Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies in Academia: The Faculty's Response

The history of our country reveals a continual quest to live up to our ideals. Given past impediments faced by minorities and women, institutions of higher education are committed to increasing the representation of people from historically marginalized groups. This commitment is often expressed through policies that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). To many, DEI signifies the elimination of barriers, the hope for fair representation, and the desire to respect group differences. However, DEI is seldom defined with specificity, leaving its meaning open to interpretation. Lack of definitional clarify may create confusion, suspicion, and disagreement when various policies are implemented. Some are concerned that progressive values of DEI are in tension with traditional values of academic freedom, free speech, and the disinterested pursuit of truth. To date, there has been no comprehensive investigation of whether academics perceive these commitments to be in conflict, and if so, which they prioritize. In the present research, 55 faculty across the humanities and social sciences at a public research university in California were interviewed about ten DEI policies. Qualitative content analysis revealed four ideologies—radically critical, supportive, ambivalent, and opposed—that represent distinct appraisals of whether progressive values (a) supersede, (b) complement, (c) threaten, or (d) undermine traditional values. These assessments lead to distinct perceptions of whether/how DEI policies should be implemented. Given that many academics endorse both traditional and progressive values, their perceptions of DEI policies reveal their attempts to negotiate between honoring the past and transforming the future of academia

UCPC 2016

The University of California Personality Conference (UCPC) is a bi-annual conference designed to bring together faculty and graduate students across the UC system to discuss and present topics relating to personality psychology

Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication

The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual differences, and 3 data quality indicators over the course of the academic semester in 20 participant pools (N = 2696) and with an online sample (N = 737). Weak time of semester effects were observed on data quality indicators, participant sex, and a few individual differences—conscientiousness, mood, and stress. However, there was little evidence for time of semester qualifying experimental or correlational effects. The generality of this evidence is unknown because only a subset of the tested effects demonstrated evidence for the original result in the whole sample. Mean characteristics of pool samples change slightly during the semester, but these data suggest that those changes are mostly irrelevant for detecting effects

Evaluation of underreporting of salmonellosis and shigellosis hospitalised cases in Greece, 2011: results of a capture-recapture study and a hospital registry review

Background: Salmonellosis and shigellosis are mandatorily notifiable diseases in Greece. Underreporting of both diseases has been postulated but there has not been any national study to quantify it. The objective of this study was to: a) estimate underreporting of hospitalised cases at public Greek hospitals in 2011 with a capture-recapture (C-RC) study, b) evaluate the accuracy of this estimation, c) investigate the possible impact of specific factors on notification rates, and d) estimate community incidence of both diseases. Methods: The mandatory notification system database and the database of the National Reference Laboratory for Salmonella and Shigella (NRLSS) were used in the C-RC study. The estimated total number of cases was compared with the actual number found by using the hospital records of the microbiological laboratories. Underreporting was also estimated by patients' age-group, sex, type of hospital, region and month of notification. Assessment of the community incidence was based on the extrapolation of the hospitalisation rate of the diseases in Europe. Results: The estimated underreporting of salmonellosis and shigellosis cases through the C-RC study was 47.7% and 52.0%, respectively. The reporting rate of salmonellosis significantly varied between the thirteen regions of the country from 8.3% to 95.6% (median: 28.4%). Age and sex were not related to the probability of reporting. The notification rate did not significantly differ between urban and rural areas, however, large university hospitals had a higher underreporting rate than district hospitals (p-value < 0.001). The actual underreporting, based on the hospital records review, was close to the estimated via the C-RC study; 52.8% for salmonellosis and 58.4% for shigellosis. The predicted community incidence of salmonellosis ranged from 312 to 936 and of shigellosis from 35 to 104 cases per 100,000 population. Conclusions: Underreporting was higher than that reported by other countries and factors associated with underreporting should be further explored. C-RC analysis seems to be a useful tool for the assessment of the underreporting of hospitalised cases. National data on underreporting and under-ascertainment rate are needed for assessing the accuracy of the estimation of the community burden of the diseases