Assessing the Accuracy of Manipulation Checks: Follow-up.

This study examines the accuracy with which participants complete a typical social psychology post-experimental inquiry following a procedure involving deception. Participants were randomly assigned to be informed or naïve to an ostensible purpose and were randomly assigned to be offered or not offered a reward for revealing awareness of the ostensible purpose and admission of receiving prior information. MANOVA analyses suggest that being informed and being offered a reward increase Awareness. Being offered a Reward actually decreased Admission. The implications of these results for deception research will be discussed

Streamlining CCR Compliance

Streamlining CCR Compliance using a Groundwater Data Management System Authors Mr. Travis Clark - United States - Tetra Tech, Inc. Abstract An electric utility company partnered with Tetra Tech to develop a groundwater data management system (DMS) that streamlines their CCR groundwater monitoring process, automates data collection and storage, and provides a tool to ease tracking and confirm compliance across the utility. The DMS improves data quality by including sample planning tools and electronic data deliverables (EDD), a field data collection application for use at hundreds of locations at more than 15 waste facility sites, data processors to import field data exported from data loggers as well as lithology and well construction data exported from external geotechnical software, and a web-based interface to laboratories for EDD tracking and management. Additional features include immediate, interactive feedback on data uploads that mitigates quality drift and tightens workflows, complete data traceability by maintaining a history of all changes. For analysis and reporting, the DMS includes business intelligence dashboards for understanding analyte criteria exceedances, with reporting and analytics to determine trends and correlations. Additionally, automated, reproducible report tables were developed which save over three weeks of labor annually in report preparation. The utility’s DMS was developed from a core data management system and customized to suit the specific needs of the utility. The core DMS has a flexible design, as addition of new tables or fields to the database are automatically supported by the system software so no code changes are required. This allows the DMS to be easily customized to suit the needs of a particular groundwater monitoring program while minimizing costs. This DMS improved the utility’s ability to track compliance, plan their work, organize their data, prepare reports, and provided easy data access to everyone involved

The Netherlands and 20th century migration

A panel of students presenting on topics relating to the history of migration in the 20th century

Creation Of A Conditional Reasoning Task For Hostile Sexism

The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) is a widely used measure of sexism. The current project describes the creation and administration of an alternative measurement of sexism that utilizes a conditional reasoning task (CRT) while supporting the theoretical underpinnings in Ambivalent Sexism Theory. Arguments in favor of creating a new scale are presented along with arguments for the specific use of a CRT. By creating a conditional reasoning task for hostile sexism (CRT-HS), the current project takes the first step toward creating a new indirect alternative for measuring sexism

Using Social Influence To Enhance Post-Experimental Inquiry Success

An experiment was performed to assess the efficacy of Post-experimental Inquiry (PEI) questions. Experiments involving deception assume participant naiveté to the study protocol. The present study implemented a PEI to assess the influence of an ethnic prime on stereotyped attitudes in order to assess PEI accuracy. A confederate (posting as another participant) additionally informed some participants as to the true purpose of the study, a violation of study integrity. The PEI was used to assess accuracy in two ways: awareness of the study hypotheses and admission to receiving information. The PEI was itself manipulated in one of two ways; the introduction of a descriptive norm paragraph (vs. control) and default option swapped (vs. control). Participants informed of the study hypothesis reported higher awareness and admitted more information. The norm prime and default option swapped conditions did not increase PEI accuracy. The implications for PEI accuracy are discussed

Wintertime Climate Variability in the Lake Michigan Region: Sensitivity of Snowfall to Temperature and Northern Hemisphere Teleconnection Patterns

Using available long-term stations, a wintertime climatology of temperature and snowfall since 1950 has been composited for the region near Lake Michigan. The seasonal snowfall characteristics of six sub-region composites were subsequently explored, using composites for three sub-regions to the west and east of Lake Michigan, respectively. While snowfall records can be problematic due to observer changes, data within a given sub-region mostly exhibit similar variability. Not surprisingly, locations to the east of Lake Michigan have higher average seasonal snowfall and greater snowfall variability than their upstream counterparts. The variations correlate fairly well among neighboring sub-regions, with the weakest relationship between northwest and southeast regions. There is a clear relationship between snowfall and temperature, with colder winters producing greater snowfall than milder winters. However, this sensitivity is strongest in the lake-effect prone regions to the east of the lake, with an effective de-correlation of snowfall and temperature in the northwest zone. As anticipated, El Niño winters are warmer and less snowy on average than neutral and La Niña winters. The North Atlantic Oscillation has the strongest relationship to snowfall in eastern regions, with a weaker correlation in the western zones. The Pacific North America and Pacific Decadal Oscillation indices do not have a clear relationship with snowfall or temperature in the eastern zones, but do exhibit a relationship to snowfall in the northwest zones. Principle Component Analysis was utilized to further explore the temporal variability, as well as generate a regional wintertime index. The leading PC exhibits substantial noise, super-imposed on a trend toward less cold and snowy winters. Snowfall trends were also examined for each sub-region, with a downward trend in recent decades most pronounced in the southeastern sub-region. This has been mostly driven by the tails of the snowfall season; an additional student group has been exploring the November data in detail