Religious engagement and attitudes to the role of religion in society: their effect on civic and social values in an Asian context

This paper explored the impact of religious engagement (religious background, religious service attendance and religious activities participation) on adolescents’ civic and social values. Attitudes towards the influence of religion on society were investigated as a possible mediator/moderator of religious engagement. A model based on Western literature was tested using a sample of over 2000 Hong Kong students. Secondary data were drawn from the International Civics and Citizenship Education Study 2009. Multi-level modelling was used to assess individual and school level effects on civic and social values. Results indicated that religious engagement exerted varied effects. Religious background showed small and negative effects on students’ civic and social values. Participation in religious services indicated a small, positive and significant effect on social but not on civic values. Participation in religious activities showed no significant effect on either social or civic values. These variables exerted a small moderating effect on social and civic values through attitudes to the influence of religion on society. The latter exerted a positive and significant effect on civic values and a negative effect on social values. These results suggested that Western models depicting the positive relationship between religious engagement and citizenship values may not hold for Asian societies.     

A retrospective study of a hybrid document-context based retrieval model

This paper describes our novel retrieval model that is based on contexts of query terms in documents (i.e., document contexts). Our model is novel because it explicitly takes into account of the document contexts instead of implicitly using the document contexts to find query expansion terms. Our model is based on simulating a user making relevance decisions, and it is a hybrid of various existing effective models and techniques. It estimates the relevance decision preference of a document context as the log-odds and uses smoothing techniques as found in language models to solve the problem of zero probabilities. It combines these estimated preferences of document contexts using different types of aggregation operators that comply with different relevance decision principles (e.g., aggregate relevance principle). Our model is evaluated using retrospective experiments (i.e., with full relevance information), because such experiments can (a) reveal the potential of our model, (b) isolate the problems of the model from those of the parameter estimation, (c) provide information about the major factors affecting the retrieval effectiveness of the model, and (d) show that whether the model obeys the probability ranking principle. Our model is promising as its mean average precision is 60–80% in our experiments using different TREC ad hoc English collections and the NTCIR-5 ad hoc Chinese collection. Our experiments showed that (a) the operators that are consistent with aggregate relevance principle were effective in combining the estimated preferences, and (b) that estimating probabilities using the contexts in the relevant documents can produce better retrieval effectiveness than using the entire relevant documents.     

P2P searching trends: 2002–2004

This paper presents the trends of searching queries by users from peer-to-peer (P2P) networks over an 18-month period from July 2002 to January 2004. Four data sets of search queries collected from Gnutella were studied to describe the searching trends. Major findings include (1) the percentage of duplicate queries ranging from 34% to 68% of total queries; (2) an increase in non-English queries; (3) an approximately half of searching queries specified for video or audio file types; (4) the stop word “the” accounting for one-third of total stop words; (5) the shift of queries from audio to video; and (6) P2P users demanding for timely entertainment and porn materials. Based on the findings, it is worthwhile for P2P developers to consider (1) system design that allows effective searching using multiple languages; and (2) techniques that eliminate stop words for faster searching.     

Indexing response to intervention: a longitudinal study of reading risk from kindergarten through third grade

In this study, response to intervention and stability of reading performance of 41 kindergarten children identified as at risk of reading difficulty were evaluated from kindergarten through third grade. All students were assessed in the fall of each academic year to evaluate need for intervention, and students who fell below the 30th percentile on criterion measures received small-group supplemental intervention. Measures included a combination of commercial normative referenced measures and specific skill and construct measures to assess growth or change in reading risk status relative to 30th percentile benchmarks. Results indicated that consistent with the findings of prior research involving students with comparable entry-level performance, the majority of children identified as at risk in the beginning of kindergarten responded early and positively to intervention. On average, absolute performance levels at the end of kindergarten positioned students for trajectories of later reading performance that exceeded the 50th percentile on the majority of measures. Moreover, changes in risk status that occurred early were generally sustained over time. Only oral reading fluency performance failed to exceed the 30th percentile for the majority of students.     

Teachers as Disempowered and Demoralised Moral Agents: School Board Management and Teachers in Hong Kong

This study argues that teachers are disempowered and demoralised moral agents. Specifically, it uses a qualitative study of Hong Kong teachers to show that teachers’ agency in the pursuit of the moral goal of education is socially disempowered. The study shows that although teachers are committed to the moral goal of education, the obstacles to attaining this goal result in demoralisation. The difficulties consist of technical disempowerment (deprivation of power over one’s labour) and cognitive disempowerment (deprivation of power to identify the instructional value of teachers’ work), which are induced by managerialist educational reforms and school administration.     

Explicating factual and subjective science knowledge: knowledge as a mediator of news attention and attitudes

Communication scholars have conflicting views on the relationship between exposure to science news and knowledge, and its subsequent influence on attitudes. Such mixed sentiments could arise from the vague definition of knowledge. Therefore, this paper explicates science knowledge into factual knowledge and subjective knowledge. It also compares the mediating roles of both types of knowledge between news attention and public support for science and technology (S&T). A survey of 967 Singaporeans showed that news attention was positively related to both factual and subjective knowledge. The findings revealed a stronger relationship between subjective knowledge and news attention than factual knowledge and news attention. Additionally, factual knowledge was positively related to public support for S&T, but subjective knowledge was negatively related to public support for S&T. The contrasting directions of these associations demonstrate that factual and subjective knowledge are two distinct dimensions of knowledge. Practically, the findings can inform policymakers and communication practitioners about effective public education and engagement initiatives. This study also provided guidelines for newsmakers in news reporting about S&T.     

Statistical extremes and peak factors in wind-induced vibration of tall buildings

In the structural design of tall buildings, peak factors have been widely used to predict mean extreme responses of tall buildings under wind excitations. Vanmarcke’s peak factor is directly related to an explicit measure of structural reliability against a Gaussian response process. We review the use of this factor for time-variant reliability design by comparing it to the conventional Davenport’s peak factor. Based on the asymptotic theory of statistical extremes, a new closed-form peak factor, the so-called Gamma peak factor, can be obtained for a non-Gaussian resultant response characterized by a Rayleigh distribution process. Using the Gamma peak factor, a combined peak factor method was developed for predicting the expected maximum resultant responses of a building undergoing lateral-torsional vibration. The effects of the standard deviation ratio of two sway components and the inter-component correlation on the evaluation of peak resultant response were also investigated. Utilizing wind tunnel data derived from synchronous multi-pressure measurements, we carried out a wind-induced time history response analysis of the Commonwealth Advisory Aeronautical Research Council (CAARC) standard tall building to validate the applicability of the Gamma peak factor to the prediction of the peak resultant acceleration. Results from the building example indicated that the use of the Gamma peak factor enables accurate predictions to be made of the mean extreme resultant acceleration responses for dynamic serviceability performance design of modern tall buildings.     

A reflective learning taxonomy for an educational tour

This study is to investigate the reflective learning in a group of secondary school students who participated in an educational tour to Liannan, which is located in a rural area in Guangdong Province, Mainland China. The specific aim is to develop a framework to describe the learning in an educational tour. For this purpose, data were collected through students?? reflective writing in daily journals and end-of-trip sharing passages, triangulated with participant observation and interviews. The data analysis involved the use of grounded theory??s constant-comparative technique??an inductive method for generating hypotheses that are grounded in data. During the analysis of the data, the types of student learning which emerged were categorized in a Reflective Learning Taxonomy for an educational tour, comprising seven levels which are developmental in nature. The interpretative framework based on such a taxonomy of reflective learning reveals the rich context of learning in an educational tour and so makes a contribution to research on learning outside the classroom.