Do Loss Aversion and the Ownership Effect Bias Content Validation Procedures?

In making validity arguments, a central consideration is whether the instrument fairly and adequately covers intended content, and this is often evaluated by experts. While common procedures exist for quantitatively assessing this, the effect of loss aversion—a cognitive bias that would predict a tendency to retain items—on these procedures has not been investigated. For more novel constructs, experts are typically drawn from adjacent domains. In such cases, a related cognitive bias, the ownership effect, would predict that experts would be more loss averse when considering items closer to their domains. This study investigated whether loss aversion and the ownership effect are a concern in standard content validity evaluation procedures. In addition to including promising items to measure a relatively novel construct, framing agency, we included distractor items linked to other areas of our evaluators’ expertise. Experts evaluated all items following procedures outlined by Lawshe (1975). We found on average, experts were able to distinguish between the intended items and distractor items. Likewise, on average, experts were somewhat more likely to reject distractor items closer to their expertise. This suggests that loss aversion and the ownership effect are not likely to bias content validation procedures

Crime, community, context & fear : influences on informal social control in an affluent English suburb

Based on ethnographic research, involving observations, participant observation and in-depth interviews, this thesis explores the impact of crime and the influences on informal social control in an affluent, middle class suburb. The research focused on the interaction between estate design, the environment, social and community life, and fear of crime, and their effects on residents in the neighbourhood. Despite low recorded crime rates, crime was perceived to be a problem. This situation arose from a paradox of community dynamics which, on the one hand, increased fear of crime, but on the other, contained crime. Apart from small-scale and extremely localised solidarities, a socially fragmented community existed in which limited and loose-knit local social networks, strong desires for privacy, and atomisation prevailed. These factors, coupled with busy lifestyles and features of the suburban environment, resulted in isolation and enhanced fear of crime. However, fear arose more from concerns about crime in wider society together with general anxieties rooted in change in late-modernity, than actual risk of victimisation. Crime control was rarely based on conm-iunity action, instead being individualistic and reliant on sophisticated target hardening. Low crime, therefore, was less attributable to the pursuits of 'active citizens' envisaged by community crime prevention policies and more to structural processes of affluence, status and property ownership which created an exclusive and exclusionary community of vested interest, common identity and shared values. As a study of affluent suburban life, the research contributes to the community studies tradition. However, the main importance of the research is its implications for community crime prevention. By highlighting the complex and contextual nature of informal social control and the influences which impact on it, the necessity to tailor crime prevention more to local needs is emphasised

Autonomy and relatedness : an ethnography of Wik people of Aurukun, western Cape York Peninsula

I seek in this thesis to provide a critical account of Wik Aboriginal people living in and near the township of Aurukun on western Cape York Peninsula, north Queensland. It is set in a period of rapid and often traumatic changes for Wik, the seeds of which were sown during the seventy-four year mission period, but which accelerated dramatically with the imposition in 1978 of a local government administrative system based on the mainstream Queensland model. The decade or so following this saw the massive and cumulative penetration of the forms and institutions of the wider, dominant society. Yet, despite this, Wik people continued to carve out a social and spatial domain established through a distinctive way of life, defined in terms of particular sets of conjoint dispositions, beliefs, and understandings and through the forms, styles and contexts of social practices. In analysing this particular style of life, I argue that the essentially unresolved tension between personal autonomy and relatedness provided a fundamental dynamic to Wik social forms and processes. I examine the changing symbolic and material resources, such as cash and alcohol, through which autonomy could be realized but which at the same time instantiated relatedness. These new resources, I suggest, provided potent and unprecedented means through which personal autonomy could be realized. For these and other reasons, there was a trend towards increasing individuation of Wik, and the sundering of the control of the means of social reproduction which had lain essentially with senior generations. At the same time as this developing individuation, there was a rise in the importance of 'community' based forms, and of a construction of 'culture' as a set of reified practices which were posited as differentiating Wik from others, particularly Whites. I also examine Wik political processes in detail. The Wik domain was distinguished by a high degree of fluidity and contingency in the composition of the various collectivities coalescing around social actions. Despite the attempts of the Mission and more recent secular. regimes to alter the legitimate definitions of social and geographic space, the constantly ebbing and flowing currents of Wik social life acted to subvert these imposed designations of public and private spaces and their appropriate uses. This fluidity of structure and process extended to Wik political forms. Within the Wik domain, relations of domination and subordination were essentially created in and through the direct interactions between persons, rather than being mediated through objective institutions such as a legislature or bureaucracy. In such circumstances, not only political groupings but orthodoxy and legitimacy themselves were contingent and embedded in the flux of social life. Implicit in this thesis also is an argument against theories which see phenomena such as violence, large-scale alcohol consumption, and gambling, characteristic of many remote areas of Aboriginal Australia, as in some simple causal sense resulting from dispossession and alienation. Rather, it is argued that such phenomena can only be understood in terms of the complex interaction between core cultural themes, themselves historically located, and the circumstances of settlement life which have arisen through the colonial and post-colonial periods

Sustainable Community Redevelopment: A Plan for Detroit's Lower Eastside

In the city of Detroit, decades of discrimination, unrest, and disinvestment have left scores of vacant and abandoned property and thousands of impoverished residents. This is clearly apparent in Detroit’s lower eastside, located just inside the city limits and bordered by affluent suburban Grosse Pointe Park. Here, in the heart of the lower eastside, the Jefferson East Business Association (JEBA) works to restore economic vitality as a means of revitalizing the overall conditions of the neighborhood. To aid JEBA in their strategic planning process, we developed a replicable model of sustainable community redevelopment and delivered a set of tailored suggestions for the lower eastside. Our research began with a review of national case studies relevant to six core topic areas critical to redevelopment: Economic Prosperity, Human Health & Well-Being, Vibrant Communities, Energy Systems, Material & Resource Flows, and Ecosystem Services. Through the course of our research, common principles emerged and informed the creation of the sixstep REPAIR model for sustainable community redevelopment. In this report, we demonstrate the model through application to the lower eastside, provide our resulting assessment of the neighborhood, and suggest detailed next steps for JEBA and the community. While specific guidance is provided for Detroit, the key findings are universal: First, a data-driven approach is essential in guiding proper resource usage and investment. Second, there is often a plethora of organizations working for the betterment of hard-hit urban areas. It is essential that these disparate stakeholders collaborate on a common plan to avoid redundancy and while accelerating community redevelopment. Stakeholders must rally behind a strong leader to most effectively assemble crucial resources and increase the likelihood of success. Third, a truly sustainable community will need to prepare for future challenges through mitigation and adaptation strategies. These methods must be established to increase resilience and realize true sustainably. We highlight a process of continual improvement in which metrics and indicators are regularly checked for both changes in trends and continued relevancy.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69234/1/SCR-Paper.pd