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Skeptics of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trend for International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) argue that while US elementary and high school students are behind their peers in other nations, the US workforce is still excellent because of the high quality post-secondary educational institutions in the US. However, the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) indicates that US adults are in fact far behind their international peers in literacy, numeracy, and technology-based problem solving. Through the use of data mining, this study explored the possible association between PIAAC scores and several constructs. Since the US, Canada, and New Zealand were considered culturally similar nations, according to cluster analysis, patterns between PIAAC scores and selected constructs were analyzed by a variety of big data analytical methods, including cluster analysis, bootstrap forest, boosted tree, and data visualization. Given that PIAAC used multiple computerized adaptive testing, the consequential plausible values were randomly selected when the ensemble approach was used. Additionally, model comparison was utilized to decide between bagging and boosting in order to select the optimal model for each sample. In these samples, cultural engagement, readiness to learn, and social trust, respectively emerged as strong predictors for learning outcomes as they were assessed by PIAAC.

Big data analytics are prevalent in fields like business, engineering, public health, and the physical sciences, but social scientists are slower than their peers in other fields in adopting this new methodology. One major reason for this is that traditional statistical procedures are typically not suitable for the analysis of large and complex data sets. Although data mining techniques could alleviate this problem, it is often unclear to social science researchers which option is the most suitable one to a particular research problem. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate how the model comparison of two popular ensemble methods, namely, boosting and bagging, could yield an improved explanatory model.

Two experiments assessed how racial ambiguity and racial salience moderates the cross-race effect (CRE). In experiment 1, White and Black participants studied and identified the race of Asian, Black, Latino, and White faces that varied in ethnic typicality (high or low ET). For White participants, the CRE was larger when comparing high-ET White faces to high-ET other-race faces than low-ET other-race faces. Black participants showed a similar CRE reduction by ethnic typicality, but also showed a less prevalent CRE than White participants. Experiment 2 replicated experiment 1 procedures, but without the race identification task and only with White participants. Experiment 2 findings were comparable to experiment 1. Furthermore, experiment 2 showed a noticeably smaller CRE on Black faces than experiment 1, eliciting questions about increased racial salience amplifying the CRE. Results' general implications and the conceptual roots that indirectly link the CRE and racism will be discussed.

I. Introduction II. Sexual Harassment as a Form of Sex Discrimination III. An Implied Private Right of Action under Title IX A. Judicially Created Private Right of Action & Available [...]

Using Spanish-English bilingual Latino-Americans, this studytested whether priming Latino or American culturalrepresentations facilitated the accessibility of the Spanishmeaning or English meaning of Spanish-English homographs.Seventy-four participants were randomly assigned to a Latinoprime, American prime, or no prime condition. After beingprimed, subjects performed an English lexical decision taskwherein they indicated whether a letter string formed anEnglish word. Homographs, English controls, and non-wordswere included in the array. As predicted, there was asignificant prime condition by word type interaction, F(2,70)= 5.48, p= .006, partial eta squared = .136, suggesting thatprime condition modulated reaction times to homographs.Planned contrasts showed that participants in the Latino primecondition had slower reaction times to homographs thanEnglish controls, F(1, 22)= 4.84, p= .039, partial eta squared= .180, suggesting that the Latino prime facilitated access tohomographs’ Spanish meaning.

Secular scholars have criticized Christian education and counseling on sex as restrictive, ineffective, and outdated. The authors of the current study explored both common non-Christian and Christian approaches to human sexuality with reference to overarching domains of religion, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Secular approaches were classified as the "inward approach," the "spatial approach," and the "temporal approach", whereas Christian approaches were categorized as the "traditional" and the "modern" perspectives. Although Christian faith can be signified as a protective factor against casual and risky sexual behaviors, traditional Christian values should be reevaluated in favor of comprehensive Christian approaches to sexuality, which embrace sexual desires as divine gifts for completeness of humanity.