Love Styles and Communication in Relationships: Partner Preferences,Initiation, and Intensification

The three exploratory studies reported here investigate the role of love styles in the early stages of romantic relationships. Study 1 (N = 108) had subjects rate and rank 14 characteristics of prospective romantic partners. As expected, individual's love style scores were related to the characteristics people report as desirable in a relational partner. Several of these effects, however, were moderated by sex. Study 2 (N = 173) revealed that scores on love styles were associated with ratings of opening lines and intensification strategies. None of these effects were moderated by sex. Study 3 (N = 137) investigated the association between love styles and ratings of secret tests among individuals currently involved in a romantic relationship. The results indicated that love styles were associated with ratings of secret tests. These data add to a growing body of literature suggesting that love styles are associated with individual differences in relational and communicative behavior across the life span of romantic relationships.     

Product architecture,organizational capabilities and IT integration for competitive advantage

Increasingly, firms recognize the strategic implications of front-end product design for improving total cost effectiveness. Computer-aided design (CAD) is becoming firms’ competitive weapon beyond its traditional function as a product design tool. Yet, it is unclear how the full potential of IT system, particularly the usage patterns of 3D CAD system, may be realized through organizational capabilities. This paper presents a model of IT system configurations and CAD usage patterns. Next, a typology of IT system configurations is presented based on (1) the degree of CAD integration between assembly makers and suppliers and (2) the structure of product design information (i.e., product architecture). The product architecture of four electronic firms illustrates that information integration through organizational capabilities is more important than IT investment itself. The findings suggest that a Korean firm accomplishes a greater level of IT integration compared to the other two Japanese firms and thus attain better market performance. This study offers valuable insight on effective IT integration strategy for competitive advantage in the global market.     

Children's experience of violence in China and Korea: a transcultural study

OBJECTIVE: There were two aims: First, to compare children's rates of being battered in home, by peers, and by teachers among students between China and Korea, and second, to identify particular risk factors for such violence. METHODS: Children in grades four through six in Shanghai (238 cases) and Yanji (245 cases) in China and Seoul (248 cases) and Kimpo (241 cases) in Korea were surveyed by questionnaire method. They were asked to complete the Straus' Conflict Tactics Scale and their frequencies in the three situations respectively, and other demographic items. RESULTS: Family violence during the last 1 year was experienced in 70.6% (minor 42.2%; serious 22.6%) of the children in China and 68.9% (minor 9.4%; serious 51.3%) of those in Korea. Experience rates of violence by peers were 42.7% (minor 25.7%; serious 13.7%) in China and 26.0% (minor 11.5%; serious 14.3%) in Korea. Finally, rates of corporal punishment by teachers were 51.1% (minor 28.0%; serious 4.1%) in China and 62.0% (minor 8.8%; serious 43.8%) in Korea. The most important and common risk factor for violence in one situation was the presence of violence in another situation. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that the differences in children's overall experience rates were not particularly striking. However, Korean children experienced more severe forms of violence from family members and from teachers. Findings of risk factors clearly imply that there are children vulnerable to violence from multiple sources.     

Stabilizability of complex complex-valued memristive neural networks using non-fragile sampled-data control

This paper investigates the stability and stabilizability of complex-valued memristive neural networks (CVMNNs) with random time-varying delays via non-fragile sampled-data control. Taking the influence of gain fluctuations into account, a non-fragile sampled-data controller is designed for CVMNNs. Compared with the existing control schemes, the one here is more applicable and can effectively save the communication resources. The assumption on activation functions of CVMNNs is relaxed by only needing the complex-valued activation functions satisfying the Lipschitz condition. By constructing a suitable Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF), new stability and stabilizability criteria are derived for CVMNNs. Different from the existing results with the maximum absolute values of memristive connection weights, our ones are based on the average values of the maximum and minimum of the memristive connection weights. Finally, numerical simulations are given to validate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.     

How do congressional members appear on the web? Tracking the web visibility of South Korean politicians

The web visibility of politicians has substantial implications for the internet and politics. In this regard, the present paper examines the web visibility of South Korea's 18th National Assembly members. This study identifies those members with the highest web visibility and determines the factors affecting their web visibility by using a set of socio-demographic variables indicating web visibility. The concept of web visibility is operationally defined as the number of web mentions of each congressional member. Web mentions of the name of each congressional member were collected across many platforms, including blogs, images, news, and websites, by using a Naver search tool based on the API, and relationships between the web visibility of the members and their socio-demographic attributes (their gender, age, term, constituency, and party affiliation) were analyzed using Kruskal–Wallis, Median, and Mann–Whitney U tests. The most visible politicians in the Korean webosphere had highly qualified political careers and prominence, and the difference in politicians' web visibility depended on their political attributes (their term, constituency, and party), not on their demographic attributes (their gender and age). These findings suggest that politicians who build political power and influence through their political career in the offline world are likely to be more visible in the webosphere. Further, an integrated indicator based on politicians' web visibility status can reflect their “ubiquitous presence” in Korea's digitalized society.     

The Expression of Depressive Symptomatology in Korean American Undergraduates: Sex and Generational Differences

This study examined the influence of acculturation and perception of the university environment on the depressive symptomatology of 228 Korean American undergraduates, with a focus on sex and generational differences. Perceptions of the university environment and perceived barriers were positive predictors of depressive symptomatology in respective regression equations by sex and generation. Study limitations and counseling practice implications are discussed.     

Do American and Korean education systems converge? Tracking school reform policies and outcomes in Korea and the USA

This study examines key school reform policies and outcomes of the USA and Korea over the past three decades from comparative perspectives. Since the two nations’ unique educational problems brought divergent educational reform paths—standardization versus differentiation, high-stakes testing versus individualized assessment, and centralization versus decentralization—the study tracks international policy benchmarking efforts and potential impact on educational convergence. The study employs mixed methods, including the content analysis of research and media documents and the trend analysis of TIMSS and PISA datasets. The results indicate that, despite significant changes in policy discourse, the gaps between Korea and the USA in student math achievement and school climates did not narrow. The policy lessons from these cases and the issues of international education benchmarking are discussed.     

A decade revisited and a step toward the future: incremental but quintessential progress

This study scrutinizes Asia Pacific Education Review (APER) that has been weathered 13 years of journey from its inception. Numerically, 504 peer-reviewed articles have been published so far, and 0.5 of impact factor has been achieved. This article recollects the history of APER, overhaul the accomplishment and shortcomings of it. Through an overview of the annually submitted and published articles, 14 domains of research area, research methods, and the demographics of contributors were examined; 30 nationalities of authors’ papers were published, and 2/3 of articles used quantitative research method. The most published domains were educational administration and policy, educational psychology and special education, and higher education; however, the most cited articles covered all research area of education impartially. This study also suggested APER’s contribution to the advancement of education research community internationally and interdisciplinarily.