sources.
Objective
To assess trends in hospital price disclosures after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Final Rule went into effect.
Data Sources and Study Setting
The Turquoise Health ...Price Transparency Dataset was used to identify all US hospitals that publicly displayed pricing from 2021 to 2023.
Study Design
Price‐disclosing versus nondisclosing hospitals were compared using Pearson's Chi‐squared and Wilcoxon rank sum tests. Bayesian structural time‐series modeling was used to determine if enforcement of increased penalties for nondisclosure was associated with a change in the trend of hospital disclosures.
Data Collection/Extraction Methods
Not applicable.
Principal Findings
As of January 2023, 5162 of 6692 (77.1%) US hospitals disclosed pricing of their services, with the majority (2794 of 5162 54.1%) reporting their pricing within the first 6 months of the final rule going into effect in January 2021. An increase in hospital disclosures was observed after penalties for nondisclosure were enforced in January 2022 (relative effect size 20%, p = 0.002). Compared with nondisclosing hospitals, disclosing hospitals had higher annual revenue, bed number, and were more likely to be have nonprofit ownership, academic affiliation, provide emergency services, and be in highly concentrated markets (p < 0.001).
Conclusions
Hospital pricing disclosures are continuously in flux and influenced by regulatory and market factors.
Although recent research documents a positive relation between corporate transparency and the proportion of independent directors, the direction of causality is unclear. We examine a regulatory shock ...that substantially increased board independence for some firms, and find that information asymmetry, and to some extent management disclosure and financial intermediation, changed at firms affected by this shock. We also examine whether these effects vary as a function of management entrenchment, information processing costs, and required changes to audit committee independence. Our results suggest that firms can alter their corporate transparency to suit the informational demands of a particular board structure.
Non‐linear optical chalcogenides with a wide band gap (Eg) and excellent NLO properties are key materials for highly desirable multiwaveband tunable optical parametric oscillators (OPOs). We exploit ...the “electronic structure engineer bucket effect” to develop a novel dual‐waveband SrZnGeS4 with an ultrawide transparency window. It exhibits an asymmetric Fdd2 structure that consists of layers formed by corner‐sharing ZnGeS6 dimers. SrZnGeS4 is transparent from 0.30 to 23.6 μm, spanning the UV‐, vis‐, mid‐ and far‐IR spectral regions and has the widest Eg (3.63 eV) in the AeMIIMIVQ4 family to date. It exhibits phase matching, high SHG intensities (e.g., 11.0×KDP and 17.5×AGS under λinc=1450 and 950 nm, respectively), and a very high laser‐induced damage threshold (35×AGS). These results not only suggest bright prospects for high‐power laser applications but may also enable applications of the multiwaveband OPO system from the UV‐visible to far‐IR regions.
An electronic structure‐engineering “bucket effect” strategy produces a novel non‐linear optical compound SrZnGeS4 with unique dual‐waveband NLO properties, including a second harmonic generation of 0.9–17.5×AgGaS2 under 850–2100 nm incident laser wavelengths and a laser‐induced damage threshold of 35×AgGaS2.
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