Social media communication strategies of government agencies: Twitter use in Korea and the USA

This study examines Twitter use by the central government in Korea and the federal government in the USA by employing the webometric technique to extract their Twitter activity (basic Twitter statistics such as the numbers of followers, followings, and Tweets) and the social network analysis technique to map the relationship between their Twitter accounts and the direction of outlinks in their Tweets. The results of the initial analysis indicate some differences in Twitter strategies between the two governments. For example, Korean ministries were well connected through a dense network, engaged in collective cooperation, and retweeted common content to reinforce their collective agendas regardless of their main administrative functions, whereas US government departments were less collective and more individualistic and retweeted those messages that specifically fit the purpose of each department. In addition, the results for outlinks indicate that US government departments preferred private sources of information, whereas Korean ministries, government sources.     

Training Orthographic and Sentence Structures Helps Poor Readers in Chinese

We trained 36 12-year-old Chinese students with reading disorders in the analysis, synthesis and integration of orthographic constituents of semantic and phonetic bujians (radicals); and also their writing (spelling and composing) skills. These target students were compared with 37 age-controls in a pre-test and post-test design on a number of reading literacy indicators predicated on the “Blueprint of the Reader”. The tasks were: essay writing; morphological compounding; correction of errors; segmentation; text comprehension; fluency; copying of words, and of texts; writing to dictation; and reading aloud words and text. A promax oblique structure analysis of the performance of the 73 students found the tasks clustered into four components. A two (group) × 11 (tasks) multivariate analysis of covariance with the pre-training tasks as covariates followed by analyses of variance showed that the experimental students outperformed their age-peers in essay writing, morphological compounding, correction of errors, text comprehension and reading text aloud. They were also highly satisfied with their training as shown in a questionnaire survey.     

Attempting to predict success in the qualifying round of the International Chemistry Olympiad

The aim of this study was trying to predict success in the qualifying round for the International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) on the basis of the expectancy-value model of achievement motivation by Eccles et al. The investigation with 52 participants, including 14 females, was conducted during the third of four qualifying rounds of the IChO in Germany. The subjects filled in a questionnaire, took an intelligence test, and participated in two theoretical chemistry exams. Male and female Olympians showed large differences in parental support, motivation, and emotion as well as test performance. Ultimately, only one female participant qualified for the fourth round of the IChO. The model of Eccles et al. was well suited for predicting test performance in the competition. The strongest predictor was found to be the participation in a previous IChO. The implications for reducing gender differences and promoting scientifically talented students are discussed.