Editors' Perspectives on Current Topics in Serials

Periodical Radio is a podcast interview program with the editors of journals and magazines. This article presents editors' diverse perspectives on topics including title changes, peer review, Open Access, the business of sustaining magazines, and the future of print versions of periodicals.     

Perceived Health Outcomes of Recreation Scale (PHORS): Reliability,Validity and Invariance

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Perceived Health Outcomes of Recreation Scale (PHORS). Data for PHORS were collected from three different trail sites (Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and First Landing State Park) during three separate time periods, allowing for cross-validation and invariance testing. Exploratory factor analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, and invariance testing procedures were conducted. The results indicate that PHORS, with 13 items across three underlying factors, showed high reliability and strong evidences of validity. Full configural and metric invariance indicated the factor loading pattern. The measurement properties of PHORS were generally invariant across recreation participants using different trails, situating PHORS as a potential instrument that can be used in various outdoor recreation trail settings.     

Teachers’ Perceptions of Appraiser–Appraisee Relationships

Teacher appraisal procedures may lead to formative (teacher development and improvement of teaching) and summative (managerial decision) outcomes. Elementary school teachers in Hong Kong (N=527) responded to survey items on formative outcomes, summative outcomes, perceived purposes of appraisal, overall effectiveness of appraisal, and summative purposes such as promotion and dismissal of staff. Principal components analysis and confirmatory factor analysis yielded the two a priori outcome factors, each of which was significantly correlated with perceived overall effectiveness of appraisal. Analysis of variance found that senior teachers appraised by the school principal (SP) perceived that appraisal had formative purposes and this perception was stronger than for those teachers appraised by senior staff (TS). Teachers in the TS group did not perceive the importance of the promotion purpose as did the other groups. Teachers appraised by the principal (TP) perceived that appraisal had dismissal purposes whereas teachers in the TS group did not. Although the three groups did not differ in their perceptions of formative outcomes, summative outcomes, or overall effectiveness of teacher appraisal, the appraiser-appraisee combination did make a significant difference in teacher perceptions of the purposes and appropriateness of the appraisal.     

Perceptions of Play Therapy in Taiwan: The Voices of School Counselors and Counselor Educators

The current status of play therapy in the elementary schools of Taiwan was investigated in relation to its compatibility with Chinese culture and its potential for wider societal adoption. Seven participants, four counselor educators and three elementary school counselors, in West Taiwan participated in this phenomenological qualitative inquiry. Seven assertions emerged from the interviewing data, implying that the potential for adopting play therapy in Taiwanese school counseling is embedded in the society. However, there are insufficient facilities and a lack of play therapy resources. Further investigation of the infrastructure in school counseling is necessary. Suggestions for practice and research regarding the development of play therapy and child counseling are presented.     

Discrete-time nonlinear observer design with general criteria

A class of discrete-time nonlinear system and measurement equations having incrementally conic nonlinearities and finite energy disturbances is considered. A linear matrix inequality-based design approach is presented, which guarantees the satisfaction of a variety of performance criteria ranging from simple estimation error boundedness to dissipativity. Some simulation examples are included to illustrate and provide support to the proposed design methodology.     

R&D price indexes and real R&D expenditures in the United States

The rate of inflation in R&D is very difficult to measure. The official government statistics in the United States use the GNP deflator to deflate R&D expenditures. Little is known about the extent to which price indexes for R and D inputs, if they were constructed in various industries, would differ from the GNP deflator. This paper reports the findings of a study that attempts to fill this important gap. Laspeyres price indexes are presented both for R and D inputs and for inputs used in other stages of the innovation process. Also, price indexes for R and D inputs are constructed, assuming that the relevant production function is Cobb-Douglas. On the basis of the results, we estimate the extent and direction of the errors in the official R&D statistics due to the use of the GNP deflator.Our findings, based on detailed data obtained from firms accounting for about one-ninth of all company-financed R&D in the U.S., indicate that the GNP deflator underestimated the rate of price increase for R&D inputs during 1969–1979 in practically every industry we studied. The bulk of the apparent increase in real R&D in these industries (which was relatively modest in any event) seems to have been due to the inadequacies of the GNP deflator. One important moral seems to be that more attention and resources should be devoted to the construction of better price indexes for R&D.