Media Analysis on Volatile Markets’ Dynamics and Adaptive Behavior for the Agri-Food System

The volatility of agricultural markets has increased remarkably in recent years. In spite of this, the way in which supply chain actors perceive market volatility has only rarely been analyzed. This paper seeks to close this research gap by presenting empirical findings about how the volatility of agricultural markets is perceived, how increasing market volatilities are being explained, and what adaptations to the volatile external environments are being suggested. Based on a large-scale media analysis, we have identified perceptions, which vary greatly over time, especially with regard to the perception of the threats and opportunities volatility creates for farms and firms and the most frequently identified reasons for volatile pricesagriculture, media analysis, public discourse, shared assumptions, volatility, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Production Economics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Risk and Uncertainty,

Automated Reading Passage Generation with OpenAI's Large Language Model

The widespread usage of computer-based assessments and individualized learning platforms has resulted in an increased demand for the rapid production of high-quality items. Automated item generation (AIG), the process of using item models to generate new items with the help of computer technology, was proposed to reduce reliance on human subject experts at each step of the process. AIG has been used in test development for some time. Still, the use of machine learning algorithms has introduced the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the process greatly. The approach presented in this paper utilizes OpenAI's latest transformer-based language model, GPT-3, to generate reading passages. Existing reading passages were used in carefully engineered prompts to ensure the AI-generated text has similar content and structure to a fourth-grade reading passage. For each prompt, we generated multiple passages, the final passage was selected according to the Lexile score agreement with the original passage. In the final round, the selected passage went through a simple revision by a human editor to ensure the text was free of any grammatical and factual errors. All AI-generated passages, along with original passages were evaluated by human judges according to their coherence, appropriateness to fourth graders, and readability

Advancing Human Assessment: The Methodological, Psychological and Policy Contributions of ETS

​This book describes the extensive contributions made toward the advancement of human assessment by scientists from one of the world’s leading research institutions, Educational Testing Service. The book’s four major sections detail research and development in measurement and statistics, education policy analysis and evaluation, scientific psychology, and validity. Many of the developments presented have become de-facto standards in educational and psychological measurement, including in item response theory (IRT), linking and equating, differential item functioning (DIF), and educational surveys like the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Programme of international Student Assessment (PISA), the Progress of International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In addition to its comprehensive coverage of contributions to the theory and methodology of educational and psychological measurement and statistics, the book gives significant attention to ETS work in cognitive, personality, developmental, and social psychology, and to education policy analysis and program evaluation. The chapter authors are long-standing experts who provide broad coverage and thoughtful insights that build upon decades of experience in research and best practices for measurement, evaluation, scientific psychology, and education policy analysis. Opening with a chapter on the genesis of ETS and closing with a synthesis of the enormously diverse set of contributions made over its 70-year history, the book is a useful resource for all interested in the improvement of human assessment

NEPC Review: "Cross-Country Evidence on Teacher Performance" and "Merit Pay International"

The primary claim of this Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance report and the abridged Education Next version is that nations &ldquo;that pay teachers on their performance score higher on PISA tests.&rdquo; After statistically controlling for several variables, the author concludes that nations with some form of merit pay system have, on average, higher reading and math scores on this international test of 15-year-old students. Although the author lists numerous caveats, his broad conclusions do not heed these cautions. The fundamental differences among countries in the types of performance pay system are not properly considered. Nations are simply lumped together as having or not having a performance pay plan. Also, the length of time the program had been in place in each country is not addressed and the unknown intensity of program implementations argue against drawing lessons from this study. The small sample size of 28 observations requires extreme caution in interpretation. For example, the inclusion or exclusion of a single country results in large shifts in the size of the reported relationships. That is, the numbers become unreliable and invalid. With any correlational study, attributing causality is problematic; the differences among nations could be due to any number of factors. Finally, the type of regression-based analyses used to support the performance pay conclusion does not properly consider that the background variables used in these analyses can vary in terms of relationships with student scores and have different definitions across the countries under study. Therefore, drawing policy conclusions about teacher performance pay on the basis of this analysis is not warranted.</p

Media Analysis on Volatile Markets' Dynamics and Adaptive Behavior for the Agri-Food System

 The volatility of agricultural markets has increased remarkably in recent years. In spite of this, the way in which supply chain actors perceive market volatility has only rarely been analyzed. This paper seeks to close this research gap by presenting empirical findings about how the volatility of agricultural markets is perceived, how increasing market volatilities are being explained, and what adaptations to the volatile external environments are being suggested. Based on a large-scale media analysis, we have identified perceptions, which vary greatly over time, especially with regard to the perception of the threats and opportunities volatility creates for farms and firms and the most frequently identified reasons for volatile prices

Food Chain Actors’ Perceptions of and Adaptations to Volatile Markets: Results of a Media Analysis

The volatility of agricultural markets has increased remarkably in recent years. In spite of this, the way in which supply chain actors perceive market volatility has only rarely been analyzed. This paper seeks to close this research gap by presenting empirical findings about how the volatility of agricultural markets is perceived, how increasing market volatilities are being explained, and what adaptations to the volatile external environments are being suggested. Based on a large scale media analysis, we have identified perceptions, which vary greatly over time, especially with regard to the perception of the threats and opportunities volatility creates for farms and firms and the most frequently identified reasons for volatile prices

Commentary: On the Importance of the Speed-Ability Trade-Off When Dealing With Not Reached Items

A Commentary on: On the Importance of the Speed-Ability Trade-Off When Dealing With Not Reached Items by Tijmstra, J., and Bolsinova M. (2018). Front. Psychol. 9:964. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00964 In their 2018 article, (T&B) discuss how to deal with not reached items due to low working speed in ability tests (Tijmstra and Bolsinova, 2018). An important contribution of the paper is focusing on the question of how to define the targeted ability measure. In this note, we aim to add further aspects to this discussion and to propose alternative approaches

Variable Selection in Latent Regression IRT Models via Knockoffs: An Application to International Large-scale Assessment in Education

International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) play an important role in educational research and policy making. They collect valuable data on education quality and performance development across many education systems, giving countries the opportunity to share techniques, organizational structures, and policies that have proven efficient and successful. To gain insights from ILSA data, we identify non-cognitive variables associated with students' academic performance. This problem has three analytical challenges: 1) academic performance is measured by cognitive items under a matrix sampling design; 2) there are many missing values in the non-cognitive variables; and 3) multiple comparisons due to a large number of non-cognitive variables. We consider an application to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), aiming to identify non-cognitive variables associated with students' performance in science. We formulate it as a variable selection problem under a general latent variable model framework and further propose a knockoff method that conducts variable selection with a controlled error rate for false selections