El viaje desde los cuestionarios Likert a los cuestionarios de elección forzosa: evidencia de la invarianza de los parámetros de los ítems

Multidimensional forced-choice questionnaires are widely regarded in the personnel selection literature for their ability to control response biases. Recently developed IRT models usually rely on the assumption that item parameters remain invariant when they are paired in forced-choice blocks, without giving it much consideration. This study aims to test this assumption empirically on the MUPP-2PL model, comparing the parameter estimates of the forced-choice format to their graded-scale equivalent on a Big Five personality instrument. The assumption was found to hold reasonably well, especially for the discrimination parameters. In the cases in which it was violated, we briefly discuss the likely factors that may lead to non-invariance. We conclude discussing the practical implications of the results and providing a few guidelines for the design of forced-choice questionnaires based on the invariance assumptionLos cuestionarios de elección forzosa multidimensionales son bastante apreciados en la literatura de selección de personal por su capacidad para controlar los sesgos de respuesta. Los modelos de TRI desarrollados recientemente normalmente asumen que los parámetros de los ítems permanecen invariantes cuando se emparejan en bloques de elección forzosa, sin dedicarle mucha atención. Este estudio tiene como objetivo poner a prueba empíricamente este supuesto en el modelo MUPP-2PL, comparando las estimaciones de los parámetros del formato de elección forzosa con su equivalente en escala graduada, en un instrumento de personalidad Big Five. Se encontró que el supuesto se cumplía razonablemente bien, especialmente para los parámetros de discriminación. En los casos en los que no se cumplió se discuten brevemente los posibles factores que pueden dar lugar a no invarianza. Concluimos discutiendo las implicaciones prácticas de los resultados y proponiendo algunas pautas para el diseño de cuestionarios de elección forzosa basados en el supuesto de invarianzaThis research is funded by the Spanish government’s Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, projects PSI 2015-65557-P and PSI 2017-85022-

Conducta antisocial adolescente bajo un enfoque integrador de tres teorías criminológicas

In order to test the theories of Differential Association, Social Control and General Crime, the relationship between antisocial behavior and key constructs of the theories was analyzed, namely, “favourable definitions” (differential association), “attachment” (social control) and “self-control”. The propositional integrated side-by-side approach of Tibbets and Hemmens (2010) was used to determine the weight of said constructs in the prediction of antisocial behavior with a binary logistic regression model entering the explanatory variables in blocks. Sociodemographic variables such as sex and the size of the city were included. A total of 2,395 adolescents were surveyed in schools located in three cities (large, medium and small) in Venezuela. The results show that, of the three variables derived from differential association theory, the favourable definitions of friends towards participation in criminal acts served as predictors of antisocial behavior at the individual level. Of the ten variables derived from social control theory, attachment to school and participation in activities without family supervision predict antisocial behaviour. Self-control (from the general theory of crime) also predicts antisocial behavior

Autocontrol y conducta desviada: Una exploración con datos Venezolanos. (Self control and deviant behaviour: An exploration with Venezuelan data)

Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory is tested with adolescent Venezuelan students (n = 2354), examining the relationship between deviant behavior, self-control, age, sex, socioeconomic status, and size of settlement. The hypothesis that “low self-control increases the probability of individual and group deviance” is supported, except for drug-related behaviors. Males with low self-control show a greater probability of engaging in individual and group deviant behaviors

Estudio del pensamiento funcional de estudiantes de educación primaria

El objetivo de esta investigación es identificar evidencias de pensamiento funcional en estudiantes de 3º curso de Primaria, en el marco de la propuesta de innovación curricular y línea de investigación conocida como Early-Algebra (Molina, 2009). Previo a la toma de datos se realizó un análisis de los antecedentes en el tema del álgebra en relación con el pensamiento funcional, concluyendo que este tipo de pensamiento incluye la relación entre cantidades que pueden expresarse en palabras, símbolos, tablas o gráficos, y el razonamiento con estas diversas representaciones para analizar el comportamiento de la función. El pensamiento funcional se trabaja, habitualmente, en etapas posteriores a la educación primaria, por lo que actualmente no existen suficientes estudios realizados sobre su introducción en cursos tempranos

Two-state theory of nonlinear Stochastic Resonance

An amenable, analytical two-state description of the nonlinear population dynamics of a noisy bistable system driven by a rectangular subthreshold signal is put forward. Explicit expressions for the driven population dynamics, the correlation function (its coherent and incoherent part), the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the Stochastic Resonance (SR) gain are obtained. Within a suitably chosen range of parameter values this reduced description yields anomalous SR-gains exceeding unity and, simultaneously, gives rise to a non-monotonic behavior of the SNR vs. the noise strength. The analytical results agree well with those obtained from numerical solutions of the Langevin equation.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Phase diffusion as a model for coherent suppression of tunneling in the presence of noise

We study the stabilization of coherent suppression of tunneling in a driven double-well system subject to random periodic $\delta-$function ``kicks''. We model dissipation due to this stochastic process as a phase diffusion process for an effective two-level system and derive a corresponding set of Bloch equations with phase damping terms that agree with the periodically kicked system at discrete times. We demonstrate that the ability of noise to localize the system on either side of the double-well potenital arises from overdamping of the phase of oscillation and not from any cooperative effect between the noise and the driving field. The model is investigated with a square wave drive, which has qualitatively similar features to the widely studied cosinusoidal drive, but has the additional advantage of allowing one to derive exact analytic expressions.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Stochastic synchronization in globally coupled phase oscillators

Cooperative effects of periodic force and noise in globally Cooperative effects of periodic force and noise in globally coupled systems are studied using a nonlinear diffusion equation for the number density. The amplitude of the order parameter oscillation is enhanced in an intermediate range of noise strength for a globally coupled bistable system, and the order parameter oscillation is entrained to the external periodic force in an intermediate range of noise strength. These enhancement phenomena of the response of the order parameter in the deterministic equations are interpreted as stochastic resonance and stochastic synchronization in globally coupled systems.Comment: 5 figure

Ideal hierarchical secret sharing schemes

Hierarchical secret sharing is among the most natural generalizations of threshold secret sharing, and it has attracted a lot of attention from the invention of secret sharing until nowadays. Several constructions of ideal hierarchical secret sharing schemes have been proposed, but it was not known what access structures admit such a scheme. We solve this problem by providing a natural definition for the family of the hierarchical access structures and, more importantly, by presenting a complete characterization of the ideal hierarchical access structures, that is, the ones admitting an ideal secret sharing scheme. Our characterization deals with the properties of the hierarchically minimal sets of the access structure, which are the minimal qualified sets whose participants are in the lowest possible levels in the hierarchy. By using our characterization, it can be efficiently checked whether any given hierarchical access structure that is defined by its hierarchically minimal sets is ideal. We use the well known connection between ideal secret sharing and matroids and, in particular, the fact that every ideal access structure is a matroid port. In addition, we use recent results on ideal multipartite access structures and the connection between multipartite matroids and integer polymatroids. We prove that every ideal hierarchical access structure is the port of a representable matroid and, more specifically, we prove that every ideal structure in this family admits ideal linear secret sharing schemes over fields of all characteristics. In addition, methods to construct such ideal schemes can be derived from the results in this paper and the aforementioned ones on ideal multipartite secret sharing. Finally, we use our results to find a new proof for the characterization of the ideal weighted threshold access structures that is simpler than the existing one.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft