Large-scale surveys are common in social and behavioral science research. Missing data often occur at item levels due to nonresponses or planned missing data designs. In practice, the item scores are ...typically aggregated into scale scores (i.e., sum or mean scores) for further analyses. Although several strategies to handle item-level missing data have been proposed, most of them are not easy to implement, especially for applied researchers. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we examined a practical hybrid approach to deal with item-level missing data in Likert scale items with a varying number of categories (i.e., four, five, and seven) and missing data mechanisms. Specifically, the examined approach first uses proration to calculate the scale scores for a participant if a certain proportion of item scores is available (a cutoff criterion of proration) and then use full information maximum likelihood to deal with missing data at the scale level when scale scores cannot be computed due to the selected proration cutoff criterion. Our simulation results showed that the hybrid approach was generally acceptable when the missing data were randomly spread over the items, even when they had different thresholds/means and loadings, with caution to be taken when the missingness is determined by one of the scale items. Based on the results, we recommend using the cutoff of 30% or 40% for proration when the sample size is small and the cutoff of 40% or 50% when the sample size is moderate or large.
This article reviews new scholarship on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families. The past decade witnessed rapid expansion of data and strong research designs. The most notable advance was ...in studies on variation among mostly planned lesbian comother families. Cumulative evidence suggests that although many of these families have comparatively high levels of shared labor and parental investment, they may not be as ' ' genderless ' ' as previously depicted. Gay men f s diverse paths to family formation and planned parenthood have also been explored, but almost no research studies their children's experiences. Conceptualizations of sexual orientation expanded to include bisexuals and others, and some understanding of the experiences of transgender people has begun to emerge. Future work should explore relationships among members of the families they create.
Missing observations are pervasive throughout empirical research, especially in the social sciences. Despite multiple approaches to dealing adequately with missing data, many scholars still fail to ...address this vital issue. In this article, we present a simple-to-use method for generating multiple imputations (MIs) using a Gaussian copula. The Gaussian copula for MI allows scholars to attain estimation results that have good coverage and small bias. The use of copulas to model the dependence among variables will enable researchers to construct valid joint distributions of the data, even without knowledge of the actual underlying marginal distributions. MIs are then generated by drawing observations from the resulting posterior joint distribution and replacing the missing values. Using simulated and observational data from published social science research, we compare imputation via Gaussian copulas with two other widely used imputation methods: multiple imputation via chained equations and Amelia II. Our results suggest that the Gaussian copula approach has a slightly smaller bias, higher coverage rates, and narrower confidence intervals compared to the other methods. This is especially true when the variables with missing data are not normally distributed. These results, combined with theoretical guarantees and ease of use, suggest that the approach examined provides an attractive alternative for applied researchers undertaking MIs.
The replication crisis in the social and psychological sciences is said to be due in part to publication bias and the resulting file drawer problem. Meta-analysis is often advocated as a means of ...resolving this crisis but is prone to the same publication bias and file drawer effects. A study of 23 meta-analyses examined the consequences of correcting for these effects through the inclusion of unpublished research. Results indicated that the inclusion of unpublished data led to smaller meta-analytic means in some instances, consistent with the primary theorized effects of the file drawer problem and publication bias, but led to larger meta-analytic means in nearly as many instances, suggesting the presence and influence of other, unknown artifacts in unpublished research. These findings suggest that meta-analysis is limited in its ability to resolve the replication crisis and instead may introduce unexplained effects that render cumulative science problematic.
Can a subtle linguistic cue that invokes the self motivate children to help? In two experiments, 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 149) were exposed to the idea of "being a helper" (noun condition) or ..."helping" (verb condition). Noun wording fosters the perception that a behavior reflects an identity—the kind of person one is. Both when children interacted with an adult who referenced "being a helper" or "helping" (Experiment 1) and with a new adult (Experiment 2), children in the noun condition helped significantly more across four tasks than children in the verb condition or a baseline control condition. The results demonstrate that children are motivated to pursue a positive identity. Moreover, this motivation can be leveraged to encourage prosocial behavior.
This study aims to understand the nature of information and communication technology in technology convergence. We form a knowledge network by applying social network theories to Korean patent data ...collected from the European Patent Organization. A knowledge network consists of nodes representing technology sectors identified by their International Patent Classification codes and edges that link International Patent Classification codes when they appear concurrently in a patent. We test the proposed hypotheses using four indices (degree centrality, E-I index, entropy index, and clustering coefficient). The results show that information and communication technology is easily attached but tends to converge with similar technology and has the greatest influence on technology convergence over other technologies. This study is expected to help practitioners and policymakers understand the structure and interaction mechanisms of technology from a systematic perspective and improve national-level technology policies.
Corpus selection bias in international relations research presents an epistemological problem: How do we know what we know? Most social science research in the field of text analytics relies on ...English language corpora, biasing our ability to understand international phenomena. To address the issue of corpus selection bias, we introduce results that suggest that machine translation may be used to address non-English sources. We use human translation and machine translation (Google Translate) on a collection of aligned sentences from United Nations documents extracted from the Multi-UN corpus, analyzed with a "bag of words" analysis tool, Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC). Overall, the LIWC indices proved relatively stable across machine and human translated sentences. We find that while there are statistically significant differences between the original and translated documents, the effect sizes are relatively small, especially when looking at psychological processes.
Unlike formal ‘heritage landscapes’, the role of unmanaged, ‘everyday’ rural landscapes in perpetuating social memories and reiterating certain conceptualisations of place has been relatively ...overlooked within the rural studies literature. Using the case study of Askam-in-Furness, a former mining village in Cumbria, this paper addresses this gap by exploring how industrial remains within the landscape act as prompts for the recollection of both personal and social place-related memories. In doing so, it also extends some of the learning from urban-centred studies that have explored the affective ability of industrial ruins to bring memories of past people and places into the present. I demonstrate how vestiges of Askam's mining past have become incorporated into local people's experiences of the everyday landscape and, as such, play an important role in understandings of place and temporality. These processes are considered in some depth and their implications for the future management of landscape and ‘heritage’ are also discussed.
•Explores the significance of a former mining landscape for rural residents.•Everyday landscapes are important for processes of memory and place identity.•Mining remnants have been ‘naturalised’ into local perceptions of rurality.•Industrial remains can play valuable roles in conceptions of place and temporality.•Considers implications for the future management of ‘heritage’.
Cross-national comparisons in health care and social care have been hampered by various limitations. A proposed framework takes these limitations into account and is based on discussions, expert ...opinions, and interpretations of existing evidence.
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