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Museums must assess visitors' experience to understand them and their needs. TripAdvisor provides an accessible source of user-generated data about the visit experience, but there is limited empirical evidence on the value of automated elaboration of this data for museum management. This paper uses topic modeling to identify the latent dimensions of the visit experience for the 30 most-visited Italian museums in 2019 using online reviews. Differences in the latent dimensions are assessed between visitors with different cultural backgrounds, as identified by whether they write in the local or non-local language. The results show that while all visitors share three cross-cultural dimensions of experience (museum cultural heritage, personal experience, and museum services), specific latent dimensions are emphasized by local (i.e., 'wow effect' and hospitality) and non-local visitors (i.e., time management and unfavorable experiences). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-assessment has been portrayed as a way to promote lifelong learning in higher education. While most of the previous literature builds on the idea of self-assessment as a formative tool for learning, some scholars have suggested using it in a summative way. In the present study, we have empirically compared formative and summative models for self-assessment, based on different educational purposes (N = 299). Latent profile analysis was used to observe student subgroups in terms of deep and surface approaches to learning. The results show that the student profiles varied between the self-assessment models. The students taking part in the summative self-assessment group were overrepresented amongst the profile with high level of deep approach to learning. Also, summative self-assessment was related to an increased level of self-efficacy. The study implies that summative self-assessment can be used to foster students' studying; however, this requires a context where aligning self-assessment with future-driven pedagogical purposes is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixed-effects models can be used to examine the association between a categorical moderator and the magnitude of the effect size. Two approaches are available to estimate the residual between-studies variance, τ r e s 2 —namely, separate estimation within each category of the moderator versus pooled estimation across all categories. We examine, by means of a Monte Carlo simulation study, both approaches for τ r e s 2 estimation in combination with two methods, the Wald-type χ 2 and F tests, to test the statistical significance of the moderator. Results suggest that the F test using a pooled estimate of τ r e s 2 across categories is the best option in most conditions, although the F test using separate estimates of τ r e s 2 is preferable if the residual heterogeneity variances are heteroscedastic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-esteem has been deemed an important variable in many theories over the past 100 years, and several interventions are aimed at improving self-esteem in order to prevent criminal and delinquent behavior. However, no systematic attempt to quantify the collective results of this variable’s effect on criminal and delinquent behavior has been undertaken, and only one narrative literature review has taken place. This meta-analysis seeks to inform the research by focusing on 48 effect sizes from 42 studies spanning 25 years (1990-2015) and 71,130 individuals. Our findings indicate that self-esteem has a small, negative but significant effect on crime and delinquency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychosocial impact concept improves the understanding of the effects of disasters on people and communities. However, its definition is not clear. This work explores consistencies between studies (k = 21) that refer to the psychosocial impact of disasters by way of a meta-analytic synthesis. This synthesis indicates that people are more prone to illness when they are exposed to a disaster, and less when they are protected (OR = 2.737). Please check the change conveys the intended meaning or amend Nevertheless, there are no differences in healthy responses, regardless of how protected or exposed they are (OR = 1.053). Finally, a model is proposed to explain four types of psychosocial impact: resilient, traumatic, sensitive, witness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reality of illusory conjunctions in perception has been sometimes questioned, arguing that they can be explained by other mechanisms. Most relevant experiments are based on migrations along the space dimension. But the low rate of illusory conjunctions along space can easily hide them among other types of errors. As migrations over time are a more frequent phenomenon, illusory conjunctions can be disentangled from other errors. We report an experiment in which series of colored letters were presented in several spatial locations, allowing for migrations over both space and time. The distribution of frequencies were fit by several multinomial tree models based on alternative hypothesis about illusory conjunctions and the potential sources of free-floating features. The best-fit model acknowledges that most illusory conjunctions are migrations in the time domain. Migrations in space are probably present, but the rate is very low. Other conjunction errors, as those produced by guessing or miscategorizations of the to-be-reported feature, are also present in the experiment. The main conclusion is that illusory conjunctions do exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a hypothesis for understanding democratic stability based on the distinction between politicized and meritocratic bureaucracies. We argue that in a politicized administration, the professional careers of large numbers of government officials depend directly upon which party wins the elections. This increases the likelihood that the government will take opportunistic actions aimed at surviving in office at any cost; that is, benefiting core supporters at the expense of other groups. In turn, this may foster pre-emptive actions from the opposition, such as military coups. Conversely, in democracies with meritocratic administrations, incumbents are credibly constrained from undertaking partial policies because their hands are tied in terms of managing the staff policy of the state apparatus. Consequently, countries with meritocratic bureaucracies have greater prospects for democratic stability. Empirically, we illustrate the mechanisms with two well-documented cases of democratic transitions that enshrined a politicized administration – Spain (1876–1936) and Venezuela (1958–1998) – and one transition that kept a meritocratic bureaucracy, Spain (1975–). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Computerized tasks allow a more fine-grained analysis of the strategy deployed in a task designed to map a specific ability than the usual assessment on the basis of only the level of performance. Manipulations expected to impair performance sometimes do not have that effect, probably because the level of performance alone can confound the assessment of the ability level if researchers ignore the strategy used. In a study with 1,872 participants, the authors applied the Spatial Orientation Dynamic Test-Revised (J. Santacreu, 1999) in single and dual task settings, identifying 3 different strategies. Strategy shifts were associated with the level of performance, as more apt individuals were more likely to shift to better strategies. Ignoring the strategies yields counterintuitive results that cannot be explained by simple, direct relations among the constructs involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]