How to reverse-engineer quality rankings

A good or bad product quality rating can make or break an organization. However, the notion of ??quality?? is often defined by an independent rating company that does not make the formula for determining the rank of a product publicly available. In order to invest wisely in product development, organizations are starting to use intelligent approaches for determining how funding for product development should be allocated. A critical step in this process is to ??reverse-engineer?? a rating company??s proprietary model as closely as possible. In this work, we provide a machine learning approach for this task, which optimizes a certain rank statistic that encodes preference information specific to quality rating data. We present experiments on data from a major quality rating company, and provide new methods for evaluating the solution. In addition, we provide an approach to use the reverse-engineered model to achieve a top ranked product in a cost-effective way.     

Weight suppression predicts weight gain over treatment but not treatment completion or outcome in bulimia nervosa.

The authors attempted to replicate previous findings that weight suppression is a significant predictor of treatment completion and treatment outcome (M. L. Butryn, M. R. Lowe, D. L. Safer, & W. S. Agras, 2006) and weight gain over treatment (M. R. Lowe, W. Davis, D. Lucks, R. A. Annunziato, & M. L. Butryn, 2006) among women with bulimic disorders. The authors also examined 2 alternative measures of weight variability. Participants were 132 women with bulimia nervosa treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy. Participants who dropped out of treatment did not have significantly higher levels of weight suppression than did treatment completers. Among those who completed treatment, weight suppression did not significantly predict binge eating and purging at post-treatment. Weight suppression did significantly predict weight change and, in particular, weight gain (≥5 kg) over treatment. Alternative measures of weight variability did not significantly predict treatment completion or treatment outcome, but 1 measure significantly predicted weight gain over treatment. In conclusion, the authors failed to replicate the previous finding that weight suppression predicts treatment compliance and treatment outcome, but they did replicate the finding that weight suppression predicts weight gain over treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Situational approach to the assessment of social competence in children.

Generated and evaluated a taxonomy of the situations and tasks most likely to lead deviant children to experience social difficulties. In Study 1, elementary school teachers and clinicians were asked to notice such situations as they occurred. The outcome was a 44-item taxonomy of problematic social situations for children. This survey was administered to teachers of 45 socially rejected children (79% male) from Grades 3–5 and 39 adaptive children of the opposite sociometric criteria who were matched by sex and age to the rejected Ss. The survey was found to have high internal consistency and high test–retest reliability. Six situation types emerged as factors in analyses: Peer Group Entry, Response to Peer Provocations, Response to Failure, Response to Success, Social Expectations, and Teacher Expectations. Teachers rated the rejected group as having more problems than the adaptive group in each situation, but particularly in Response to Peer Provocations and Teacher Expectations. In Study 2, 15 items within the 6 factors were presented in a hypothetical format to 39 clinic-referred rejected aggressive children (77% males) from Grades 3–5 and 34 adaptive children selected by opposite criteria and matched by sex and age to the rejected aggressive Ss, who were asked to role play their responses. The items, in particular the provocation items, again differentiated the 2 groups. Sex and age differences were also found. The usefulness of this taxonomy in a 3-step model of clinical assessment is proposed. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factor structure integrity of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire: An English–French comparison.

The Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) is one of the pre-eminent measures of gender-specific personality characteristics. To evaluate the PAQ'S viability 20 yrs after its creation, the authors assessed the dimensionality and psychometric properties of the original PAQ and a French version using samples of 637 English-speaking and French-speaking university administrators. The structure of the English form of the PAQ was supported for both women and men when the data were submitted to confirmatory analyses. Support was not as convincing for the dimensionality of the French form of the PAQ, however. Some evidence for expected differences in mean Instrumentality and Expressivity scores was found between women and men. Findings support the continued use of the English PAQ as a measure of Instrumental and Expressive personality traits. Further study of the French PAQ is recommended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-evaluation of abilities: Accurate self-assessment versus biased self-enhancement.

In Study 1, 170 volunteers (mean age 24.2 yrs) chose among 8 forms of a cognitive abilities test that varied in their diagnosticity of success, diagnosticity of failure, and difficulty. In accordance with the self-assessment view, test choice was found to be positively related to diagnosticity of success and, to a lesser extent, diagnosticity of failure. Test choice was also dependent on the interaction of diagnosticity and difficulty in a manner that was more consistent with the self-assessment view. In a 2nd study that provided more precise measurement of perceived diagnosticity and expected success, data from 40 undergraduates indicate that the motives for self-assessment and self-enhancement were each reliably related to task preference. Of the two, self-assessment motivation was a stronger determinant of task preference. Results suggest that task choice is governed largely by a concern for accurate self-appraisal and that current models may require revisions that take into account the less-than-accurate appraisal of diagnosticity. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Utilizing Instructional Consultations to Enhance the Teaching Performance of Engineering Faculty

Although many kinds of data can be used to guide instructional consultations, research comparing the efficacy of such data is scant, especially in engineering. In this study, multiple modes of assessment were used to evaluate the impact of consultations informed by different kinds of data. This study illuminates two key aspects of instructional consultations: (1) their efficacy varies depending on the kind of data used to guide them, with student feedback from a Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID) having the largest positive impact, and (2) the instructional consultant plays a key role in helping both interpret the available data and identify strategies for improvement. These findings suggest three implications for practice: (1) whenever possible, SGID‐based consultations should be offered systematically and proactively for engineering faculty, (2) data for other kinds of consultations should be tailored to the needs of the individual instructor, and (3) instructional consultants should be available to collaborate with faculty to enhance their teaching, thereby building an engineering culture that actively supports teaching and learning.     

Survey of non-APA-accredited internships and their interns.

We obtained information about the characteristics of internship programs not accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA) and of their interns. Surveys were completed by directors of 74% of the programs and 51% of the interns in these programs. The most prominent reason why these programs did not seek accreditation was financial, though several of these programs had been in existence for several years, and 65% of them indicated that they would eventually seek accreditation. More than half of the interns in these programs were from APA-accredited graduate programs; their choice of internship was closely related to the location of the site. Interns did rate APA accreditation as important in ideal site selection, although four factors were rated even more important. Over 350 interns train in nonaccredited programs, which suggests their importance in the development of professional psychologists. Efforts being made by the Association of Psychology Internship Centers (APIC) to apply minimum criteria to these programs seem well warranted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infant reactivity: Physiological correlates of newborn and 5-month temperament.

The relation between measures of heart period and vagal tone and infant reactivity was investigated in a longitudinal study of infants from birth to 5 months of age. At 2 days of age, electrocardiogram (EKG) was recorded and a pacifier-withdrawal task was administered. At 5 months of age, EKG was recorded, after which infants and mothers participated in a laboratory session designed to elicit positive and negative reactivity. Maternal ratings of 5-month infant temperament were also obtained. There was a significant concurrent relation between 5-month vagal tone and negative reactivity elicited in the laboratory and maternal ratings of activity level and smiling behavior. Newborn vagal tone predicted maternal ratings of frustration and fear. Moderate stability was found for infant reactivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inhibitory processes in adults with persistent childhood onset ADHD.

The theory that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) stems from a deficit in an executive behavioral inhibition process has been little studied in adults, where the validity of ADHD is in debate. This study examined, in high-functioning young adults with persistent ADHD and a control group, 2 leading measures of inhibitory control: the antisaccade task and the negative priming task. ADHD adults showed weakened ability to effortfully stop a reflexive or anticipated oculomotor response but had normal ability to automatically suppress irrelevant information. Results suggest that an inhibitory deficit in ADHD is confined to effortful inhibition of motor response, that antisaccade and negative priming tasks index distinct inhibition systems, and that persistence of ADHD symptoms into adulthood is associated with persistence of executive motor inhibition deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Knowledge of strategies for dealing with everyday problems from childhood through adolescence.

This study examined the knowledge that children (5th grade) and adolescents (8th and 11th grade) have of the effectiveness of strategies for dealing with everyday problems. Two hundred seventeen individuals rated the effectiveness of six strategies presented as solutions to 20 everyday problems (in school or out of the school setting) before and after information was given that added or removed an obstacle from the problem. Strategy effectiveness was dependent on the context of the specific problem. Age differences (favoring older adolescents) and gender differences (favoring females) were found when students' strategy knowledge was compared with teachers' strategy knowledge. Students' strategy knowledge was related to teachers', parents', and students' ratings of the student's practical intellectual skills as well as to achievement test scores and grades. Implications for the relation between academic and everyday intelligence are drawn. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)