Premathematical concepts

Margaret A. King teaches early childhood education     

Performing arts as a club good: Evidence from a nonprofit organization

This paper combines perspectives on nonprofit organizations, clubs and club goods, demand for performing arts, and demand for charitable contributions to consider relationships between nonprofit organizations in the performing arts and their patrons. A broad view is taken of factors influencing demand for club goods, charitable donations, and for the live performing arts. These are integrated in a model of demand for the outputs and services of nonprofits in the performing arts. Data from a single institution is used to test hypotheses. Conclusions are drawn for organizational policy and economic theory.     

Some correlates of culture shock among American tourists in Africa

The effects on culture shock of prior travel experience, feelings of internal/external control, and intolerance of ambiguity were examined in American tourists to Africa. Participants, 42 members of a university sponsored six week tour of East Africa, ranged widely in age and prior travel experience. Hostility toward Africans, withdrawal from cross cultural contact, and overidentification with America were assessed with ratings by tour leaders and by participant self reports. Prior travel experience does not correlate significantly with culture shock, a finding confounded in this study by age. Older tourists had more prior travel but also experienced greater culture shock. Those less tolerant of ambiguity experienced greater culture shock. Internal/external control feelings did not correlate significantly with culture shock. Combining personality and prior travel in multiple regression did not significantly improve prediction of any of the culture shock manifestations over that of the best single predictor. Results are discussed primarily in terms of differences between the cross cultural experience of tourists and that of other groups in which culture shock has been studied.     

Early Home Activities and Oral Language Skills in Middle Childhood: A Quantile Analysis

Oral language development is a key outcome of elementary school, and it is important to identify factors that predict it most effectively. Commonly researchers use ordinary least squares regression with conclusions restricted to average performance conditional on relevant covariates. Quantile regression offers a more sophisticated alternative. Using data of 17,687 children from the United Kingdom's Millennium Cohort Study, we compared ordinary least squares and quantile models with language development (verbal similarities) at 11 years as the outcome. Gender had more of an effect at the top of the distribution, whereas poverty, early language, and reading to the child had a greater effect at the bottom. The picture for TV watching was more mixed. The results are discussed in terms of the provision of universal and targeted interventions.     

Reading behaviour and electronic journals

Studies from 1977 through 2001 demonstrate that scientists continue to read widely from scholarly journals. Reading of scholarly articles has increased to approximately 120–130 articles per person per year, with engineers reading fewer journal articles on the average and medical faculty reading more. A growing proportion of these readings come from e-prints and other separate copies. Most scientists in a discipline now use electronic journals at least part of the time, with considerable variations among disciplines. Evidence suggests that scientists are reading from a broader range of journals than in the past, influenced by timely electronic publishing and by growth in bibliographic searching and interpersonal communication as means of identifying and locating articles. Although the scholarly journals system has changed dramatically in the past few decades, it is evident that the value scientists place on the information found in scholarly journal articles, whether electronic or print, remains high.