Social Statistics Commons^™

A Systematic Assessment Of Socio-Economic Impacts Of Prolonged Episodic Volcano Crises, Justin Peers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Uncertainty surrounding volcanic activity can lead to socio-economic crises with or without an eruption as demonstrated by the post-1978 response to unrest of Long Valley Caldera (LVC), CA. Extensive research in physical sciences provides a foundation on which to assess direct impacts of hazards, but fewer resources have been dedicated towards understanding human responses to volcanic risk. To evaluate natural hazard risk issues at LVC, a multi-hazard, mail-based, household survey was conducted to compare perceptions of volcanic, seismic, and wildfire hazards. Impacts of volcanic activity on housing prices and businesses were examined at the county-level for three volcanoes with a …

Improving Access To Clean Water In Rural Ecuador: The Connection Between Willingness To Pay And Population Health, Micalea Leaska

Capstone Collection

Climate change is affecting social and environmental determinants of health through access to safe drinking water, safely managed sanitation systems, and access to health care services and the ability for individuals to break free from unsuitable circumstances. Ecological disturbances such as those caused by climate change can cause a shift in host vectors or a change in habitat that results in a greater likelihood of the pathogen coming in contact with humans. Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services and their accessibility to populations can directly impact a community’s vulnerability to diseases and limiting factors to increase economic growth. If rural …

The Relationship Between Housing Affordability And Demographic Factors: Case Study For The Atlanta Beltline, Chapman T. Lindstrom

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Housing affordability has been a widely examined subject for populations residing in major metropolitan regions around the world. The relationship between housing affordability and the city’s demographics and its volume of urban development are important to take into consideration. In the past two decades there has been an increasing volume of literature detailing Atlanta Georgia’s large-scale redevelopment project, the Atlanta BeltLine (ABL), and its relationship with Atlanta’s Metropolitan population and housing affordability. The first objective of this paper is to study the relationship between housing affordability at two scales within the Atlanta Metropolitan Area (AMA) for both renters and homeowners. …

An Evaluation Of Geotagged Twitter Data During Hurricane Irma Using Sentiment Analysis And Topic Modeling For Disaster Resilience, Ike Robert Vayansky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Disasters require quick response times, thought-out preparations, overall community, and government support. These efforts will ensure prevention of loss of life and reduce possible damages. The United States has been battered by multiple major hurricanes in the recent years and multiple avenues of disaster response efforts were being tested. Hurricane Irma can be recognized as the most popular hurricane in terms of social media attention. Irma made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm and preparation measures taken were intensive thus providing a good measure to evaluate in terms of efficacy. The effectiveness of the response methods utilized are …

Yelp’S Review Filtering Algorithm, Yao Yao, Ivelin Angelov, Jack Rasmus-Vorrath, Mooyoung Lee, Daniel W. Engels

SMU Data Science Review

In this paper, we present an analysis of features influencing Yelp's proprietary review filtering algorithm. Classifying or misclassifying reviews as recommended or non-recommended affects average ratings, consumer decisions, and ultimately, business revenue. Our analysis involves systematically sampling and scraping Yelp restaurant reviews. Features are extracted from review metadata and engineered from metrics and scores generated using text classifiers and sentiment analysis. The coefficients of a multivariate logistic regression model were interpreted as quantifications of the relative importance of features in classifying reviews as recommended or non-recommended. The model classified review recommendations with an accuracy of 78%. We found that reviews …

Pretrial Release And Failure-To-Appear In Mclean County, Il, Jonathan Monsma

Student Research – Stevenson Center

Actuarial risk assessment tools increasingly have been employed in jurisdictions across the U.S. to assist courts in the decision of whether someone charged with a crime should be detained or released prior to their trial. These tools should be continually monitored and researched by independent 3^rd parties to ensure that these powerful tools are being administered properly and used in the most proficient way as to provide socially optimal results. McLean County, Illinois began using the Public Safety Assessment-Court^TM (PSA-Court or simply PSA) risk assessment tool beginning in 2016. This study culls data from the McLean County Jail …

Using Data To Ignite And Sustain Employment Systems Change, Jean Winsor, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

ThinkWork! Publications

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Ordinality Of Response Bias With Item Response Models: A Case Study Using The Phq-9, Venessa N. Singhroy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Improper scale usage in psychological and clinical assessment is an important problem. If respondents do not use the scales in a consistent manner, the reliability of a composite is likely to be attenuated. This is particularly problematic when particular items are singled out for special treatment or when subscales are of interest, not just a total score. This study used both non-parametric and parametric item response theory (IRT) methods to gain further insight into the validity of the PHQ-9, a dual purpose instrument that assesses the severity of depressive symptoms using nine Likert-scale items and allows the investigator to establish …

Technical Considerations In The Use Of The E-Value, Tyler J. Vanderweele, Peng Ding, Maya Mathur

Harvard University Biostatistics Working Paper Series

The E-value is defined as the minimum strength of association on the risk ratio scale that an unmeasured confounder would have to have with both the exposure and the outcome, conditional on the measured covariates, to explain away the observed exposure-outcome association. We have elsewhere proposed that the reporting of E-values for estimates and for the limit of the confidence interval closest to the null become routine whenever causal effects are of interest. A number of questions have arisen about the use of E-value including questions concerning the interpretation of the relevant confounding association parameters, the nature of the transformation …

Predicting The Next Us President By Simulating The Electoral College, Boyan Kostadinov

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

We develop a simulation model for predicting the outcome of the US Presidential election based on simulating the distribution of the Electoral College. The simulation model has two parts: (a) estimating the probabilities for a given candidate to win each state and DC, based on state polls, and (b) estimating the probability that a given candidate will win at least 270 electoral votes, and thus win the White House. All simulations are coded using the high-level, open-source programming language R. One of the goals of this paper is to promote computational thinking in any STEM field by illustrating how probabilistic …

Models As Weapons: Review Of Weapons Of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy By Cathy O’Neil (2016), Samuel L. Tunstall

Numeracy

Cathy O’Neil. 2016. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (New York, NY: Crown) 272 pp. ISBN 978-0553418811.

Accessible to a wide readership, Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy provides a lucid yet alarming account of the extensive reach of mathematical models in influencing all of our lives. With a particular eye towards social justice, O’Neil not only warns modelers to be cognizant of the effects of their work on real people—especially vulnerable groups who have less power to fight back—but also encourages laypersons to take initiative …

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #6: Sea Level Rise And Flooding, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

[Introductory paragraph]

This report examines regional measures of environmental risk perceptions from the 2018 Life In Hampton Roads survey (LIHR 2018) conducted by the Old Dominion University Social Science Research Center. Data from prior years is also provided when available to show comparisons in responses over time. Responses were weighted by city population, race, age, gender, and phone usage (cell versus land-line) to be representative of the Hampton Roads region. For additional information on survey methodology, and analyses of other issues, please see the SSRC website at www.odu.edu/ssrc. The 2018 Life in Hampton Roads survey included a series of …

Developing A Cyberterrorism Policy: Incorporating Individual Values, Osama Bassam J. Rabie

Theses and Dissertations

Preventing cyberterrorism is becoming a necessity for individuals, organizations, and governments. However, current policies focus on technical and managerial aspects without asking for experts and non-experts values and preferences for preventing cyberterrorism. This study employs value focused thinking and public value forum to bare strategic measures and alternatives for complex policy decisions for preventing cyberterrorism. The strategic measures and alternatives are per socio-technical process.

Campus Climate Sexual Assault Survey (2015) Analysis, Felicia Rosin

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The issue of sexual assault has garnered widespread attention in recent years, as is evident by the growing number of high-profile cases and mainstream social movements. With this increasingly bright spotlight, it is no surprise that The University of Akron has interest in improving the sexual violence education programs offered to students. In 2015, the university conducted a survey to gather information on the campus climate surrounding sexual assault. This analysis dives into a deeper analysis of the data gathered in an attempt to pinpoint areas that require the university’s attention. The analysis covers topics identified by Dean of Students …

Netnographic Slog: Creative Elicitation Strategies To Encourage Participation In An Online Community Of Practice For Early Education And Care, Ruth Wallace

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Active, participatory netnography, in contrast to passive netnography, is essential if researchers are to gain rich rewards from the rigorous collection of qualitative data. However, researchers should be aware of the ‘netnographic slog’; “the blood, sweat and tears” associated with eliciting quality data and encouraging active participation in online communities.

This article examines the – Supporting Nutrition for Australian Childcare (SNAC) – online community of practice, established to support healthy eating practices in early childhood education and care settings. To ensure research rigour, Kozinets’ netnographic steps were employed. Garnering member participation in this online community was a slog; most community …

Analysis Of Gender Differences In Authentic Science Inquiry Practices, Arianna Garcia

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

The purpose of this project is to study differences in male versus female science epistemology as reflected in their practices during authentic science inquiry. Understanding an individual’s science epistemology is important to develop better methods of teaching authentic science inquiry. Science epistemology refers to the beliefs people have about the process of performing scientific inquiry and how scientific information is generated. In particular, students may believe science is a simple process with definite conclusions previously established by professionals, or that science is a complex field with many unanswered questions which require creative and unconventional processes to expose. Scientific inquiry in …

Life In Hampton Roads: Sea Level Rise And Flooding, Public Affairs & News Bureau, Old Dominion University

News Items

No abstract provided.

A Cross-Sectional Exploration Of Household Financial Reactions And Homebuyer Awareness Of Registered Sex Offenders In A Rural, Suburban, And Urban County., John Charles Navarro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As stigmatized persons, registered sex offenders betoken instability in communities. Depressed home sale values are associated with the presence of registered sex offenders even though the public is largely unaware of the presence of registered sex offenders. Using a spatial multilevel approach, the current study examines the role registered sex offenders influence sale values of homes sold in 2015 for three U.S. counties (rural, suburban, and urban) located in Illinois and Kentucky within the social disorganization framework. Homebuyers were surveyed to examine whether awareness of local registered sex offenders and the homebuyer’s community type operate as moderators between home selling …

Introduction To Gis Using Open Source Software, 8th Ed, Frank Donnelly

Open Educational Resources

This tutorial was created to accompany the GIS Practicum, a day-long workshop offered by the Newman Library at Baruch College CUNY that introduces participants to geographic information systems (GIS) using the open source software QGIS. The practicum introduces GIS as a concept for envisioning information and as a tool for conducting geographic analyses and creating maps. Participants learn how to navigate a GIS interface, how to prepare layers and conduct a basic geographic analysis, and how to create thematic maps. This tutorial was written using QGIS version 2.18 "Las Palmas", a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) desktop GIS software package.

Marketing The Mountain State: A Large N Study Of User Engagement On Twitter, Kirk Richardson

Capstone Projects – Politics and Government

Much of the evolving research on the use of social media in destination marketing emphasizes how information diffusion influences the reputational image of place. The present study uses Twitter data to focus on the relative differences in user engagement across discrete account types. Specifically, this is done to examine how the official destination marketing organization of Montana—the Montana Office of Tourism (MTOT)—performs relative to other account types. Several regression analyses conducted on Twitter data associated with an ongoing MTOT place branding campaign reveal that tweets sent from ‘official’ accounts are more likely to be retweeted, and are estimated to receive …

Yale’S Environmental Performance Index: The Construction And Use Of A Composite Index For Global Sustainability, Zach Wendling

Yale Day of Data

No abstract provided.

Consumers' Perceptions Of Voluntary And Involuntary Deconsumption: An Exploratory Sequential Scale Development Study, Kranti K. Dugar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This exploratory sequential mixed methods study of scale development was conducted among baby boomers in the United States to render conceptual clarity to the concepts of voluntary and involuntary deconsumption, to explore deconsumption behavior under the tenets of the attribution theory of motivation, and to examine the components, structures, uses, and measurement properties of scales of voluntary and involuntary deconsumption. It was also an attempt to reiterate the importance of the baby boomer segment(s) for marketing practitioners based on growth, economic viability, and the power of influence, and to establish a deep understanding of the deconsumption processes, which could enable …

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #5: Sea Level Rise And Flooding, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

[Introductory paragraph]

This report examines regional measures of environmental risk perceptions from the 2017 Life In Hampton Roads survey (LIHR 2017) conducted by the Old Dominion University Social Science Research Center. Data from prior years is also provided when available to show comparisons in responses over time. Responses were weighted by city population, race, age, gender, and phone usage (cell versus land-line) to be representative of the Hampton Roads region.

Social Justice In Social-Ecological Systems: Resilience Through Stakeholder Engagement, Frederick I. Lauer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Successful management of social-ecological systems (SES) is predicated on quality collaborative exchanges between project stakeholders and management. The Southwest Crown of the Continent Collaborative (SWCC) Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) provided an opportunity to explore landscape scale collaborative management and SES outcomes. Global change and future uncertainty of landscapes prompted the SWCC to employ restoration treatment alternatives throughout 1.4 million acres of forests, most of which are publicly held. The SWCC currently monitors environmental and economic variables, with plans to monitor social variables. This thesis formalizes a proposed framework to investigate SES resilience, and explores public engagement as an …

Bayesian Exponential Random Graph Modelling Of Interhospital Patient Referral Networks, Alberto Caimo, Francesca Pallotti, Alessandro Lomi

Articles

Using original data that we have collected on referral relations between 110 hospitals serving a large regional community, we show how recently derived Bayesian exponential random graph models may be adopted to illuminate core empirical issues in research on relational coordination among healthcare organisations. We show how a rigorous Bayesian computation approach supports a fully probabilistic analytical framework that alleviates well-known problems in the estimation of model parameters of exponential random graph models. We also show how the main structural features of interhospital patient referral networks that prior studies have described can be reproduced with accuracy by specifying the system …

Introduction To Gis Using Open Source Software, 7th Ed, Frank Donnelly

Open Educational Resources

This tutorial was created to accompany the GIS Practicum, a day-long workshop offered by the Newman Library at Baruch College CUNY that introduces participants to geographic information systems (GIS) using the open source software QGIS. The practicum introduces GIS as a concept for envisioning information and as a tool for conducting geographic analyses and creating maps. Participants learn how to navigate a GIS interface, how to prepare layers and conduct a basic geographic analysis, and how to create thematic maps. This tutorial was written using QGIS version 2.14 "Essen", a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) desktop GIS software package.

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #5: Sea Level Rise And Flooding, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

This report examines regional measures of environmental risk perceptions from the 2016 Life In Hampton Roads survey (LIHR 2016) conducted by the Old Dominion University Social Science Research Center. Data from prior years is also provided when available to show comparisons in responses over time. Responses were weighted by city population, race, age, gender, and phone usage (cell versus land-line) to be representative of the Hampton Roads region.

Topic Analysis Of Tweets On The European Refugee Crisis Using Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, Chong Shen

CMC Senior Theses

The ongoing European Refugee Crisis has been one of the most popular trending topics on Twitter for the past 8 months. This paper applies topic modeling on bulks of tweets to discover the hidden patterns within these social media discussions. In particular, we perform topic analysis through solving Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) as an Inexact Alternating Least Squares problem. We accelerate the computation using techniques including tweet sampling and augmented NMF, compare NMF results with different ranks and visualize the outputs through topic representation and frequency plots. We observe that supportive sentiments maintained a strong presence while negative sentiments such …

Review Of Developing Quantitative Literacy Skills In History And The Social Sciences: A Web-Based Common Core Approach By Kathleen W. Craver, Victor J. Ricchezza, H L. Vacher

Numeracy

Kathleen W. Craver. Developing Quantitative Literacy Skills in History and Social Sciences: A Web-Based Common Core Standards Approach (Lantham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2014). 191 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4758-1050-9 (cloth); ISBN …-1051-6 (pbk); ISBN…-1052-3 (electronic).

This book could be a breakthrough for teachers in the trenches who are interested in or need to know about quantitative literacy (QL). It is a resource providing 85 topical pieces, averaging 1.5 pages, in which a featured Web site is presented, described, and accompanied by 2-4 critical-thinking questions purposefully drawing on data from the Web site. The featured Web sites range from …

Failing To Replicate: Hypothesis Testing As A Crucial Key To Make Direct Replications More Credible And Predictable, Pedro Fernando Mateu Bullón

Dissertations

Theory cannot be fully validated unless the original results have been replicated, resulting in conclusion consistency. Replications are the strongest source to verify research findings and knowledge claims. Sciences such as medicine, chemistry, physics, genetics, and biology, are considered successful because their knowledge claims are buttressed by a large set of replications of original studies. Unfortunately in the social sciences many attempts to replicate fail and thus there is a continuing need for replication studies to confirm facts, expand knowledge to gain new understanding, and verify hypotheses. Two plausible explanations for the failure to replicate in the social sciences could …