Multiple Comparison Procedures, Trimmed Means And Transformed Statistics

A modification to testing pairwise comparisons that may provide better control of Type I errors in the presence of non-normality is to use a preliminary test for symmetry which determines whether data should be trimmed symmetrically or asymmetrically. Several pairwise MCPs were investigated, employing a test of symmetry with a number of heteroscedastic test statistics that used trimmed means and Winsorized variances. Results showed improved Type I error control than competing robust statistics

Buffy the vampire slayer: what being Jewish has to do with it

This article examines the whiteness in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The author argues that the show’s overwhelming whiteness is a product of a generalized white anxiety about the numerical loss of white dominance across the United States and, in particular, in California. The article goes on to think through the role that Jewishness plays in the program, discussing the relationship between the apparently Anglo-American Buffy, played by a Jewish actor, and her sidekick, Willow, who is characterized as Jewish but is played by a non-Jewish actor. The evil master in the first series is given Nazi characteristics and the destruction that he wants to inflict carries connotations of the Holocaust. Structurally, Buffy is produced as the Jew who saves the United States from this demonic destruction. In this traumatic renarrativising, the Holocaust comes to stand for the white-experienced crisis of the loss of white supremacy in the United States. With this reading we can begin to understand the show’s popularity among early adult, predominantly white Americans

Statistical practices of educational researchers: An analysis of their ANOVA, MANOVA, and ANCOVA analyses

Articles published in several prominent educational journals were examined to investigate the use of data-analysis tools by researchers in four research paradigms: between-subjects univariate designs, between-subjects multivariate designs, repeated measures designs, and covariance designs. In addition to examining specific details pertaining to the research design (e.g., sample size, group size equality/inequality) and methods employed for data analysis, we also catalogued whether: (a) validity assumptions were examined, (b) effect size indices were reported, (c) sample sizes were selected based on power considerations, and (d) appropriate textbooks and/or articles were cited to communicate the nature of the analyses that were performed. Our analyses imply that researchers rarely verify that validity assumptions are satisfied and accordingly typically use analyses that are nonrobust to assumption violations. In addition, researchers rarely report effect size statistics, nor do they routinely perform power analyses to determine sample size requirements. We offer many recommendations to rectify these shortcomings.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Counci

Maintaining Momentum: Evolving an Information Literacy Faculty Ambassador Program

This presentation will describe the evolution of an information literacy faculty development program that shifted from focusing on singular course design to programmatic goals. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education encourages librarians to collaborate with departmental faculty in designing IL programs. This level of collaboration requires time and flexibility as each discipline will have unique curricular opportunities and challenges. At Northern Kentucky University, IL is a campus-wide strategic initiative. To advance this work, librarians developed an IL faculty ambassador program that engaged participants in year-long professional development. In many cases, the program led to assignment and course redesigns. While largely successful, the program did not incorporate ongoing support of faculty ambassadors beyond the year spent in a cohort. As such, a new program was launched to build on the initial successes of the ambassador work, while aiming to more deeply engage entire departments in taking responsibility for IL education. Presenters will provide an overview of the faculty development program, with an emphasis on its evolution, and share examples of how different disciplines are embedding information literacy. A faculty member who engaged in the program will share her experiences as a participant and the work she has done within her department to embed IL at the program level. This will include a discussion of centering the program learning outcomes around IL, revision of current assignments and the creation of an IL assignment bank for faculty in the department, and challenges juggling curricular changes with academic freedom

Introduction. Canonical Veronica: Veronica Mars and vintage television

Who did you sit with at lunch in high school? If you were an American high school student, you know that this question means much more than it might seem; and we phrase it colloquially in hopes that we might cast your mind back to those times. Did you sit with the jocks and the other popular kids? Did you sit with the eggheads, the nerds? The normal-but-not-first-rank? The outsiders? A high school lunch table is a little fiefdom, and moving from one table to another can be more difficult than crossing a national border. When we see Veronica Mars in the pilot of the series, she is sitting at lunch alone. Rob Thomas, former high school teacher, former young adult novelist, and creator of Veronica Mars, is very well aware of the implications of her lunchtime solitude. It introduces us to her lonely heroism and at the same time makes very apparent (through those she observes) the implications for the web of social interaction in which we are all caught. Veronica Mars manages a remarkable balance between the focus on the individual and the recognition of larger social patterns - at least for the first two seasons, the vintage seasons of the series

In their own voices: definitions and interpretations of physical activity

Terms such as physical activity, exercise, and leisure are perceived and interpreted differently by people differing in gender, class, and sociocultural factors. We accessed multiple diverse data sources (including qualitative data recently collected in research and evaluation studies) to explore African-American and American Indian women's (age 40+) definitions, meanings, and interpretations of “physical activity”. These women reported that physical activity is typically considered to be structured “exercise” and not incidental activities of daily life. The term “leisure” was interpreted from a cultural perspective as being lazy. These women also had difficulty understanding the meaning of “intensity” (e.g., “moderate”, “vigorous”). Researchers must acknowledge and understand inconsistencies that arise and how these might influence design of, and responses to, self-report assessment of physical activity