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Representative Data Sets (representative + data_set)
Selected AbstractsGlobalization, Human Resource Practices and Innovation: Recent Evidence from the Canadian Workplace and Employee SurveyINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2007SCOTT WALSWORTH This study examines the triangular relationship that connects the degree to which a workplace is internationally engaged, the extent to which it innovates, and the human resource practices it adopts. By pooling various years of data from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey, a nationally representative data set, we found that certain practices, such as variable pay and autonomy training, are more likely to be used in international workplaces. We subsequently found that for an international workplace, the use of variable pay contributes very little to workplace innovation while autonomy training has a positive relationship with innovation. [source] Mars and Venus at Twilight: A Critical Investigation of Moralism, Age Effects, and Sex DifferencesPOLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2003Daniel Aldrich Analysts have long sought to understand whether women and men have different ethical orientations. Some researchers have argued that women and men consistently make fundamentally different ethical judgments, especially of corruption; others have found no such disparities. This study considered whether an individual's age may also play a role in determining his or her moral judgment. A statistical investigation of interactive effects between gender and age in a nationally representative data set from Japan shows that this interaction functions better as a predictor of moralism than do education or gender alone. Older individuals of both sexes were found to have similar strict moral perceptions; as women and men age, their ethical judgments converge. [source] Diverse alcohol drinking patterns in 20 African countriesADDICTION, Issue 7 2009Thomas Clausen ABSTRACT Aims This paper describes drinking patterns in 20 African countries, exploring the extent of abstention, heavy occasional drinking and daily light drinking and how these aspects of drinking are inter-related. Design and participants Data were collected as part of the World Health Survey in 2002,04 and comprise national representative data sets from 20 African countries. A cross-sectional survey of 77 165 adults aged 18 years and older were undertaken by face-to-face interviews in respondent households. Measures Drinking behaviour was assessed in terms of life-time abstention and the following measures over the 7 days immediately preceding interview: high consumption (15 or more drinks); heavy drinking occasions (five or more standard units at at least one session) and daily light drinking (one or two drinks daily). Findings In four countries (Comoros, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal), virtually all respondents were life-time abstainers. The prevalence of current drinkers (previous week) did not exceed one-third in any country. Among current drinkers the prevalence of heavy drinking varied between 7% and 77% and the prevalence of daily light drinkers varied between 0% and 21%. Overall drinking patterns varied significantly between and within the examined African countries. Conclusions African drinking patterns are diverse, and although life-time abstinence dominates in African countries, a single typical pattern of drinking for the African continent, such as the alleged ,all-or-none' pattern, was not observed. [source] Change in Paternal Involvement from 1977 to 1997: A Cohort AnalysisFAMILY & CONSUMER SCIENCES RESEARCH JOURNAL, Issue 2 2005Scott S. Hall Contemporary social expectations of fathering promote an image of fathers more heavily involved in child rearing than their counterparts from past decades. However, some have questioned whether or not the actual "conduct" of fatherhood has changed over time. Fathers from two nationally representative data sets and from two distinct time periods,1977 and 1997,were selected to test whether there has been a change in the amount of time that fathers spend with their children. The results of a cohort analysis indicated that fathers from each of the age cohorts in 1997 reported spending more time with children on both workdays and non-workdays than comparable fathers in 1977. In addition, younger fathers from both time periods generally reported spending more time with their children than did older fathers. Common predictors of paternal involvement differed somewhat in each time period. [source] Artificial neural network inversion of magnetotelluric data in terms of three-dimensional earth macroparametersGEOPHYSICAL JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, Issue 1 2000Vjacheslav Spichak The possibility of solving the three-dimensional (3-D) inverse problem of geoelectrics using the artificial neural network (ANN) approach is investigated. The properties of a supervised ANN based on the back-propagation scheme with three layers of neurons are studied, and the ANN architecture is adjusted. A model class consisting of a dipping dyke in the basement of a two-layer earth with the dyke in contact with the overburden is used for numerical experiments. Six macroparameters of the 3-D model, namely the thickness of the top layer, which coincides with the depth of the dyke (D), the conductivity ratio between the first and second layers (C1,/C2,), the conductivity contrast of the dyke (C/C2,), and the width (W ), length (L ) and dip angle of the dyke (A), are used. Various groups of magnetotelluric field components and their transformations are studied in order to estimate the effect of the data type used on the ANN recognition ability. It is found that use of only the xy - and yx -components of impedance phases results in reasonable recognition errors for all unknown parameters (D: 0.02 per cent, C1/C2: 8.4 per cent, C/C2: 26.8 per cent, W : 0.02 per cent, L : 0.02 per cent, A: 0.24 per cent). The influence of the size and shape of the training data pool (including the ,gaps in education' and ,no target' effects) on the recognition properties is studied. Results from numerous ANN tests demonstrate that the ANN possesses good enough interpolation and extrapolation abilities if the training data pool contains a sufficient number of representative data sets. The effect of noise is estimated by means of mixing the synthetic data with 30, 50 and 100 per cent Gaussian noise. The unusual behaviour of the recognition errors for some of the model parameters when the data become more noisy (in particular, the fact that an increase in error is followed by a decrease) indicates that the use of standard techniques of noise reduction may give an opposite result, so the development of a special noise treatment methodology is required. Thus, it is shown that ANN-based recognition can be successfully used for inversion if the data correspond to the model class familiar to the ANN. No initial guess regarding the parameters of the 3-D target or 1-D layering is required. The ability of the ANN to teach itself using real geophysical (not only electromagnetic) data measured at a given location over a sufficiently long period means that there is the potential to use this approach for interpreting monitoring data. [source] National Estimates of Medication Use in Nursing Homes: Findings from the 1997 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey and the 1996 Medical Expenditure SurveyJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 3 2005Jalpa A. Doshi PhD Objectives: To provide the first nationwide estimates of medication use in nursing homes (NHs) and to introduce a new data set for examining drug use in long-term care facilities. Design: Cross-sectional comparison. Setting: NH medication files from two nationally representative data sets, the 1997 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) and the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey,Nursing Home Component (MEPS-NHC). Participants: NH residents in the MCBS (n=929, weighted n=2.0 million) and MEPS-NHC (n=5,899, weighted n=3.1 million). Measurements: Estimates include characteristics of facilities and residents, average number of drugs used per person per month, and the prevalence and duration of use by select therapeutic drug classes. Results: NH residents received, on average, seven to eight medications each month (7.6 MCBS, 7.2 MEPS-NHC). About one-third of residents had monthly drug regimens of nine or more medications (31.8% MCBS, 32.4% MEPS-NHC). The most commonly used medications in NHs, in descending order, were analgesics and antipyretics, gastrointestinal agents, electrolytic and caloric preparations, central nervous system agents, anti-infective agents, and cardiovascular agents. Conclusion: These estimates serve as examples of the first national benchmarks of prescribing patterns in NHs. This study highlights the usefulness of the MCBS as an important new resource for examining medication use in NHs. [source] Dental Insurance and Clinical Dental Outcomes in NHANES IIIJOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH DENTISTRY, Issue 4 2005Tonya R. Stancil PhD Abstract Objectives: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) 1988,1994 is one of the few nationally representative data sets with information on both private dental insurance and a clinical dental exam. The objective of this analysis was to examine the possible associations between private dental insurance and clinical exam outcomes, demographic variables, and dental visits. Methods: Using NHANES III data, analysis was limited to persons aged 20 years or older who had a dental exam and reported on their private dental insurance status. Initial analyses were based on comparisons between those with and without private dental insurance. Propensity scoring method was used to examine the effects of dental insurance on clinical exam variables. Results: The percentage of individuals with private dental insurance was significantly greater among non-Hispanic blacks, those with higher educational attainment, those living at/above the federal poverty level, and those with a dental visit in the past year compared to their respective counterparts. Those with untreated caries, those with a loss of attachment of greater than 4 mm, and those with 12,27 missing teeth were significantly less likely to have dental insurance (p<0.05) than their respective counterparts. Conclusions: These results suggest that having private dental insurance is associated with better clinical oral health status. [source] Stratified resampling of phytosociological databases: some strategies for obtaining more representative data sets for classification studiesJOURNAL OF VEGETATION SCIENCE, Issue 4 2005Ilona Knollová Abstract Question: The heterogeneous origin of the data in large phytosociological databases may seriously influence the results of their analysis. Therefore we propose some strategies for stratified resampling of such databases, which may improve the representativeness of the data. We also explore the effects of different resampling options on vegetation classification. Methods: We used 6050 plot samples (relevés) of mesic grasslands from the Czech Republic. We stratified this database using (1) geographical stratification in a grid; (2) habitat stratification created by an overlay of digital maps in GIS; (3) habitat stratification with strata defined by traditional phytosociological associations; (4) habitat stratification by numerical classification and (5) habitat stratification by Ellenberg indicator values. Each time we resampled the database, taking equal numbers of relevés per stratum. We then carried out cluster analyses for the resampled data sets and compared the resulting classifications using a newly developed procedure. Results: Random resampling of the initial data set and geographically stratified resampling resulted in similar classifications. By contrast, classifications of the resampled data sets that were based on habitat stratifications (2,5) differed from each other and from the initial data set. Stratification 2 resulted in classifications that strongly reflected environmental factors with a coarse grain of spatial heterogeneity (e.g. macroclimate), whereas stratification 5 resulted in classifications emphasizing fine-grained factors (e.g. soil nutrient status). Stratification 3 led to the most deviating results, possibly due to the subjective nature of the traditional phytosociological classifications. Conclusions: Stratified resampling may increase the representativeness of phytosociological data sets, but different types of stratification may result in different classifications. No single resampling strategy is optimal or superior: the appropriate stratification method must be selected according to the objectives of specific studies. [source] | ||||||||||||||||