The Construct Validity Of A Situational Judgment Test In A Maximum Performance Context

A Predictor Response Process model (see Ployhart, 2006) and research findings were leveraged to formulate research questions about, and generate construct validity evidence for, a new situational judgment test (SJT) designed to measure declarative and strategic knowledge. The first question asked if SJT response instructions (i.e., \u27Should Do\u27, \u27Would Do\u27) moderated the validity of an SJT in a maximum performance context. The second question asked what the upper-bound criterion-related validity coefficient is for SJTs in talent selection contexts in which typical performance is the criterion of interest. The third question asked whether the SJT used in the present study was fair for gender and ethnic-based subgroups according to Cleary\u27s (1968) definition of test fairness. Participants were randomly assigned to complete an SJT with either \u27Should Do\u27 or \u27Would Do\u27 response instructions and their maximum decision making performance outcomes were captured during a moderate fidelity poker simulation. The findings of this study suggested knowledge, as measured by the SJT, interacted with response instructions when predicting aggregate and average performance outcomes such that the \u27Should Do\u27 SJT had stronger criterion-related validity coefficients than the \u27Would Do\u27 version. The findings also suggested the uncorrected upper-bound criterion-related validity coefficient for SJTs in selection contexts is at least moderate to strong ([beta] = .478). Moreover, the SJT was fair according to Cleary\u27s definition of test fairness. The implications of these findings are discussed

Ecological Macreconomics: Introduction and Review

The Great Recession of the past years has brought macroeconomics back. Many of the recession's phenomena, causes and consequences alike, cannot be understood using solely microeconomic decisionmaking. Over the past decades the economics profession has pursued the implications of rational choices and enshrined them in so-called "micro foundations" as a hallmark of modern economic theory. By focusing on the choices and actions of individual consumers, firms, or the government, however, one can easily miss important determinants of the economic system which only arise at the meso- or the macroeconomic levels where institutions, coordination, and complexity in general are important and sometimes even can take on a life of their own. To lesser extent, ecological economics has fallen prone to similar pitfalls by mostly focusing the unit of investigation on low-level, small-scale subsystems of the economy. There are, of course, notable exceptions including the early contributors Boulding and Georgescu-Roegen and the general interest of ecological economists in the field of (ecological) macroeconomics has been increasing. (authors' abstract)Series: Ecological Economic Paper

Ecological Macroeconomics: Introduction and Review

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The confusion of languages as a plague and a giftor. No democracy without literacy

Ausgangspunkt des Textes sind die Begriffe Literarität und Öffentlichkeit und deren Bezug zur Demokratie. Die Autorinnen unterstreichen die Bedeutung von Literarität im digitalen Raum als dem global dominanten Raum schlechthin, der unsere öffentliche Welt prägt. Literarität verstehen sie als die globale Summe verschiedener Interpretationsweisen, die von verschiedenen Stimmen mit verschiedenen Augen und aus verschiedenen Perspektiven aufgegriffen, verarbeitet und weitergeleitet werden. Der öffentliche Raum ist ein durchmedialisierter Raum, voll von Zeichenwelten, die medial entschlüsselt werden müssen. Um dies zu bewältigen, braucht es die Kompetenz der Literarität. Die Autorinnen wörtlich: Literarität als Vermittlungswissenschaft vertritt keinen eigenen Gegenstandsbereich, sie ist mit keiner Disziplin ident, allerdings wird sie mit jeder Disziplin und mit jedem Feld „transportiert“, ob bewusst oder nicht, ob analysiert oder nicht, implizit oder explizit. Literarität ist überall, in jedem Bereich erlernbar. Gerade weil sie überall „gelernt“ werden kann, eignet sich Literarität zur Auseinandersetzung mit Übersetzungen von verschiedenen Vermittlungsebenen. Wieder einmal drängt sich die Gemeinsamkeit mit dem öffentlichen Raum auf – ob auf der Straße, im Amtsgebäude oder im Krankenhaus, überall werden direkt und indirekt Botschaften mitgeteilt und bestimmte Lesarten transportiert. Und so lassen sich beide, sowohl die öffentliche Vermittlung als auch das Lesen und Schreiben, als eingeschriebene Kulturtechniken der Vermittlung betrachten. Und weiter: In Zeiten von Fakes sagt uns das, dass man sich in den Techniken des Darstellens auskennen muss. Man muss die Mittel der literarischen und poetischen Überhöhung kennen, um Fakes und andere manipulative Techniken zu erkennen. (DIPF/Orig.)The text takes as its starting point the concepts of literacy and the public sphere and their relationship to democracy. The authors underline the importance of literacy in the digital space, the space that is globally dominant, which has left a mark on our public world. Literacy is understood to be the global sum of different ways of interpretation that are taken up, processed and transmitted by different voices with different eyes and from different perspectives. The public sphere is a thoroughly mediated space, full of worlds of signs that must be deciphered. The competence of literacy is required to accomplish this task. To quote the authors: Literacy as a science of communication does not represent a subject area of its own; it is not identical to any discipline, yet it is “conveyed” by every discipline and every field, whether consciously or not, whether analysed or not, implicitly or explicitly. Literacy is everywhere and is able to be learned in every area. Precisely because it can be “learned” everywhere, literacy is suitable for the examination of translations of different levels of communication. Once again the similarity to public space imposes itself—whether in the street, in public buildings or in hospitals, messages are communicated directly and indirectly and particular ways of reading are conveyed. And thus both public communication as well as reading and writing can be regarded as encoded cultural techniques of communication. And furthermore: in times of fakes, it means that one must be familiar with techniques of representation—one must be literate. (DIPF/Orig.

Implementation of article 12 of the un convention on the rights of persons with disabilities in Austria

Legal capacity and capacity to act are regulated in Austrian law by the civil code Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch from 1811 (hereinafter 'ABGB'). The ABGB itself, although more than 200 years old, has been continuously amended and adapted by the legislator to current social or economic needs. Among other things, the regulation of legal capacity, including in particular the position of adults who, for health - especially mental - reasons, are unable to fully manage their own affairs, has been subject to changes recently. Austrian law, like Polish law, assumes that all human beings, natural persons, have full legal personality from the moment of birth. This is derived from § 16 ABGB, which is imbued with a legal-naturalistic concept. The ABGB distinguishes a category of persons with a broader, partial legal capacity. Their legal situation does not generally differ from that of persons between the age of 7 and 14

Understanding Peri-urban Sustainability: The role of the resilience approach

Resilience is a term that is widely used by scholars from different disciplines who promote action research between science and policy. This paper is largely concerned with how resilience approaches can be used as a practical tool in helping to understand complex dynamic socio-ecological systems in an urbanising world and, in particular, how resilience approaches can contribute to initiatives with normative development agendas to enhance environmental integrity and social justice. Some key debates around differing understandings and uses of the term resilience are summarised, and criticisms discussed. An initial case study demonstrates how the resilience approach can be a useful tool in understanding key interactions between social and ecological systems that impact on the management of protected areas. Further case studies examine how resilience approaches might help in understanding more complex peri-urban situations, characterised by increasing social exclusion and environmental degradation. A final case study from Varanasi India, examines relationships between water management in the peri-urban interface and urban food systems. It utilises a resilience framework to illustrate the lack of recognition by formal institutions of actual peri-urban water use practices and the many informal transactions that occur, and to highlight some implications in relation to urban food security, environmental policies and particular marginalised groups. These examples seek to demonstrate opportunities for the use of resilience approaches as an integral part of initiatives that seek to identify opportunities for enhancing sustainability (in relation to environmental integrity and social justice) in dynamic urbanising situations.ESR

Towards an operational measurement of socio-ecological performance

Questioning GDP as dominant indicator for economic performance has become commonplace. For economists economic policy always aims for a broader array of goals (like income, employment, price stability, trade balance) alongside income, with income being the priority objective. The Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission argued for extending and adapting key variables of macroeconomic analysis. International organisations such as the EC, OECD, Eurostat and UN have proposed extended arrays of macroeconomic indicators (see 'Beyond GDP', 'Compendium of wellbeing indicators', 'GDP and Beyond', 'Green Economy', 'Green Growth', 'Measuring Progress of Societies'). Despite these high profile efforts, few wellbeing and environmental variables are in use in macroeconomic models. The reasons for the low uptake of socio-ecological indicators in macroeconomic models range from path dependencies in modelling, technical limitations, indicator lists being long and unworkable, choices of indicators appearing ad hoc and poor data availability. In this paper we review key approaches and identify a limited list of candidate variables and - as much as possible - offer data sources.Series: WWWforEurop

Work-sharing for a sustainable economy

Achieving low unemployment in an environment of weak growth is a major policy challenge; a more egalitarian distribution of hours worked could be the key to solving it. Whether worksharing actually increases employment, however, has been debated controversially. In this article we present stylized facts on the distribution of hours worked and discuss the role of work-sharing for a sustainable economy. Building on recent developments in labor market theory we review the determinants of working long hours and its effect on well-being. Finally, we survey work-sharing reforms in the past. While there seems to be a consensus that worksharing in the Great Depression in the U.S. and in the Great Recession in Europe was successful in reducing employment losses, perceptions of the work-sharing reforms implemented between the 1980s and early 2000s are more ambivalent. However, even the most critical evaluations of these reforms provide no credible evidence of negative employment effects; instead, the overall success of the policy seems to depend on the economic and institutional setting, as well as the specific details of its implementation. (authors' abstract)Series: Ecological Economic Paper