Cultural Connections and Disconnections Between Non-Hmong Principals and Hmong Parents

The purpose of the authors in this qualitative research is to explore cultural connections and disconnections between non-Hmong principals and Hmong parents. The results show that cultural disconnections occur because of the lack of culturally sensitive professional development for teachers and principals, and the lack of understanding of Hmong cultural values and beliefs, especially when it comes to parental involvement.     

Boundary-Work in the Health Research Field: Biomedical and Clinician Scientists’ Perceptions of Social Science Research

Funding agencies in Canada are attempting to break down the organizational boundaries between disciplines to promote interdisciplinary research and foster the integration of the social sciences into the health research field. This paper explores the extent to which biomedical and clinician scientists’ perceptions of social science research operate as a cultural boundary to the inclusion of social scientists into this field. Results indicated that cultural boundaries may impede social scientists’ entry into the health research field through three modalities: (1) biomedical and clinician scientists’ unfavourable and ambivalent posture towards social science research; (2) their opposition to a resource increase for the social sciences; and (3) clinician scientists procedural assessment criteria for social science. The paper also discusses the merits and limitations of Tom Gieryn’s concept of boundary-work for studying social dynamics within the field of science.

‘We Have to Go Where the Money Is’—Dilemmas in the Role of Nutrition Scientists: An Interview Study

In Western societies scientists are increasingly expected to seek media exposure and cooperate with industry. Little attention has been given to the way such expectations affect the role of scientific experts in society. To investigate scientists’ own perspectives on these issues eight exploratory, in-depth interviews were conducted in Denmark with reputable nutrition scientists. Additionally, eight interviews were held with ‘key informants’ from the field of nutrition policy. It was found that nutrition scientists experience two dilemmas: first, between their aspiration to make a collective impact on public health and the powerful incentives of each to appear frequently in the media with new messages; second, between their need to cooperate with the food industry for financial reasons and their fear that this may compromise their independence and scientific integrity. It is argued that the dilemmas identified in this study should be dealt with openly by the relevant groups of scientists.     

How to be Real and Conventional: A Discussion of the Quality Criteria of Official Statistics

Are the categories used to study the social world and acting on it “real” or “conventional”? An empirical answer to that question is given by an analysis of the debates about the “quality” of statistics produced by the European National Institues of statistics in the 1990s. Six criteria of quality were then specified: relevance, accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, comparability and coherence. How do statisticians and users of statistics deal with the tension produced by their objects being both “real” (they exist before their measurement) and “conventionally constructed” (they are in a way, created by these conventions)? In particular, the technical and sociological distinction between the criteria of relevance and accuracy implies a realistic interpretation, desired by users, but that is nonetheless problematic.     

Rethinking Polanyi’s Concept of Tacit Knowledge: From Personal Knowing to Imagined Institutions

Half a century after Michael Polanyi conceptualised ‘the tacit component’ in personal knowing, management studies has reinvented ‘tacit knowledge’—albeit in ways that squander the advantages of Polanyi’s insights and ignore his faith in ‘spiritual reality’. While tacit knowing challenged the absurdities of sheer objectivity, expressed in a ‘perfect language’, it fused rational knowing, based on personal experience, with mystical speculation about an un-experienced ‘external reality’. Faith alone saved Polanyi’s model from solipsism. But Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism provides scope to rethink personal tacit knowing with regard to ‘other people’ and the intersubjectively viable construction of ‘experiential reality’. By separating tacit knowing from Polanyi’s metaphysical realism and drawing on Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’, it is possible to conceptualise ‘imagined institutions’ as the tacit dimension of power that shapes human interaction. Whereas Douglass North claimed institutions could be reduced to rules, imagined institutions are known in ways we cannot tell.     

Towards a Culture of Application: Science and Decision Making at the National Institute of Standards &; Technology

How does the research performed by a government mission agency contribute to useable technologies for its constituents? Is it possible to incorporate science policy mechanisms for increasing benefits to users in the decision process? The United States National Institute of Standards &; Technology (NIST) promises research directed towards industrial application. This paper considers the processes that produce science and technology at NIST. The institute’s policies for science provide robust examples for how effective science policies can contribute to the emergence of useful technologies. To progress towards technologies that can be years away, the agency uses several means for integrating the needs of eventual information users into the prioritization process. To accomplish this, NIST units, such as the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory, incorporate mechanisms for considering user need and project impact into different stages of its scientific decision processes. This, and other specific strategies that the agency utilizes for connecting the supply of science to information demand, provide lessons for generating useable science.     

Broadway productions and the value of a Tony Award

This article investigates the effect of a Tony nomination or win on the demand facing a Broadway production using a panel of weekly revenues for Broadway productions from 1996 to 2007. Our results indicate that the effect of a nomination or win is positive in the week of the announcement and gradually increases in successive weeks, presumably due to publicity and word-of-mouth. Winners experience an increase in demand as late as 1 year later when awards are publicized for the following season. Moreover, nominees that do not win the award are penalized heavily in the weeks following the Award announcements. We find that winning a Tony Award increases a production’s revenues by 12% in the week immediately following the Awards.

Revealed word-of-mouth demand and adaptive supply: survival of motion pictures at the Australian box office

This study considers a frailty duration approach to modelling the life-length of a sample of 360 films that went into wide release at the Australian box office from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2005. The analysis extends previous research by considering a range of film-specific covariates relating to distribution, production, consumer signals, and weekly performance. In particular, it is shown that film success (defined in a duration context) responds to previewing, advertising, critical reviews, and US box office—but not to production budget, star power or opening-week screens. The study also reveals that it is appropriate to account for unobservable heterogeneity between films in the choice of empirical methodology.     

Authoritarianism, perceived threat and exclusionism on the eve of the Disengagement: Evidence from Gaza

Major political events such as terrorist attacks and forced relocation of citizens may have an immediate effect on attitudes towards ethnic minorities associated with these events. The psychological process that leads to political exclusionism of minority groups was examined using a field study among Israeli settlers in Gaza days prior to the Disengagement Plan adopted by the Israeli government on June 6, 2004 and enacted in August 2005. Lending credence to integrated threat theory and to theory on authoritarianism, our analyses show that the positive effect of religiosity on political exclusionism results from the two-staged mediation of authoritarianism and perceived threat. We conclude that religiosity fosters authoritarianism, which in turn tends to move people towards exclusionism both directly and through the mediation of perceived threat.     

Comparability of the WISC and the WISC-R in normal children of divergent socioeconomic backgrounds

WISC and WISC-R IQs of two groups of normal ten-year-old children from divergent socioeconomic backgrounds (N = 36) were compared in a counterbalanced research design. Generally, all WISC mean IQs were higher than the WISC-R mean IQs for both groups of children. Significantly higher WISC IQs were obtained on the Verbal and Full Scales of the low socioeconomic group and on the Performance and Full Scales of the high socioeconomic group. Correlations between tests for Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQs were.95,.79, and.91 for the low socioeconomic group, and.84,.57, and.87 for the high socioeconomic group. Although practice effects did not appear to significantly affect IQs of the low socioeconomic group, various practice effects were observed in the high socioeconomic group. Negative effects were observed for both WISC and WISC-R on the Verbal Scale, whereas positive effects were observed on both Performance and Full Scales in this group. Analysis of simple effects reveals that WISC and WISC-R IQs did not differ significantly upon first administration, but were significantly different upon second administration. Conclusions were drawn that while WISC-R yields a lower IQ estimate than WISC for children of lower ability, results were not so clear for the children of higher ability, due to practice effects which disproportionately favor increases on WISC IQs upon second administration. The greater practice effects found on the WISC have implications for comparisons of the two tests in counterbalanced research designs. Simple randomized or treatment-by-levels design may be more useful in comparisons of the WISC and the WISC-R because of the bias introduced by counterbalanced designs.