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Competition is everywhere in antitrust. Courts, agencies, and scholars routinely insist that antitrust can, does, and should measure the legality of conduct by asking whether it has harmed or promoted “competition.” The idea that competition is, without further definition, a coherent value that can be increased or reduced—and used to guide the development and application of antitrust rules—has dominated doctrine for a century, and is deployed freely by judges, enforcers, and writers across the political spectrum. This does more harm than good, and it should stop. There is no single value or quantity, in economics or antitrust law, that competition just is. Competition has long been essentialized, in both disciplines, in countless inconsistent ways. And its enduring dominance in antitrust doctrine causes real harms: indeterminacy and confusion, because the purported criterion cannot resolve concrete cases; utopianism, because it conceals antitrust’s fundamental need for hard choices among desirable goals; and bluntness, because today’s courts respond to antitrust’s vague tests by erring in favor of defendants. Antitrust would be better off without competition as a purported orienting value or criterion. There are multiple meaningful and plausible evaluative criteria available to which doctrine might turn instead. One such measure, “harm-centric antitrust,” would orient antitrust to guard against welfare harms resulting from the unprivileged suppression of rival incentive, or rival ability, to meet demand. This is not the only option: there are plenty of other plausible orientations for the antitrust project. But the undefined “promotion of competition” is not among them. It is time to let it go. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So far, many ways have been provided to solve Multiple-Criteria Decision-Making(MCDM)problems with interval numbers. Most of these methods rank the alternatives according to two criteria, that is, being close to the Positive Ideal Solution (PIS)and far away from the Negative Ideal Solution(NIS). In this paper, a method is presented for solving MCDM problems with interval numbers, such that being close to PIS and being away from NIS have the same effect in alternative ranking. In the proposed method, the first PIS and NIS are determined as interval numbers and distance of each alternative from PIS and NIS is calculated by extension of Euclidean distance. Then, a compromise index is de ned to rank the alternatives. Three numerical examples are given to compare the proposed method with other methods presented in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study investigated the scoring and criterion-related validity of the TEAP, a newly developed Test of English for Academic Purposes. In this study, scoring validity was examined by investigating the factor structure, while criterion-related validity was examined by first investigating the longitudinal change of test takers' perceived test task value toward the measured construct and then investigating the relationship of test takers' perceived value to the factor structure of the TEAP. Methods: Confirmatory item-level factor analysis was conducted using the data obtained from 2217 first-year university students comparing four models (unitary, correlated, receptive-productive, higher order). Additional confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to first investigate the longitudinal change of perceived value toward the measured construct and then to investigate the relationship of test takers' perceived value of the construct measured by the test to the factor structure of the TEAP. Results: The results show that the higher-order model was the best-fitting model. This confirmed a previous small-scale study suggesting the generalizability of the test's factor structure. Furthermore, it was found that test takers' perceived values measured at the start of university positively affected the values measured about 6 months later. In addition, perceived values measured both at the start of university study and about 6 months later positively correlated with the higher-order factor of the test. Conclusions: The results provide further support of the scoring validity of the test. In addition, a positive relationship between the higher-order factor of TEAP and the factors of perceived values provide evidence of the usefulness of test takers' perception to further support the criterion-related validity of the test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals use the internet to look up information. This has consequences for the measurement of political knowledge in self-administered online surveys. Online surveys may now include answers that were retrieved from the internet instead of a respondent's declarative memory, thereby distorting knowledge measures. This problem has been acknowledged and studied, but existing research focuses on interventions designed to deter online searching and on methods to detect the behavior. I take a different approach and focus on the questions themselves to show that some questions are more vulnerable to bias via internet searching than others. I take advantage of interview mode differences in the 2016 ANES to examine the effect of internet access on different kinds of political knowledge questions. The study concludes with best practices recommendations for researchers wishing to improve their knowledge scales by discussing what type of questions are most likely to form a scale that retains criterion validity in the online environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the group controllability of discrete‐time second‐order multi‐agent systems (MASs) with two‐time‐scale feature. The paper first provides a definition of the group controllability of discrete‐time second‐order MASs with two‐time‐scale feature. In view of the ill‐posedness problem that occurs when the classical control theory is used directly to manage the controllability of two‐time‐scale MASs with a singular perturbation parameter, we adopt a singular perturbation method based on iteration and approximation to decompose two‐time‐scale MASs into fast‐time‐scale and slow‐time‐scale subsystems. Subsequently, by combining the Kalman rank criterion and matrix theory knowledge, several additional easy‐to‐operate controllable criteria are proposed for these MASs. The validity is then demonstrated through simulations, and the influence of the singular perturbation parameter on the group controllability of discrete‐time second‐order MASs is discussed. This research complements existing situations in which only first‐order agents are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely believed that feedback improves behavior, but the mechanisms behind this improvement remain unclear. Different theories postulate that feedback has either a direct effect on performance through automatic reinforcement mechanisms or only an indirect effect mediated by a deliberate change in strategy. To adjudicate between these competing accounts, we performed two large experiments on human adults (total N = 518); approximately half the participants received trial-by-trial feedback on a perceptual task, whereas the other half did not receive any feedback. We found that feedback had no effect on either perceptual or metacognitive sensitivity even after 7 days of training. On the other hand, feedback significantly affected participants' response strategies by reducing response bias and improving confidence calibration. These results suggest that the beneficial effects of feedback stem from allowing people to adjust their strategies for performing the task and not from direct reinforcement mechanisms, at least in the domain of perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans exhibit substantial biases in their decision making even in simple two-choice tasks, but the origin of these biases remains unclear. I hypothesized that one source of bias could be individual differences in sensory encoding. Specifically, if one stimulus category gives rise to an internal-evidence distribution with higher variability, then responses should optimally be biased against that stimulus category. Therefore, response bias may reflect a previously unappreciated subject-to-subject difference in the variance of the internal-evidence distributions. I tested this possibility by analyzing data from three different two-choice tasks (n s = 443, 443, and 498). For all three tasks, response bias moved in the direction of the optimal criterion determined by each subject's idiosyncratic internal-evidence variability. These results demonstrate that seemingly random variations in response bias can be driven by individual differences in sensory encoding and are thus partly explained by normative strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a philosophical proposition of elucidating creativity by means of distinguishing the category of intentionality. The intentional dimension of cognitive content encompasses predispositions for constructing sign systems. Such an intellectual modification of sign systems forms the foundation of dynamic creative acts. However, creative processes are not restricted to the sphere of intellectual operations, but also remain under the influence of object categories. For this reason, the results of creative processes must allow for the potential determinants of sensual matter. A transition between the subjective sphere of possibility and the objective sphere of potency indicates the dynamism of the process. A crucial component of the emergence of intentional relations is formulating the criterion of a creative process. It determines the rules of constructing sign systems, the forms of acceptable transformations as well as the possible modes of allowing for the results of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on identity criterion and relational approach to duty of care in negligence. It mentions decision of the New York Court of Appeals in the case Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. which considered the victim's identity to be the key to relationality. It also mentions underlying moral justification for the use of relationality to determine duty and corrective justice theory and civil recourse theory have focused exclusively on the bipolar relationship.

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What distinguishes causation from grounding? One suggestion is that causation, but not grounding, occurs over time. Recently, however, counterexamples to this simple temporal criterion have been offered. In this paper, we situate the temporal criterion within a broader framework that focuses on two aspects: locational overlapping in space and time and the presence of intermediaries in space and time. We consider, and reject, the idea that the difference between grounding and causation is that grounding can occur without intermediaries. We go on to use the fact that grounding and causation both involve intermediaries to develop a better temporal criterion for distinguishing causation from grounding. The criterion is this: when a cause and effect are spatially disjoint, there is always a chain of causal intermediaries between the cause and the effect that are extended in time. By contrast, when the grounds and the grounded are spatially disjoint, there is always a chain of grounding intermediaries, but the chain need not be extended in time, it can be purely spatial. The difference between grounding and causation, then, is that causation requires time for chaining in a way that grounding does not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Characteristics have been developed, by which the boundaries of coherence of adjacent road sections are established in accordance with requirements for the traffic safety. The coordination of adjacent sections of the road is carried out taking into account the driver's behavior program, which is presented in the work as a value of the maximum entropy of his perception field. The choice of this criterion is determined by the possibility of a comprehensive assessment of many road environment factors that influence the driver. The boundaries of coordination of the maximum entropy values of adjacent road sections with use of the accident rate are established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with the justification of the developed methodological approaches to the evaluation of the economic rationality criterion in business design, which is applicable to any organization. An important aspect in the methodology under consideration is the formation of sound intersectoral relations. According to the authors, a complete, objective and reliable evaluation of the effectiveness of the establishment of the intersectoral relations occurring in any area of production activity is an option for solution of the problem under consideration. Not one, but a system of indicators ensuring the reliability of the conclusions drawn should be applied to evaluate production efficiency. The system of indicators makes it possible to specify the leading criterion of efficiency, to present a generalized quantitative and qualitative characteristic of the economic processes taking place in the industry. This justifies the choice of the economic rationality criterion, which is objective and universal in nature, can be easily interpreted and makes it possible to adequately assess the status of business design in an organization, not only at the current time, but also for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the challenges in cluster analysis is the evaluation of the obtained clustering results without using auxiliary information. To this end, a common approach is to use internal validity criteria. For mixtures of linear regressions whose parameters are estimated by maximum likelihood, we propose a three-term decomposition of the total sum of squares as a starting point to define some internal validity criteria. In particular, three types of mixtures of regressions are considered: with fixed covariates, with concomitant variables, and with random covariates. A ternary diagram is also suggested for easier joint interpretation of the three terms of the proposed decomposition. Furthermore, local and overall coefficients of determination are respectively defined to judge how well the model fits the data group-by-group but also taken as a whole. Artificial data are considered to find out more about the proposed decomposition, including violations of the model assumptions. Finally, an application to real data illustrates the use and the usefulness of these proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On one influential view, the problems that should attract medical attention involve a disorder, because the goals of medical practice are to prevent and treat disorders. Based on this view, if there are no mental disorders then the status of psychiatry as a medical field is challenged. In this paper, I observe that it is often difficult to establish whether the problems that attract medical attention involve a disorder, and argue that none of the notions of disorder proposed so far offers a successful demarcation criterion between medical and non-medical problems. As an illustration, I consider why delusions are considered pathological and whether they attract medical attention in virtue of being pathological, where 'pathological' stands for 'being caused by a disorder'. Although there are several promising answers to what makes delusions pathological, available accounts of the pathological nature of delusions fail to distinguish delusions from other irrational beliefs that are not typically thought of as pathological; and cannot explain why delusions typically attract medical attention whereas other irrational beliefs do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights regarding the article of Pearce and Huang which examines the value of research to management education by differentiating useful and less useful research on management. The author states that research was regarded by Pearce and Huang as useful if it is actionable. He mentions that the aggregation problem and disaggregation fallacy help explain why the criterion of Pearce and Huang for actionable research can produce a narrow band of actionable responses. He notes that the conclusions of Pearce and Huang are undermined by the conceptual problem of aggregation and disaggregation across levels of analysis, and technical problem of interpreting correctly research implications.

The author comments on the article "The Rain Man Cometh-Again," by Robert Zemsky in the February 2008 issue of "Academy of Management Perspectives." She notes that in the article, which focused on ranking for colleges, Zemsky focused on undergraduate programs rather than master of business administration (MBA) programs and suggests that though academic quality should be the most important criterion in the rankings, it cannot be measured accurately. She comments that students' opinions of academic quality may be a way to measure academic quality. She suggests business schools can choose a ranking system that fits their needs.

Objective: To determine the day-to-day variability of older adults' physical activity, and to evaluate the accuracy of the 10,000-step goal for classifying whether older adults obtain 30 minutes of MVPA. Methods: Ninety-one adults of age over 60 years of age wore a Yamax pedometer and Actigraph accelerometer for 7 days. Interday reliability was estimated via two-way ANOVA ICCs, and classification accuracy was evaluated via sensitivity, specificity, and ROC curve analysis. Results: Interday reliability was high; 4 of 5 outcome measures had a reliability of = .80 with only 2 days of data. The 10,000-step cut point had high accuracy for identifying days with less than 30 minutes of MVPA, but poor accuracy for identifying days with more than 30 minutes of MVPA. Conclusions: Day-to-day variability in physical activity is lower in older adults than other age groups. The 10,000-step goal is inadequate for determining whether daily physical activity includes 30 minutes of MVPA in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors provide more efficient designs for conjoint choice experiments based on prior information elicited from managers about the parameters and their associated uncertainty. The authors use a Bayesian design procedure that assumes a prior distribution of likely parameter values and optimizes the design over that distribution. The authors propose a way to elicit prior information from managers and show in Monte Carlo studies that the procedure provides more efficient designs than the current procedures. The authors provide an empirical application, in which they elicit prior information on the parameter values and the associated uncertainty from managers. Here, the Bayesian design provides 30%–50% lower standard errors of the estimates and an expected predictive validity that is approximately 20% higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of and conclusions from a survey of 2,830 college and university undergraduate business and philosophy departments regarding their business ethics offerings. The impetus for this survey included seeking a better understanding of the problems for which business ethics courses are the solution. It was proposed that, if we knew what it is that professors teaching business ethics believe they are teaching--not in terms of content or methods, but in terms of what criteria they are using to assess students' achievement of the course objectives--we would have a better understanding of what issues business ethics attempts to resolve. The survey focused on ranking six possible assessment criteria drawn from the literature on teaching business ethics. In addition to disclosing the specific survey results, the paper draws conclusions based on the fact that there are statistically significant differences between the rankings assigned to the six assessment criteria by business professors as contrasted with philosophy professors. The results of the survey indicate that there is more uniformity expressed in the responses by the philosophy professors teaching business ethics than by the business professors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the methodological literature is replete with advice regarding the development and validation of multi-item scales based on reflective measures, the issue of index construction using formative measures has received little attention. The authors seek to address this gap by (1) examining the nature of formative indicators, (2) discussing ways In which the quality of formative measures can be assessed, and (3) illustrating the proposed procedures with empirical data. The aim is to enhance researchers' understanding of formative measures and assist them in their index construction efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moderated multiple regression models allow the simple relationship between the dependent variable and an independent variable to depend on the level of another independent variable. The moderated relationship, often referred to as the interaction, is modeled by including a product term as an additional independent variable. Moderated relationships are central to marketing (e.g., Does the effect of promotion on sales depend on the market segment?). Multiple regression models not including a product term are widely used and well understood. The authors argue that researchers have derived from this simpler type of multiple regression several data analysis heuristics that, when inappropriately generalized to moderated multiple regression, can result in faulty interpretations of model coefficients and incorrect statistical analyses. Using theoretical arguments and constructed data sets, the authors describe these heuristics, discuss how they may easily be misapplied, and suggest some good practices for estimating, testing, and interpreting regression models that include moderated relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on Criterion Collection with an assortment of additional items such as audio commentaries, video essays, interviews, television segments, and trailers. Topics include navigating multiple hardships including the sexism and patriarchy of rural community and the harshness of family home; and humongous refinery being constructed where fishing boats, modest homes, little businesses, and a pristine waterfront prevail.

A challenge for the theorising of climate justice is that even when the agents whose actions are supposed to be regulated are cooperative and act in good faith, they may still disagree about how the burdens and benefits of dealing with climate change should be distributed. This article is a contribution to the formulation of a useful role for normative theorising in light of this bounded nature of climate justice. We outline a theory of pure procedural climate justice; its content, function in relation to international climate diplomacy, and justification. The theory is 'pure' in the sense that it does not rely on an independent criterion of what are just outcomes in negotiations of climate responsibilities. Rather, it specifies procedural fairness norms, such as transparency, reciprocity and participation, which make the process of negotiation fair independently of which account of substantive climate justice happens to be correct. Such procedural fairness norms are justified in part by being expressions of an ideal of a reasonable negotiator, an ideal which itself commands respect. They are also justified as means to an effective coordinated response to dangerous climate change in virtue of their capacity to create trust, predictability and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This meta-analytic study examined the validity of Gordon's music aptitude tests as predictors of other musical variables. The four tests analyzed were the Music Aptitude Profile (1965), Primary Measures of Music Audiation (1979), Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (1982), and Advanced Measures of Music Audiation (1989). Separate analyses were performed for tonal, rhythm, and composite constructs of music aptitude. From 47 music education journal articles that met requirements for inclusion, 215 independent data points representing 6,086 participants were collapsed into an overriding set of five criterion categories: (a) aural perception, (b) achievement, (c) creativity, (d) affective outcomes, and (e) musical engagement. Moderators potentially affecting validity included audiation type, sampling method, grade level, criterion test type, and year of publication. Results revealed estimated true criterion-related validities of.45 (tonal),.46 (rhythm), and.53 (composite). Gordon's music aptitude tests were consistently but not always strongly associated with many desirable musical outcomes. Analysis of correlations by subtest and criterion category produced mixed results, and high levels of between-study heterogeneity could not be explained through meta-regression moderator analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a multiple criteria decision-making problem, decision-makers often make judgments of importance, for example, that "rent is more important than apartment size" when choosing apartments. Even though linear models are heavily used in choice prediction, it has remained unclear whether criterion weights are connected to judgments of importance. A surprisingly common assumption is that a more important criterion tends to have a larger weight, as if weights and importance were equal, or at least heavily correlated. In the experiment, subjects provided pairwise judgments of importance for four criteria and made pairwise choices with apartments defined by these criteria. According to our results, Goldstein's (1990) idea of connecting judgments of importance to impact is more meaningful than connecting them to weights. Impact as the product of AHP weights and coefficient of variation is the best definition for impact, when measured by correlation to the original judgments of importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In topic modeling, identifiability of the topics is an essential issue. Many topic modeling approaches have been developed under the premise that each topic has a characteristic anchor word that only appears in that topic. The anchor-word assumption is fragile in practice, because words and terms have multiple uses; yet it is commonly adopted because it enables identifiability guarantees. Remedies in the literature include using three- or higher-order word co-occurence statistics to come up with tensor factorization models, but such statistics need many more samples to obtain reliable estimates, and identifiability still hinges on additional assumptions, such as consecutive words being persistently drawn from the same topic. In this work, we propose a new topic identification criterion using second order statistics of the words. The criterion is theoretically guaranteed to identify the underlying topics even when the anchor-word assumption is grossly violated. An algorithm based on alternating optimization, and an efficient primal-dual algorithm are proposed to handle the resulting identification problem. The former exhibits high performance and is completely parameter-free; the latter affords up to 200 times speedup relative to the former, but requires step-size tuning and a slight sacrifice in accuracy. A variety of real text copora are employed to showcase the effectiveness of the approach, where the proposed anchor-free method demonstrates substantial improvements compared to a number of anchor-word based approaches under various evaluation metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the development and validation of the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool–4 (MnSOST-4) on a dataset consisting of 5,745 sex offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 2003 and 2012. Bootstrap resampling was used to select predictors, and k-fold and split-sample methods were used to internally validate the MnSOST-4. Using sex offense reconviction within 4 years of release from prison as the failure criterion, the data showed that 130 (2.3%) offenders in the overall sample were recidivists. Multiple classification methods and performance metrics were used to develop the MnSOST-4 and evaluate its predictive performance on the test set. The results from the regularized logistic regression algorithm showed that the MnSOST-4 performed well in predicting sexual recidivism in the test set, achieving an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.835. Additional analyses on the test set revealed that the MnSOST-4 outperformed the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool–3 (MnSOST-3), Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool–Revised (MnSOST-R), and Static-99 in predicting sexual reoffending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantile regression (QR) allows one to model the effect of covariates across the entire response distribution, rather than only at the mean, but QR methods have been almost exclusively applied to continuous response variables and without considering spatial effects. Of the few studies that have performed QR on count data, none have included random spatial effects, which is an integral facet of the Bayesian spatial QR model for areal counts that we propose. Additionally, we introduce a simplifying alternative to the response variable transformation currently employed in the QR for counts literature. The efficacy of the proposed model is demonstrated via simulation study and on a real data application from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (TDFPS). Our model outperforms a comparable non-spatial model in both instances, as evidenced by the deviance information criterion (DIC) and coverage probabilities. With the TDFPS data, we identify one of four covariates, along with the intercept, as having a nonconstant effect across the response distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In practice, fractional factorial split-plot (FFSP) designs are widely used when the levels of some factors are very difficult or expensive to be changed or controlled. The factors of an FFSP design are divided into two groups, the whole plot (WP) and subplot factors. Under the circumstances that the experimenter has some prior information about the significance of the WP factors, the paper gives a new optimal criterion for selecting designs, that is, the minimum aberration of type WP (WP-MA). Construction of optimal fractional factorial split-plot designs with respect to the WP-MA criterion is considered. The WP-MA FFSP designs with 8, 16, and 32 runs are tabulated. Highlights • This paper proposes a new optimal criterion for selecting split-plot designs. • Some theoretical results of design construction for small fractions are provided. • The optimal fractional factorial split-plot designs with 8, 16, and 32 runs are tabulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of librarians in United States as information professionals to ensure the understanding of the value of employing a fact-based criterion for evaluating resources. Topics include disregard for facts in news and by political leaders in the U.S. , the use of information literacy in providing us with diverse perspective to work within academic communities, and the combination of information literacy and archiving.

Many of us think we have agent‐centred options to act suboptimally. Some of these involve favouring our own interests. Others involve sacrificing them. In this paper, I explore three different ways to accommodate agent‐centred options in a criterion of objective permissibility. I argue against satisficing and rational pluralism and in favour of a principle built around sensitivity to personal cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We provide a comparative study for dynamic programming multilevel image thresholding using Otsu criterion. • 2.45x is obtained compared with state-of-the-art-algorithm. • Different data sets from different application are used to assess the performance. Abstract Multi-level thresholding of a gray image is one of the basic operations in computer vision, with applications in image enhancement and segmentation. Various criteria for the selection of threshold level values were proposed. One of these criterion is the Otsu criterion that uses maximization of between-class variance approach. Although applying multi-level thresholding to an image is a straightforward operation, computation of the threshold levels with Otsu criterion is a computationally expensive process. In this paper, we revisit a dynamic programming algorithm that provides exact and efficient solution to the problem and compare it with modern meta-heuristic algorithms. We provide a rigorous proof for the correctness of the algorithm. The algorithm computational cost is linear in the number of threshold levels. We compare the algorithm with state of the art algorithms and verify its superior performance. The experiments show that we could gain speedup up to 2.45 ×. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates children's information search behaviour to learn about their search characteristics. The study uses a qualitative approach by observing and noting children's searching process. A total of 30 children aged 7-9 years participated in this study. The unobtrusive observation of children's searching process via the Web were recorded using Camtasia software. Probing interviews were used to gather understanding on how the children perceive information trustworthiness. The data was analysed using a thematic coding approach. The findings highlighted two main characteristics of children's search: Credible Searcher and Convenience Searcher. The children in general could gauge information trustworthiness and have confidence with regard to the relevance, reliability and the credibility of resources. The children do not consider source reputation and currency as an important criterion when seeking information. This study contributes to a better understanding of information trustworthiness as reflected in young children's information seeking and processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes to explicate theoretical equivalence by supplementing formal equivalence criteria with preservation conditions concerning interpretation. I argue that both the internal structure of models and choices of morphisms are aspects of formalisms that are relevant when it comes to their interpretation. Hence, a formal criterion suitable for being supplemented with preservation conditions concerning interpretation should take these two aspects into account. The two currently most important criteria—generalized definitional equivalence (Morita equivalence) and categorical equivalence—are not optimal in this respect. I put forward a criterion that takes both aspects into account: the criterion of definable categorical equivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bringing together probabilistic persuasion theory and semantic network models, past research introduced the number and strength of direct connections in a semantic network as a theory-based criterion of argument quality. In two experiments, the present research provides evidence that this argument quality criterion also increases persuasion in decision-making contexts. Experiment 1 revealed that highly central attributes—embedded in advertising arguments advocating for choice of a focal product—were more persuasive, increased choice confidence, and were perceived as better arguments than attributes low in centrality. Experiment 2 nearly mirrored Experiment 1 by revealing main effects of attribute centrality on respondent choice behavior and perceived argument quality. In addition, an interaction effect of centrality and age on participant choice latencies was observed. In comparison to other age brackets, young adult participants had significantly lower choice latencies when choices were based on highly central attributes as opposed to lowly central attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By reviewing previous studies on pronunciation rating scale in second language pronunciation assessment, this article aims to summarize research gaps and weaknesses so as to contribute to the pronunciation rating scale research and development. Several research topics concerning construct, criterion, descriptor, scale length, scale format and scale users and suggestions with regard to participants, data collection methods and data analysis methods are provided for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract A perfect combination of fact-based and value-based judgments is what multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) issues pursue. Tolerability constraints, an important part of value-based judgments, are easily observable and have drawn attention in theory. However, their practical applications in the MCDM process are still in their infancy. This paper aims to fill the gap between theory and application. A framework for tolerability constraints in the context of non-independent criteria is proposed and operated for the first time. In this framework, global tolerability constraints on the overall decision-making process and local constraints on a single criterion are considered at the same time. Furthermore, mandatory/ sufficient requirements are regarded as different aspects of tolerability constraints. Two cases are given to illustrate the application of the proposed framework. In short, the proposed framework deepens the understanding of MCDM issues and extends its application, especially with respect to tolerability requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The purchasing process consists of multiple, non-isolated phases that describe the interactions between consumers and products. One of these phases is the evaluation of alternatives, in which the consumer compares the benefits that will be obtained from each product or service depending on a set of criteria. Recently, the rise of online ecosystems has fueled the development of new purchasing-decision prediction models (PDPM) based on the shared opinions, concerns, and expectations of customers. Commonly, these PDPMs are constructed as multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods, where experts ascertain the consumer's purchasing criteria, as well as the importance of them, by means of surveys and their own experience. Although relying on experts may be appropriate for identifying criteria, this approach is not suitable for assessing the importance of said criteria due to the large volume of information available on the Web. Furthermore, the preferences of consumers in online ecosystems evolve constantly. In this regard, we consider that the information about purchase-criteria importance should be derived exclusively from the opinions of consumers. However, the attitude and thought-process leading to purchases contain inherent relationships that consumers are not able to express explicitly; consequently, we explore the possibility to make use of the synergies between criteria along user preferences. This paper proposes a new PDPM that estimates the importance of the criteria and values the alternatives by only considering the opinions expressed by consumers in digital ecosystems, while using an expert-defined set of criteria. The proposed approach extracts the weights of both criteria and alternatives and determines the implicit synergies within them without the need of additional input. Lastly, it uses the Choquet integral for weight and valuation aggregation and determines a purchase ranking. This model has been tested in real examples, obtaining satisfactory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • This paper applies a recent concept, namely the concept of stratification. • The dynamicity of the decision environment when a decision is made is considered. • The method mimics the brain's decision making process and has the potential for future applications in artificial intelligence. • The method will be useful to researchers who are applying different MCDM methods. Abstract Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods generally require the decision maker to evaluate alternatives with respect to decision criteria and also to assign importance weightings to the criteria. Then, based on the assigned weightings, the best alternative can be selected. However, after a decision is made it often happens that the decision maker becomes doubtful whether the right weightings have been assigned to the criteria given that a variety of eventualities may occur in the near future. The main aim of this paper is to address this concern and improve the application of MCDM methods by addressing possible fluctuations in the criteria weightings. The recently proposed concept of stratification (CST) is used in conjunction with MCDM methods to stratify the decision environment. The method is then applied to a supplier selection problem. The stratified MCDM (SMCDM) approach is in its early stages only and requires further research to reach its maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building secondary models that describe the growth rate as a function of multiple environmental conditions is often very labour intensive and costly. As such, the current research aims to assist in decreasing the required experimental effort by studying the efficacy of both design of experiments (DOE) and optimal experimental designs (OED) techniques. This is the first research in predictive microbiology (i) to make a comparison of these techniques based on the (relative) model prediction uncertainty of the obtained models and (ii) to compare OED criteria for the design of experiments with static (instead of dynamic) environmental conditions. A comparison of the DOE techniques demonstrated that the inscribed central composite design and full factorial design were most suitable. Five conventional and two tailor made OED criteria were tested. The commonly used D-criterion performed best out of the conventional designs and almost equally well as the best of the dedicated criteria. Moreover, the modelling results of the D-criterion were less dependent on the experimental variability and differences in the microbial response than the two selected DOE techniques. Finally, it was proven that solving the optimisation of the D-criterion can be made more efficient by considering the sensitivities of the growth rate relative to its value as Jacobian matrix instead of the sensitivities of the cell density measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

M-estimation is a widely used technique for robust statistical inference. In this paper, we study model selection and model averaging for M-estimation to simultaneously improve the coverage probability of confidence intervals of the parameters of interest and reduce the impact of heavy-tailed errors or outliers in the response. Under general conditions, we develop robust versions of the focused information criterion and a frequentist model average estimator for M-estimation, and we examine their theoretical properties. In addition, we carry out extensive simulation studies as well as two real examples to assess the performance of our new procedure, and find that the proposed method produces satisfactory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study finds that framing, i.e., priming different decision criteria, influences evaluation outcomes for both expert and novice consumers when the alternatives are noncomparable and influences evaluation outcomes for novices when the alternatives are comparable. The ready availability of a decision criterion, as opposed to the lack of one, also alters consumers' cognitive responses for noncomparable sets to make these responses appear more like cognitive responses typical of comparable sets. One fundamental distinction between sets of noncomparable and comparable alternatives may be the ready availability of decision criteria versus the need to construct them, rather than any inherent differences in category types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops and tests a model of voter behavior in a primary election. The model integrates several schools of thought that have tried to explain voter behavior; it is tested by predicting the behavior of respondents based on the model, and then validating the results with the actual behavior of the respondents. Results obtained here provide a prediction rate of 90 percent correctly classified. The article then compares the explanatory and predictive power of the model to models that use demographic and political involvement data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The examination of individual differences in consumer information processing is an emerging area of research within both marketing and consumer behavior. In this article, we report on two studies that focus on ability versus preference for imaginal or visual processing. The first study assesses the psychometric properties of frequently used measures of imaginal processing ability and preference; the study's results were somewhat supportive of the two ability measures but not supportive of the preference measure. The second study proposes and tests a new measure of processing preference--the Style of Processing (SOP) scale--which exhibits internal consistency as well as discriminant and criterion validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An investigation was undertaken to empirically document effect sizes (i.e., the strength of a relationship or the magnitude of a difference between variables) in consumer behavior experiments reported in the literature during the period 1970-1982. A total of 118 experiments and 1,036 experimental effects was analyzed. Using as a measure of effect size, the investigation's results reveal that, on average, approximately 11 percent of the variance in a response variable was explained or accounted for by a statistically significant (p 0.05) effect. This percentage, however, differed as a function of the methodological characteristics of the experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze stochastic dominance (SD) rules for truncated normal distributions, symmetrically truncated at least in the lower tail. This allows us to use distributions which conform to the limited liability condition of real life situations. We show that the SD rule reduces to an intuitively appealing rule that also provides a theoretical rationale for Baumol's mean-confidence limit criterion. We analyze the preference between two risky options having truncated normal distributions. We contrast the results with the preference that would obtain without truncation, employing in the analysis stochastic dominance (hereafter SD) decision rules well known in the finance and economic literature. We note that if two distributions F and G intersect only once and F crosses G from below, then second order SD (SSD) is equivalent to the condition E[sub F](x) ≥ E[sub G](x). Also, if F and G are normally distributed, then SSD and M-V are equivalent. (For proof and review of all these rules, see Kroll and Levy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model of work attitudes, distinguishing between normative and instrumental processes as behavioral determinants, serves as the framework within which commitment is conceptualized. Commitment is defined as the totality of internalized normative pressures to act in a way that meets organizational interests. Organizational identification and generalized values of loyalty and duty are viewed as its immediate determinants. Thus commitment can be influenced by both personal predispositions and organizational interventions. The role of recruitment, selection, and socialization in affecting members' commitment is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]