Making sound decisions: A framework for judging the worth of your data

In our daily lives, we encounter decision points on a continuous basis. To maximize the likelihood of successful decisions, organizational members must draw on relevant, reliable, valid, and complete data. Sometimes copious data are available, but an overabundance can make it difficult to judge the worth of the data. This article presents a data evaluation framework that provides guidance for decision makers to evaluate and determine the potential effectiveness of the data they will use to inform their decisions.     

Aspirations of Indian inventors moderated by patenting experience,age and sector

In this hyper-competitive era, patents are an essential input to realizing sustainable competitive advantage. However, individual differences exist in patenting filing behavior and behaviors related to commercialization of patents. This study explores these behaviors in the context of three demographic variables. The demographic variables are patenting and commercialization experiences of inventors, age and sector. Further, aspirations of these inventors are assessed using external motivators of wealth, fame, and concern for societal welfare, and internal motivators such as pragmatism. The findings of this empirical study (n = 116) suggest that sector and age determine differences in personal internal motivators more than patent commercialization experience. Implications of the study are discussed.     

Infants' attention to patterned stimuli: developmental change from 3 to 12 months of age

To examine the development of look duration as a function of age and stimulus type, 14- to 52-week-old infants were shown static and dynamic versions of faces, Sesame Street material, and achromatic patterns for 20 s of accumulated looking. Heart rate was recorded during looking and parsed into stimulus orienting, sustained attention, and attention termination phases. Infants' peak look durations indicated that prior to 26 weeks there was a linear decrease with age for all stimuli. Older infants' look durations continued to decline for patterns but increased for Sesame Street and faces. Measures of heart rate change during sustained attention and the proportion of time spent in each phase of attention confirmed infants' greater engagement with the more complex stimuli.     

Demographic characteristics and rates of progress of deaf and hard of hearing persons receiving substance abuse treatment

A lack of demographic information and data related to the achievement of short-term goals during substance abuse treatment among persons who are deaf or hard of hearing dictated the need for the study. New York State maintains a database on all individuals who participate in treatment. Within this database, 1.8% of persons in treatment for substance use disorder (SUD) were also deaf or hard of hearing. As hypothesized, members of the deaf and hard of hearing sample were older, likelier to be white, and likelier to be female, relative to the SUD-only group. For both groups, alcohol, heroin, and cocaine had the highest rates of reported use. Achievement of short-term goals in the areas of alcohol use, drug use, vocational/educational goals, and overall goals indicated no differences between the deaf and hard of hearing group and the SUD-only group. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Stability, change, and correlates of the peer relationships of young children with mild developmental delays

The peer relationships of young children with mild developmental (cognitive) delays recruited at 4-6 years of age were examined in a longitudinal study across a 2-year period. Results revealed only modest increases in children's peer interactions, a high degree of intraindividual stability, and the existence of a poorly organized and conflict-prone pattern of peer interactions. Child cognitive and language levels as well as family stress and support were associated with children's peer interactions. A subgroup was identified of initially low interactors who were at especially high risk for future peer interaction problems. These findings further underscore the importance of designing and implementing early intervention programs in the area of peer relationships for children with mild developmental delays.     

Middle‐class struggle? Identity‐work and leisure among sixth formers in the United Kingdom

This paper explores the ways in which sixth‐form students in Milton Keynes negotiate their identities and the symbolic significance they attach to leisure activities in the process of doing this. The paper draws upon qualitative, young‐person‐centred interviews with sixth formers in state and private schools. We address the investments of sixth formers in constructing themselves as autonomous individuals and argue that they do so from a position of middle‐class subjects‐in‐the‐making. Through an inversion of Willis’ (1977 Willis, P. 1977. Learning to labour, Aldershot: Gower.  [Google Scholar]) (focus, our concern is to make explicit the implicitly middle‐class identities sixth formers were forging. We argue that the identity‐work of sixth formers plays a part in the reproduction of school‐based class inequalities by pathologising working‐class students while constructing themselves as bourgeois liberal individuals.