The Selection of Pay Referents: Potential Patterns and Impacts on Life Satisfaction

Despite the relatively extensive research on pay levels and the consequences of income disparities, little is known about which reference groups people choose for comparative evaluation of personal income and why different selection patterns emerge. The aim of this paper is to dig deeper for answers to the following three questions: (1) What are the most important reference groups for income comparisons? (2) Who tends to use which type of reference group? (3) Which reference groupsare most detrimental to life satisfaction? The analysis is based on data from the 2008 and 2009 pretest modules of the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). The results show the working sphere (colleagues and members of the same profession) to be the most important point of reference for income comparisons, whereas neighbors are the least important. No clear-cut picture emerges for the differential selection of reference groups. Structural characteristics - e.g., level of income, education, and type of employment - are of only minor importance in the selection of reference groups for income comparisons. The results also suggest that individuals are likely to select those reference groups whose income is closest to their own. Therefore, the level of income relative to a reference group is related to the relevance of that group in income comparisons. The consequences of such comparisons for life satisfaction prove to be negative: the more importance an individual attaches to income comparisons with reference groups, the lower his or her life satisfaction. Income relative to neighbors and colleagues only affected life satisfaction when the respondent perceived such reference groups to be relevant in income comparisons. These results challenge previous research suggesting that people are unconscious of the true impact of comparison processes. Nevertheless, the results point to various difficulties in the measurement of social comparison processes andshow personal predispositions to be a major factor influencing such comparisons. The results strongly indicate the need for advanced instruments to measure the cognitive processes underlying social comparisons.Income comparisons, relative income, reference groups, satisfaction, well-being

The Social Comparison Scale: Testing the Validity, Reliability, and Applicability of the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM) on the German Population

Social comparisons are an essential source of information about the self. Research in social psychology has shown individual variation in the tendency toward comparison with other people's opinions and abilities, raising the question of whether social comparisons are driven by psychological dispositions. To test the empirical validity of this proposition, Gibbons and Buunk (1999) created an instrument that measures the tendency to engage in social comparison and captures central aspects of the self, the other, and the psychological interaction between the two. The Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM) comprises 11 core items that have been tested in the United States and the Netherlands. To date, however, no attempt has been made to implement this instrument in a large-scale survey of the German population. To fill this gap, the core items of the INCOM scale were integrated into the 2010 SOEP (Socio-Economic Panel Study) pretest. This paper analyzes the validity of the INCOM scale and discusses potentials for shortening the instrument for continued use in large-scale population surveys. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis as well as scale validation tests (invariance tests combined with external validation techniques) produce acceptable results and confirm the measurement instrument as valid and effective. With regard to shortening the questionnaire, a six-item scale is recommended, which shows excellent model fit and proves to be a reliable and efficient indicator to grasp individual dispositions towards social comparison.Social comparisons, relative evaluations, reference groups, validity tests, SOEP

Measuring the Selection of Pay Referents: A Methodological Analysis of the Questions on Pay Referents in the 2008 and 2009 SOEP Pretest Modules

Income comparisons are among the key mechanisms used to explain satisfaction and happiness, among other outcomes. Yet progress on the questions of who people use as social referents and whether differential selection patterns exist can only be made based on valid and reliable measures of pay referents included in large-scale population surveys. The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) is pursuing this task through two questions on pay referents introduced in the 2008 and 2009 pretest modules of the SOEP. This paper analyses the quality of the two questions on pay referents in the 2008 module and discusses potential for improvement through modifications of the questions in the 2009 module. The paper concludes that the difficulties in answering questions on pay referents were not completely overcome in the 2009 pretest. To provide more solid evidence on potential biases in response behavior, the paper suggests the inclusion of reliable instruments for measuring personal dispositions.income comparisons, relative income, reference groups, SOEP

The Social Comparison Scale: Testing the Validity, Reliability, and Applicability of the IOWA-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM) on the German Population

Social comparisons are an essential source of information about the self. Research in social psychology has shown individual variation in the tendency toward comparison with other people's opinions and abilities, raising the question of whether social comparisons are driven by psychological dispositions. To test the empirical validity of this proposition, Gibbons and Buunk (1999) created an instrument that measures the tendency to engage in social comparison and captures central aspects of the self, the other, and the psychological interaction between the two. The Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM) comprises 11 core items that have been tested in the United States and the Netherlands. To date, however, no attempt has been made to implement this instrument in a large-scale survey of the German population. To fill this gap, the core items of the INCOM scale were integrated into the 2010 SOEP (Socio-Economic Panel Study) pretest. This paper analyzes the validity of the INCOM scale and discusses potentials for shortening the instrument for continued use in large-scale population surveys. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis as well as scale validation tests (invariance tests combined with external validation techniques) produce acceptable results and confirm the measurement instrument as valid and effective. With regard to shortening the questionnaire, a six-item scale is recommended, which shows excellent model fit and proves to be a reliable and efficient indicator to grasp individual dispositions towards social comparison.Social comparisons, relative evaluations, reference groups, validity tests, SOEP

Why Income Inequality is Dissatisfying? Perceptions of Social Status and the Inequality-Satisfaction Link in Europe

Schneider S. Why Income Inequality is Dissatisfying? Perceptions of Social Status and the Inequality-Satisfaction Link in Europe. European Sociological Review. 2019;35(3):409-430

Alligator (alligator mississippiensis) taphonomy: analysis of gnawed and digested bone

Understanding the tooth mark morphology and behavior of animal scavenging is essential in forensic analysis during recovery of remains in an outdoor setting. Scavengers are part of the natural process of disarticulation; therefore, further research on these taphonomic agents can aid in the analysis of various postmortem bone modifications. The present study focuses on the classifiable morphologies of American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) bite marks on bone as a method of clearly distinguishing bite marks from other scavengers, specifically canids. Based on previous research, the bite marks of American alligators include punctures, pits, and scoring; however, American alligators also have potentially diagnostic bite marks including bisected mark and hook scores. The sample for the present study consisted of feeding five adult American alligators, aged at least fifty years old, and four nine-year-old American alligators located at the Edisto Island Serpentarium in Edisto Island, South Carolina. The bones fed to the alligators included: thirty-three commercially available white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) partially fleshed long bones, which included articulated radii and ulnae, femora, tibiae, and humeri; fifteen pounds of partially fleshed white-tailed deer back ribs; and twenty-five pounds of mostly fleshed white-tailed deer neck bones. Additionally, six articulated pig (Sus scrofa) fully fleshed hind limbs were included in the present study. The alligators were typically fed three days a week during the duration of the study. Once the bones were gnawed on by the alligators and left alone in their enclosures, the bones were collected by the serpentarium personnel and stored for analysis. After bones were macerated, the author observed and measured the morphologies of the tooth marks on the bone surface and observed each tooth mark. There was a total of 412 tooth marks observed on all bones. The most frequent tooth mark observed on all bones were pits, followed by punctures, scores, furrows, hook scores, and bisected marks. The results indicate that American alligators have the potential to leave identifiable marks; however, crocodylian species also leave some tooth marks that are morphologically indistinguishable from other mammalian carnivores. The patterns of tooth marks were distinguished from other mammalian carnivores based upon previously published literature, such as Njau and Blumenschine (2006), Drumheller et al. (2014), Delaney-Rivera et al. (2009), Dominguez-Rodrigo and Piqueras (2003), and Pobiner (2007). A paired t-test was run to statistically compare the frequencies of tooth marks from previous crocodylian studies and descriptive statistics are provided to analyze the tooth mark measurements. The present research demonstrates the potential of tooth marks to identify the activity of American alligators

Ackerwildkrautschutz in Luxemburg durch Schutzäcker, Feldflorareservate und Ökologische Landwirtschaft

Arable plants are becoming increasingly rare in today's cultural landscape and belong to the most endangered plant species in Luxemburg. Their main threat is the intensification of agriculture, where high usage of pesticides and fertilizer, better seed cleaning methods and the abandonment of marginal yield sites all negatively affect arable plant communities. Another factor is the loss of (potential) habitat due to the expansion of settlements and subsequent loss of agricultural lands. The dire situation calls for urgent action. Within the framework of the bachelor thesis of the first author, a concept for the protection of arable plants in Luxembourg was developed. The following article describes and discusses the four most promising applied approaches to arable plant conservation identified in the course of this work, namely organic farming, two types of “conservation fields” (“Schutzacker” and “Feldflorareservat”) and pesticide-free field margins

The formation of the extremely primitive star SDSS J102915+172927 relies on dust

The relative importance of metals and dust grains in the formation of the first low-mass stars has been a subject of debate. The recently discovered Galactic halo star SDSS J102915+172927 (Caffau et al. 2011) has a mass less than 0.8 Msun and a metallicity of Z = 4.5 10^{-5} Zsun. We investigate the origin and properties of this star by reconstructing the physical conditions in its birth cloud. We show that the observed elemental abundance trend of SDSS J102915+172927 can be well fitted by the yields of core-collapse supernovae with metal-free progenitors of 20 Msun and 35 Msun. Using these selected supernova explosion models, we compute the corresponding dust yields and the resulting dust depletion factor taking into account the partial destruction by the supernova reverse shock. We then follow the collapse and fragmentation of a star forming cloud enriched by the products of these SN explosions at the observed metallicity of SDSS J102915+172927. We find that [0.05 - 0.1] Msun mass fragments, which then lead to the formation of low-mass stars, can occur provided that the mass fraction of dust grains in the birth cloud exceeds 0.01 of the total mass of metals and dust. This, in turn, requires that at least 0.4 Msun of dust condense in the first supernovae, allowing for moderate destruction by the reverse shock. If dust formation in the first supernovae is less efficient or strong dust destruction does occur, the thermal evolution of the SDSS J102915+172927 birth cloud is dominated by molecular cooling, and only > 8 Msun fragments can form. We conclude that the observed properties of SDSS J102915+172927 support the suggestion that dust must have condensed in the ejecta of the first supernovae and played a fundamental role in the formation of the first low-mass stars.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted as a Letter to MNRA

Public Opinion on Healthcare in the Context of Economic Crisis: Evidence from Portugal

Popic T, Schneider S, Asensio M. Public Opinion on Healthcare in the Context of Economic Crisis: Evidence from Portugal. Journal of Social Policy. 2019;48(4):741-764

Ontology-based modeling of control logic in building automation systems

The control logic implemented in building automation systems (BAS) has a significant impact on the overall energy demand of the building. However, information on the control logic, if documented, is often concealed from further data integration and reuse in heterogeneous information silos using disparate data formats. In particular, existing data formats and information models offer limited support to describe control logic explicitly. Ontology-based modeling of the control logic of BAS can potentially result in a versatile source of information for information-driven processes to further increase the performance of technical equipment in a building. Therefore, we present a novel information model, CTRLont, which allows to formally specify the domain of control logic in BAS. We demonstrate the usefulness of the novel information model by using it as a knowledge base for automating rule-based verification of designed control logic in BAS. We successfully apply the methodology to a simple control of an air handling unit and indicate a number of future steps