Use of Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA) as a Method of Process Evaluation: Maximizing Limited Resources of Nonprofit Organizations

Past literature shows the progression of different phases of evaluation practice in nonprofit organizations. Pressure of outcome or impact evaluation started the beginning of the 21st century. The attempt to manage the weight of conducting outcome evaluation has raised many complications, inhibiting the nonprofit organization’s ability to learn and understand the proper role of evaluation and what it can provide to assist in improving programs. It, therefore, has led to a gap in which nonprofits miss what happens during implementation, a crucial part of process evaluation. Among nonprofit organizations in the areas of youth development and after-school programs, various types of models and frameworks have been proposed to understand how the program is doing. This study focused on whether the use of Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA), within the Youth Program Quality Improvement (YPQI) framework, could be used as a method of process evaluation. Qualitative data collection with three program supervisors took place at After School Matters (ASM). Based on the results, research showed some signs of process evaluation taking place as an integral part of program supervisor’s job responsibility

Leaky Pipeline and Sacrificial Lambs: Gender, Political Parties, and Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Women in South Korea, 1988 – 2016

This study examines women’s political representation in pre-election (candidate nomination), election, and post-election (legislative activities) stages in South Korea. First, I examined factors contributing to electing women to the National Assembly in the eight national legislative elections since democratization in 1987. I conducted statistical analysis to examine how a candidate’s political experience, major party nomination, incumbency, and districts’ party loyalty affect the candidate’s electoral victory and how each influences women and men differently. I also interviewed candidates, candidate aspirants, elected legislators, legislative staffers, scholars and activists on their personal experiences with major party nomination and election campaigns. Second, I analyzed how legislators’ gender, partisanship, ideology, and gender stereotypes interact in shaping lawmakers’ legislative priorities. Using digital archives, I tracked who proposed women-friendly bills in the previous four Assemblies (2000-2016) and analyzed how invisible factors such as electoral rules, the culture of parliaments, party affiliation, and their seat types affect lawmakers’ legislative agendas and productivity, using both statistical analysis and interview analysis. This research contributes to the literature on gender and politics. There is very little known about the effectiveness of gender quotas on women’s political representation in the South Korean context. By identifying promotional or inhibitive factors leading to the election of more women to the national legislature, the findings propose policy measures that appear more effective in tackling the issue of women’s underrepresentation in politics. Based on original data in Korean language, this research also provides valuable resources for comparative studies in the future

750 GeV diphoton resonance and electric dipole moments

We examine the implication of the recently observed 750 GeV diphoton excess for the electric dipole moments of the neutron and electron. If the excess is due to a spin zero resonance which couples to photons and gluons through the loops of massive vector-like fermions, the resulting neutron electric dipole moment can be comparable to the present experimental bound if the CP-violating angle {\alpha} in the underlying new physics is of O(10^{-1}). An electron EDM comparable to the present bound can be achieved through a mixing between the 750 GeV resonance and the Standard Model Higgs boson, if the mixing angle itself for an approximately pseudoscalar resonance, or the mixing angle times the CP-violating angle {\alpha} for an approximately scalar resonance, is of O(10^{-3}). For the case that the 750 GeV resonance corresponds to a composite pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson formed by a QCD-like hypercolor dynamics confining at \Lambda_HC, the resulting neutron EDM can be estimated with \alpha ~ (750 GeV / \Lambda_HC)^2\theta_HC, where \theta_HC is the hypercolor vacuum angle.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure

May I Have Your Permission? Antecedents of Permission-Granting Intention

It has been noted that everyday low prices (EDLP) tactics help consumers reduce information search and benefit retailers’ business operation (Ellickson, Misra, & Nair, 2012). From the cost-benefit analysis tradition, it is possible that consumers are not willing to sacrifice resources to gain a small amount of discount. However, emergence of mobile technology reduces the cost for information search significantly, and enhances relevance of location-based coupon services, which poses a positive prospect for coupon usage

Can Visual Quality of Websites Affect Time Perception?

Website visual quality is one of the most important factors in determining the first impression of a website which influences users’ attitudes and behaviors towards the website. Previous research that investigated visual quality of websites tended to limit their interest to immediate responses such as attractiveness and performance efficiency. On the other hand, little research has been done to understand whether the first impression of the website created by visual quality can influence consumers’ cognition and behavior beyond the immediate response. To fill this gap, the present study is designed to investigate to what extent visual quality of a website can influence consumers’ online engagement and time perception

Increased Risk of Ischemic Stroke during Sleep in Apneic Patients.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:The literature indicates that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) increases the risk of ischemic stroke. However, the causal relationship between OSA and ischemic stroke is not well established. This study examined whether preexisting OSA symptoms affect the onset of acute ischemic stroke. METHODS:We investigated consecutive patients who were admitted with acute ischemic stroke, using a standardized protocol including the Berlin Questionnaire on symptoms of OSA prior to stroke. The collected stroke data included the time of the stroke onset, risk factors, and etiologic subtypes. The association between preceding OSA symptoms and wake-up stroke (WUS) was assessed using multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS:We identified 260 subjects with acute ischemic strokes with a definite onset time, of which 25.8% were WUS. The presence of preexisting witnessed or self-recognized sleep apnea was the only risk factor for WUS (adjusted odds ratio=2.055, 95% confidence interval=1.035-4.083, p=0.040). CONCLUSIONS:Preexisting symptoms suggestive of OSA were associated with the occurrence of WUS. This suggests that OSA contributes to ischemic stroke not only as a predisposing risk factor but also as a triggering factor. Treating OSA might therefore be beneficial in preventing stroke, particularly that occurring during sleep

What Motivates a Consumer to Generate Word of Mouth through Social Networking Sites?: Hedonic vs. Utilitarian Shopping Experience

The effects of word of mouth (WOM) is found to be one of the most powerful factors affecting consumers\u27 purchase decision, particularly in an online shopping context due to consumers\u27 inability to directly examine products. the emergence of online social media empowers consumers to easily create and share media content, and to interact with others online. Such consumer-generated contents shared through social networking services (SNS) have a critical impact on consumers\u27 decision making. Therefore, understanding what factors possibly affect online WOM generation through SNS seems important. An online survey (N=723) of US apparel shoppers revealed that hedonic shopping experience plays more important role than utilitarian shopping experience in generating online WOM through SNS. Creating an aesthetically appealing and entertaining website would be essential

Prediction of monthly Arctic sea ice concentrations using satellite and reanalysis data based on convolutional neural networks

Changes in Arctic sea ice affect atmospheric circulation, ocean current, and polar ecosystems. There have been unprecedented decreases in the amount of Arctic sea ice due to global warming. In this study, a novel 1-month sea ice concentration (SIC) prediction model is proposed, with eight predictors using a deep-learning approach, convolutional neural networks (CNNs). This monthly SIC prediction model based on CNNs is shown to perform better predictions (mean absolute error - MAE - of 2.28 %, anomaly correlation coefficient - ACC - of 0.98, root-mean-square error - RMSE - of 5.76 %, normalized RMSE - nRMSE - of 16.15 %, and NSE - Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency - of 0.97) than a random-forest-based (RF-based) model (MAE of 2.45 %, ACC of 0.98, RMSE of 6.61 %, nRMSE of 18.64 %, and NSE of 0.96) and the persistence model based on the monthly trend (MAE of 4.31 %, ACC of 0.95, RMSE of 10.54 %, nRMSE of 29.17 %, and NSE of 0.89) through hindcast validations. The spatio-temporal analysis also confirmed the superiority of the CNN model. The CNN model showed good SIC prediction results in extreme cases that recorded unforeseen sea ice plummets in 2007 and 2012 with RMSEs of less than 5.0 %. This study also examined the importance of the input variables through a sensitivity analysis. In both the CNN and RF models, the variables of past SICs were identified as the most sensitive factor in predicting SICs. For both models, the SIC-related variables generally contributed more to predict SICs over ice-covered areas, while other meteorological and oceanographic variables were more sensitive to the prediction of SICs in marginal ice zones. The proposed 1-month SIC prediction model provides valuable information which can be used in various applications, such as Arctic shipping-route planning, management of the fishing industry, and long-term sea ice forecasting and dynamics

Fashion Digital Products: Rethinking Product Categories and Characteristics

The fashion industry has witnessed drastic changes over the past few years. Technological development sparked innovations in many areas such as new production processes, marketing communications, virtual experiences on digital devices, etc. Much interest was concentrated on new technological advances in digital retail channels and consumer experiences (e.g., virtual fitting room) (e.g., Fiore & Jin, 2003) or on the process of design and/or production (e.g., mass-customization, co-design) (e.g., Ulrich, Anderson-Connell, & Wu, 2003)

Who gets labour market training? : Access biases of social investment in Finland

Policy access biases worry social policy scholars because they generate Matthew effects that exacerbate socioeconomic divides. Yet, access biases in many social investment policies, like training during unemployment, remain under-researched. Such access biases may be detrimental to a critical objective of social investment: to improve and uplift workers with precarious economic prospects. We focus here on access bias in training provided by public employment services against lower-educated workers. They are vulnerable to unemployment and fractured employment and should thus be targeted for training. While there is burgeoning attention on access biases in training against disadvantaged youths and non-citizens, fewer studies have focused on similar access bias against lower-educated workers. We highlight that access bias against such workers may stem from their lower willingness and demand for training, as well as policy design, informal eligibility criteria and caseworkers' creaming practices. We suggest, however, that greater availability of training opportunities may ease this access bias against lower-educated workers. Using the Finnish Income Distribution survey data (2007-2012), we find evidence of training access bias: primary-educated workers are significantly less likely to participate in training than upper secondary and vocationally educated workers. Concurrently, our results show that availability of training is not significantly associated with the extent of training access bias against primary-educated workers. With a Nordic welfare model that prioritizes training to remedy labour market vulnerability and stresses that access to benefits and services is based on need, Finland represents a least likely case to find such access bias in training. We therefore consider these results worrying: if it is found here, it may be prevalent in countries with other welfare models.Peer reviewe