Assessing the relationships between Nationalism, Ethnocentrism, and Individualism in Flanders using Bergstrom's approximate discrete model

Although Nationalism, Ethnocentrism, and Individualism in Flanders have been the subject of several studies before, a longitudinal analysis has not been performed on all three concepts simultaneously nor have their relationships and the direction of their relationships been studied in continuous time. In this study we performed a continuous-time state-space analysis on panel data collected from 1274 subjects, in the years 1991, 1995 and 1999. The LISREL program is used for estimating the approximate discrete model (ADM), and for comparison, also the exact discrete model (EDM) is estimated by means of the Mx program. Details of continuous time modeling, especially the EDM and ADM, are dealt with. Individualism and Ethnocentrism turn out to be connected in a moderately strong feedback relationship with the effect from Individualism towards Ethnocentrism somewhat stronger than that in the opposite direction. Both Individualism and Ethnocentrism have small effects on Nationalism. The autoregression functions, cross-lagged effect functions, and mean predictions are shown.     

Further evidence on the stationarity of betas and errors in their estimates

The objective of this paper is to study the stationarity of beta-coefficients of common stocks through time. Special attention is paid to the influence of errors in the estimated betas on various measures of stationarity. The results indicate that even for small porfolios the true betas (as opposed to estimated betas) are reasonably stable.     

A Comparison of Techniques for Detecting Cross-Cultural Inequivalence at the Item Level

This paper uses a Monte Carlo study to compare some DIFdetection techniques with respect to their ability to detect uniform aswell as nonuniform item bias.The techniques that are used in the comparison are the loglinearmodel, the logistic regression model, the signed and the unsignedarea between the item characteristic curves, the SOS1 and theSOS3 measure. A first Monte Carlo study was set up to assess theempirical distributions of the unsigned area (in the 2-PLM), theSOS1 and the SOS3 measures. A second simulation study compares all these techniques with respect to their ability to detect DIF. It was alsoinvestigated whether using a two-stage approachyields better results.     

The effect of the elapsed time between the initial refusal and conversion contact on conversion success: evidence from the 2nd round of the European social survey

The hold period between the initial refusal and the follow-up conversion attempt may be used as a strategic tool to improve conversion rates. We argue that longer hold periods result in better conversion rates, particularly among hard-to-convert refusals. In this article we will first investigate to what extend and in which manner survey authorities exert this elapsed time as an active survey instrument. Contact sheet data show that different national survey coordinators deploy different strategies with regard to this hold period. In the Netherlands, intentional survey tactics can be disentangled, whereas Swiss contact data show that the length of the hold period is a mere result other fieldwork conditions. Actual conversion success seems to be consistently dependent upon the hold period between the initial refusal and the follow-up contact.