Beyond Average: Contemporary statistical techniques for analysing student evaluations of teaching

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) have been used to evaluate higher education teaching performance for decades. Reporting SET results often involves the extraction of an average for some set of course metrics, which facilitates the comparison of teaching teams across different organisational units. Here, we draw attention to ongoing problems with the naive application of this approach. Firstly, a specific average value may arise from data that demonstrates very different patterns of student satisfaction. Furthermore, the use of distance measures (e.g. an average) for ordinal data can be contested, and finally, issues of multiplicity increasingly plague approaches using hypothesis testing. It is time to advance the methodology of the field. We demonstrate how multinomial distributions and hierarchical Bayesian methods can be used to contextualise the SET scores of a course to different organisational units and student cohorts, and then show how this approach can be used to extract sensible information about how a distribution is changing

Transforming Mount Airy into Mayberry: Film-Induced Tourism as Place-Making

Film-induced tourism is increasingly popular in the United States and globally. Scholars have tended to emphasize the effect of movies and television in forming the image of tourist destinations and thus influencing traveler motivation and experience. In this article, we shift discussion of film tourism beyond simply place image formation to consider it in the broader context of place-making. Such a perspective offers a fuller recognition of the material, social, and symbolic effects and practices that underlie the construction of film tourism destinations and their place identities as well as the ideologies, power relations and inequalities that become inscribed into the place transformation process. We focus on film tourism in Mount Airy, North Carolina, the birth place of television actor Andy Griffith, and delve into the remaking of his home town into a simulated version of Mayberry. Griffith popularized the fictional town of Mayberry in his 1960s television series and it continues to resonate with fans of the show. Mount Airy is marketed to visitors as the “real life Mayberry,â€� despite what Griffith has said to the contrary, and the city hosts an annual Mayberry Days Festival, which we visited and photographed in 2010. A preliminary interpretation is offered of the landscape changes, bodily performances, and social tensions and contradictions associated with the remaking of Mount Airy into Mayberry. We also assert the need to address the social responsibility and sustainability of this transformation, particularly in light of the competing senses of place in Mount Airy, generational and racial changes in the travel market, and the way in which African Americans are potentially marginalized in this conflation of the “realâ€� and the “reel.â€

Correlates of patient satisfaction and provider trust after breast-conserving surgery

BACKGROUND Although breast-conserving therapy (BCS) is considered the standard of care for early-stage breast cancer, up to 20% of patients are dissatisfied. The effect of treatment-related factors on patient satisfaction with their healthcare experiences is unclear. METHODS All BCS patients at the University of Michigan Medical Center who were treated between January 2002 and May 2006 were surveyed (n = 714; response rate, 79.5%). Patients were queried regarding 4 aspects of their decision for surgery: satisfaction with the decision, decision regret, decisional conflict, and trust in surgeons. Independent variables included the number of re-excisions, the occurrence of postoperative complications, and postoperative breast appearance, which was assessed by using the Breast Cancer Treatment and Outcomes scale. Multiple logistic regression was used to assess the effect of the independent variables on each outcome controlling for demographic and clinical characteristics. RESULTS Breast asymmetry after BCS was correlated significantly with patient satisfaction with their treatment experiences and patient distrust in surgeons. Women who reported pronounced asymmetry were significantly less likely to be satisfied with the decision for surgery compared with women who reported minimal asymmetry (odds ratio [OR], 0.43; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 0.21–0.89). Women with pronounced asymmetry were less likely to be certain about their surgical decision (OR, 0.36; 95% CI, 0.21–0.60) and to believe that they were prepared to make the decision for surgery (OR, 0.25; 95% CI, 0.14–0.43). Increasing breast asymmetry was associated with higher surgeon distrust scores (2.14 vs 2.30 vs 2.35; P = .04) and with the occurrence of postoperative complications (distrust score: 2.23 vs 2.35; P = .03). Reoperation after BCS was not associated with patient satisfaction or trust in providers. CONCLUSIONS Esthetic result after BCS was associated more profoundly with aspects of satisfaction than either surgical therapy or the occurrence of postoperative complications. The current findings indicated that surgeons who care for patients with breast cancer should identify the women at an increased risk for breast asymmetry preoperatively to effectively address their expectations of treatment outcomes. Cancer 2008. © 2008 American Cancer Society.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58592/1/23351_ftp.pd

High pressure polymorphism of ?-TaON

The high pressure behavior of TaON was studied using a combination of Raman scattering, synchrotron X-ray diffraction, and X-ray absorption spectroscopy in diamond anvil cells to 70 GPa at ambient temperature. A Birch–Murnaghan equation of state fit for baddeleyite structured ?-TaON indicates a high bulk modulus value Ko = 328 ± 4 GPa with K?o = 4.3. EXAFS analysis of the high pressure XAS data provides additional information on changes in the Ta–(O,N) and Ta–Ta distances. Changes in the X-ray diffraction patterns and Raman spectra indicate onset of a pressure induced phase transition near 33 GPa. Our analysis indicates that the new phase has an orthorhombic cotunnite-type structure but that the phase transition may not be complete even by 70 GPa. Similar sluggish transformation kinetics are observed for the isostructural ZrO2 phase. Analysis of compressibility data for the new cotunnite-type TaON phase indicate a very high bulk modulus Ko 370 GPa, close to the theoretically predicted value.<br/

The roles of endolithic fungi in bioerosion and disease in marine ecosystems. II. Potential facultatively parasitic anamorphic ascomycetes can cause disease in corals and molluscs

Anamorphic ascomycetes have been implicated as causative agents of diseases in tissues and skeletons of hard corals, in tissues of soft corals (sea fans) and in tissues and shells of molluscs. Opportunist marine fungal pathogens, such as Aspergillus sydowii, are important components of marine mycoplankton and are ubiquitous in the open oceans, intertidal zones and marine sediments. These fungi can cause infection in or at least can be associated with animals which live in these ecosystems. A. sydowii can produce toxins which inhibit photosynthesis in and the growth of coral zooxanthellae. The prevalence of many documented infections has increased in frequency and severity in recent decades with the changing impacts of physical and chemical factors, such as temperature, acidity and eutrophication. Changes in these factors are thought to cause significant loss of biodiversity in marine ecosystems on a global scale in general, and especially in coral reefs and shallow bays

Breast Reconstruction

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62091/1/reconstruction.pd

‘The longest suicide vote in history’: the Labour Party leadership election of 2015

The Labour leadership contest of 2015 resulted in the election of the veteran Left-wing backbencher, Jeremy Corbyn, who clearly defeated the early favourite, Andy Burnham. Yet Corbyn enjoyed very little support among Labour MPs, and his victory plunged the PLP into turmoil, particularly as he was widely viewed as incapable of leading the Party to victory in the 2020 general election. Given that, much of the established academic literature on Party leadership contests emphasises the ability to foster unity, and thereby render a party electable, as two of the key criteria for electing a new leader, coupled with overall competence, important questions are raised about how and why the Labour Party chose someone to lead them who clearly does not meet these criteria. We will argue that whilst these are the natural priorities of MPs when electing a new leader, in Corbyn’s case, much of the extra-parliamentary Labour Party was more concerned about ideological conviction and purity of principles, regardless of how far these diverged from public opinion. This was especially true of those who signed-up to the Labour Party following the 2015 general election defeat. Indeed, many of these only did so after Corbyn had become a candidate. This clearly suggests a serious tension between maximising intra-party democracy and ensuring the electability of the parliamentary party itself

Tales of the unexpected: the selection of British party leaders since 1963

Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Leader of the Labour Party in 2015 stunned observers and practitioners of British politics alike. In this article, we first outline a theoretical framework that purports to explain why political parties operating in parliamentary systems choose the leaders they do. We then examine 32 leadership successions involving five major British parties since 1963, and note that many of these were unexpected, in that they were triggered by unforeseen circumstances, such as the sudden death or resignation of the incumbent. Examining each party in turn, we briefly explain why the winners won and identify at least eight cases (a quarter of our sample) where a candidate widely expected to prevail at the outset was ultimately defeated by a ‘dark horse’, ‘second favourite’ or even ‘rank outsider’. Of these, Corbyn’s election in 2015 was the most unexpected and, consistent with the findings of studies of party leadership conventions in other parliamentary systems, namely Canada and Spain, suggests that ideological and policy concerns are sometimes more important than considerations of party unity and electability, especially when a leadership contest is dominated by party activists