Journal publications of Ph.D. graduates from American criminology and criminal justice programs

This article assesses the quality of 12 American doctoral programs by counting the number of publications of their Ph.D. graduates in a large number of criminology and criminal justice journals, and in 20 more “academic” journals. While half of the Ph.D. graduates had no publications, the 4 percent who were the most productive (the “stars”) accounted for one third of all journal articles. Publication rates up to graduation predicted publication rates after graduation. The University of Maryland, Michigan State University, the University of California at Irvine, Florida State University, and Sam Houston State University had the most productive Ph.D. graduates in academic journals. There was a significant correlation between the productivity of a program's Ph.D. graduates and the productivity of its faculty members. The academic publication rate was influenced most by prevalence (the percentage of Ph.D.s with at least one publication), rather than by the percentage of “stars” or the frequency of publications.     

Examining the Validity of Standards-Based Assessments for Initially Fluent Students and Former English Language Learners

To date, assessment validity research on non-native English speaking students in the United States has focused exclusively on those who are presently English language learners (ELLs). However, little, if any, research has been conducted on two other sizable groups of language minority students: (a) bilingual or multilingual students who were already English proficient when they entered the school system (IFEPs), and (b) former English language learners, those students who were once classified as ELLs but are now reclassified as being English proficient (RFEPs). This study investigated the validity of several standards-based assessments in mathematics and science for these two student groups and found a very high degree of score comparability, when compared with native English speakers, for the IFEPs, whereas a moderate to high degree of score comparability was observed for the RFEPs. Thus, test scores for these two groups on the assessments we studied appear to be valid indicators of their content knowledge, to a degree similar to that of native English speakers.     

Applying user analytics to uses and effects of social media in China

ABSTRACT

We introduce what user analytics can do in the first half of the paper and then illustrate how to do user analytics in the second half. In the current context, user analytics refers to a set of diverse communication research methods on uses and effects of social media. User analytics has evolved from TV ratings research to online user research. The history illustrates what data sources, measures, and analyses can be used for what types of research questions under user analytics. We discuss the similarities of and differences between user analytics and other methods of computational communication research (e.g. content mining and online experiments), and compare the strengths and weaknesses of user analytics with traditional quantitative methods (e.g. survey). Finally, we present an application study of Chinese bloggers to demonstrate how to employ user analytics methods to study the production, consumption, and effects of user-generated content.     

Conviviality as a politics of endurance: the refugee emergency and the consolations of artistic intervention

ABSTRACT

Against the impasse of despair in the public response to the refugee emergency, artistic interventions emerge to offer fleeting significant opportunities for restorative and reparative action. This article takes up conviviality as a conceptual tool to understand artistic interventions to the forced migration and asylum issues that variably aim for healing, empathy, and reflexivity. Drawing on comparative research consisting of interviews of artists in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States and textual analyses of their performances, we discuss specific motivations and diverse representational practices that aim to enact togetherness-in-difference. We discuss the potentials and risks of convivial artistic productions, which we argue produce a politics of endurance that, as Feldman has said, helps “people live better with circumstances they cannot change.”