Feedback effects of teaching quality assessment: macro and micro evidence

This study investigates the feedback effects of teaching quality assessment. Previous literature looked separately at the evolution of individual and aggregate scores to understand whether instructors and university performance depends on its past evaluation. I propose a new quantitative-based methodology, combining statistical distributions and transition probabilities matrices, to take into account the dynamics of teaching quality over time both at the macro and the micro level. Using a three-year longitudinal panel from an Italian university, it is shown that evaluation exercises do not impact future teaching performance at either the university level or the individual level.     

Communication in General

COMMUNICATION YEARBOOK 11 edited by James A. Anderson (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1988, 648 pp.—$41.95, ISBN 0-8039-3138-7)

TARNISHED GOLD: THE RECORD INDUSTRY REVISED by R. Serge Denisoff (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books/Rutgers, 1986, 487 pp.—$34.95/16.95, ISBN 0-88738-06809 [cloth], 0-88738-618-0 [paper])

INSIDE MTV by R. Serge Denisoff (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books/Rutgers, 1988, 373 pp.—$24.95, ISBN 0-88738-173-1)

THE END OF CONVERSATION: THE IMPACT OF MASS MEDIA ON MODERN SOCIETY by Franco Ferrarotti (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988, 192 pp.—$37.95, ISBN 0-313-26087-7)

LAWS OF OUR FATHERS: POPULAR CULTURE AND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION by Ray and Glenn Browne (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Culture Press, 1986—$24.95/12.95, no ISBN given)

POPULAR CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES edited by Josie Campbell (Bowling Greene, Ohio: Popular Culture Press, 1986—$19.95/9.95, no ISBN given)

THE PREDICAMENT OF CULTURE: TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHNOGRAPHY, LITERATURE, AND ART by James Clifford (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988—$30.00/15.95, no ISBN given)

THE SILENT MAJORITY: NONRESPONDENTS ON SAMPLE SURVEYS by John Goyder (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988—$39.00, no ISBN given)

MEDIA IN SOCIETY: READINGS IN MASS COMMUNICATION edited by Caren J. Deming and Samuel L. Becker (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1988, 435 pp.—price not given, ISBN 0-673-15820-9)     

What it is important to know about the effect of religious beliefs on entrepreneurial intention: The case of university students

Entrepreneurial Intention (EI) is one of the dimensions most studied and validated scientifically in the literature associated with entrepreneurship. This study intends to go one step further in developing the literature by presenting little studied dimensions as direct antecedents of EI. Its aim is to analyse the influence of the dimensions of Religious Beliefs, Psychological and Cognitive Factors, and Social Influence on the EI of students in higher education institutions (HEI). Five hundred and eight questionnaires were collected from higher education students, 32% of them male and 68% female. The results show that the model proposed has good explanatory power and confirms its robustness in forecasting students' EI, validating all the research hypotheses with very robust and statistically significant factor loadings. This corroborates the scarce literature on the subject, especially concerning the influence of Religious Beliefs on EI.     

Reliability, sensitivity and validity of the assistant referee intermittent endurance test (ARIET) - a modified Yo-Yo IE2 test for elite soccer assistant referees

We examined the reliability and validity of the assistant referee intermittent endurance test (ARIET), a modified Yo-Yo IE2 test including shuttles of sideways running. The ARIET was carried out on 198 Italian (Serie A-B, Lega-Pro and National Level) and 47 Danish elite soccer assistant referees. Reproducibility was tested for 41 assistant referees on four occasions each separated by one week. The ARIET intraclass correlation coefficients and typical error of measurement ranged from 0.96 to 0.99 and 3.1 to 5.7%, respectively. ARIET performance for Serie A and B was 23 and 25% greater than in Lega-Pro (P < 0.001). The lowest cut-off value derived from receiving operator characteristic discriminating Serie A-B from Lega-Pro was 1300 m. The ARIET performance was significantly correlated with VO(2max) (r = 0.78, P < 0.001), %HR(max) after 4 min of ARIET (r = - 0.81, P < 0.001) and Yo-Yo IR1 performance (r = 0.95, P < 0.001), but not sprint performance (r = -0.15; P = 0.58). The results showed that ARIET is a reproducible and valid test that is able to discriminate between assistant referees of different competitive levels. The lack of correlation with sprinting ability and close correlations with aerobic power, intermittent shuttle running and sub-maximal ARIET heart rate loading provide evidence that ARIET is a relevant test for assessment of intermittent endurance capacity of soccer assistant referees.     

Generating suggestions for queries in the long tail with an inverted index

This paper proposes an efficient and effective solution to the problem of choosing the queries to suggest to web search engine users in order to help them in rapidly satisfying their information needs. By exploiting a weak function for assessing the similarity between the current query and the knowledge base built from historical users’ sessions, we re-conduct the suggestion generation phase to the processing of a full-text query over an inverted index. The resulting query recommendation technique is very efficient and scalable, and is less affected by the data-sparsity problem than most state-of-the-art proposals. Thus, it is particularly effective in generating suggestions for rare queries occurring in the long tail of the query popularity distribution. The quality of suggestions generated is assessed by evaluating the effectiveness in forecasting the users’ behavior recorded in historical query logs, and on the basis of the results of a reproducible user study conducted on publicly-available, human-assessed data. The experimental evaluation conducted shows that our proposal remarkably outperforms two other state-of-the-art solutions, and that it can generate useful suggestions even for rare and never seen queries.     

Epistemic beliefs: Setting the standards for self-regulated learning

Relations were examined between epistemic beliefs, achievement goals, learning strategies, and achievement. We sought to empirically test Muis’ [Muis, K. R. (2007). The role of epistemic beliefs in self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 42, 173–190] hypothesis that epistemic beliefs influence processes of self-regulated learning via the standards students set for learning once goals are produced. Two hundred one undergraduate students from an educational psychology course completed questionnaires designed to measure the various constructs. Students’ final grades were also collected at the end of the semester. Students’ recollections of course tasks revealed that their epistemic beliefs are activated during learning. Results from structural equation modeling revealed epistemic beliefs influenced the types of achievement goals students adopted, which subsequently influenced the types of learning strategies they used in their education course, and their achievement. Moreover, achievement goals mediated relations between epistemic beliefs and learning strategies, and learning strategies mediated relations between achievement goals and achievement.     

International student mobility in a German and Portuguese university: Which factors in the host institution matter?

In a globalising world, international mobility in higher education is an important phenomenon for students and higher education institutions. It is therefore essential to understand the factors that determine international students' satisfaction with higher education institutions that serve as hosts. Through research of an exploratory, quantitative nature, this study presents results from a survey among 289 incoming international students in two universities in Germany and Portugal. Our findings show that the factor we define as educational experience was an important determinant of student satisfaction. Furthermore, the appraisal of academic reputation is dependent on the university. We conclude that satisfaction with academic factors is more important for international students than satisfaction with non-academic aspects.     

Willingness to Pay for Domestic Television Programming

The article describes the application of contingent valuation to estimate the value of the benefits that the Australian community derives from the mandatory transmission of Australian programs by television stations. This application of contingent valuation to estimate cultural benefits offers an insight on the potential for a wider application of the methodology to evaluate cultural policy instruments. The study found that a majority of Australians support regulation of the domestic content of television programs and considers the value of the related benefits to be commensurate with the cost of supplying domestic programming.     

New directions in the arts and sport? Critiquing national strategies

Abstract

Taking as its starting point the Fields of Vision initiative’s interest in promoting the potential benefits of bringing sports and arts closer together, this paper reviews how national (English) policy addresses that challenge. Four key strategic documents (the Government’s Sport Strategy and its Culture White Paper as well as the strategies of Arts Council England and Sport England) are examined. That is supplemented by the views of significant individuals from this interface, including the research network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Noting the similar social remit ascribed to sport and the arts by the government, shortcomings in the current strategies are identified as barriers to integration. ‘Play’ and ‘movement’ are briefly discussed as integrating concepts alongside our assessment of the potential of the arts/sport nexus, in areas including aesthetic innovation, promoting health and wellbeing, and encouraging wider participation and engagement. Having challenged existing national policies the paper suggests possible future directions.