Understanding Respondents' Attitudes Toward Web Paradata Use

The collection and use of paradata is gaining in importance, especially in web surveys. From a research ethics’ perspective, respondents should be asked for their consent to the collection and use of web paradata. In this context, a positive attitude toward paradata use has been deemed to be a prerequisite for respondents’ willingness to share their paradata. The present study aimed to identify factors affecting respondents’ attitudes toward paradata use. Our findings revealed that adequately informing survey respondents about what paradata are and why they are used was an important determinant of their attitudes toward paradata use. Moreover, we found that respondents with a positive attitude toward the survey were more likely to have a favorable opinion of paradata use. Our findings suggest that a thorough understanding of the factors that contribute to a positive attitude toward paradata use provides the basis for improved paradata consent procedures, which in turn will increase rates of consent to paradata use and help attenuate the risk of consent bias in web surveys

Relying on External Information Sources When Answering Knowledge Questions in Web Surveys

Knowledge questions frequently are used in survey research to measure respondents’ topic-related cognitive ability and memory. However, in self-administered surveys, respondents can search external sources for additional information to answer a knowledge question correctly. In this case, the knowledge question measures accessible and procedural memory. Depending on what the knowledge question aims at, the validity of this measure is limited. Thus, in this study, we conducted three experiments using a web survey to investigate the effects of task difficulty, respondents’ ability, and respondents’ motivation on the likelihood of searching external sources for additional information as a form of over-optimizing response behavior when answering knowledge questions. We found that the respondents who are highly educated and more interested in a survey are more likely to invest additional efforts to answer knowledge questions correctly. Most importantly, our data showed that for these respondents, a more difficult question design further increases the likelihood of over-optimizing response behavior

The Kapustin-Li formula revisited

We provide a new perspective on the Kapustin-Li formula for the duality pairing on the morphism complexes in the matrix factorization category of an isolated hypersurface singularity. In our context, the formula arises as an explicit description of a local duality isomorphism, obtained by using the basic perturbation lemma and Grothendieck residues. The non-degeneracy of the pairing becomes apparent in this setting. Further, we show that the pairing lifts to a Calabi-Yau structure on the matrix factorization category. This allows us to define topological quantum field theories with matrix factorizations as boundary conditions.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figures, comments welcom

Gaining Consent to Survey Respondents' Partners: The Importance of Anchors' Survey Experience in Self-administered Modes

Dyadic surveys aim to interview pairs of respondents, such as partners in a relationship. In dyadic surveys, it is often necessary to obtain the anchors' consent to contact their partners and invite them to a survey. If the survey is operated in self-administered modes, no interviewer is present to improve the consent rate, for example, by providing convincing arguments and additional information. To overcome the challenges posed by self-administered modes for dyadic surveys and to improve consent rates, it is important to identify aspects that positively influence the likelihood of anchors giving consent to contact their partners. Ideally, these aspects are in the hands of the researchers, such as the survey design and aspects of the questionnaire. Thus, in this study, we analyzed the relationship between anchors’ survey experience and their willingness to consent to surveying their partners in self-administered modes. Based on data from the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA), we found that the anchors' perceptions of the questionnaire as "interesting" or "too personal" were related to consent rates. These relationships were consistent across different survey modes and devices. Effects of other aspects of the questionnaire, such as "important for science" and "diverse" varied between modes and devices. We concluded with practical recommendations for survey research and an outlook for future research

Documentation of online surveys (Version 1.0)

This guideline on documentation of online surveys should provide guidance to researchers that aim at documenting the process of an online survey data collection. The collection of empirical data is an essential part of the scientific process. It is, therefore, important to comprehensively document how scientific data was collected. The information included in such a description will enable others to critically evaluate the data collection procedure and make replication studies possible. The guideline at hand attempts to provide a comprehensive list of aspects important for the documentation of an online survey: General aspects, details of the data collection preparation, the data collection phase, and the data processing are included in the guideline

Contracting behaviour in three species of Phyllomedusa (Anura: Hylidae: Phyllomedusinae)

We report in the present study the occurrence of contracting defensive behaviour in three treefrogs of the genus Phyllomedusa: P. azurea, P. iheringii and P. tetraploidea. It consisted of limbs bent close to the body, dorsum arched with the head towards the belly, and eyes partially closed. This behaviour was previously unreported for P. iheringii and P. tetraploidea and it seems to be a passive defensive strategy against snakes or other predators, characteristic of phyllomedusine frogs.Fil: Borteiro, Claudio. Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Montevideo; UruguayFil: Baldo, Juan Diego. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Nordeste. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Posadas; ArgentinaFil: Kunz, Tobias Saraiva. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; BrasilFil: Perez, Renata. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; BrasilFil: Petry Eltz, Rodrigo. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; BrasilFil: Kolenc, Francisco. Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Montevideo; Urugua

Robotic observation pipeline for small bodies in the solar system based on open-source software and commercially available telescope hardware

The observation of small bodies in the Space Environment is an ongoing important task in astronomy. While nowadays new objects are mostly detected in larger sky surveys, several follow-up observations are usually needed for each object to improve the accuracy of orbit determination. In particular objects orbiting close to Earth, so called Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are of special concern as a small but not negligible fraction of them can have a non-zero impact probability with Earth. Additionally, the observation of manmade space debris and tracking of satellites falls in the same class measurements. Telescopes for these follow-up observations are mainly in a aperture class between 1 m down to approximately 25 cm. These telescopes are often hosted by amateur observatories or dedicated companies like 6ROADS specialized on this type of observation. With upcoming new NEO search campaigns by very wide field of view telescopes, like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, NASA’s NEO surveyor space mission and ESA’s Flyeye telescopes, the number of NEO discoveries will increase dramatically. This will require an increasing number of useful telescopes for follow-up observations at different geographical locations. While well-equipped amateur astronomers often host instruments which might be capable of creating useful measurements, both observation planning and scheduling, and also analysis are still a major challenge for many observers. In this work we present a fully robotic planning, scheduling and observation pipeline that extends the widely used open-source cross-platform software KStars/Ekos for Instrument Neutral Distributed Interface (INDI) devices. The method consists of algorithms which automatically select NEO candidates with priority according to ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre (NEOCC). It then analyses detectable objects (based on limiting magnitudes, geographical position, and time) with preliminary ephemeris from the Minor Planet Center (MPC). Optimal observing slots during the night are calculated and scheduled. Immediately before the measurement the accurate position of the minor body is recalculated and finally the images are taken. Besides the detailed description of all components, we will show a complete robotic hard- and software solution based on our methods.TS-R acknowledges funding from the NEO-MAPP project (H2020-EU-2-1-6/870377). This work was (partially) funded by the Spanish MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe” by the “European Union” through grant RTI2018-095076-B-C21, and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences University of Barcelona (ICCUB, Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu”) through grant CEX2019-000918-M