Duplicate publication and ‘paper inflation’ in the fractals literature

The similarity of documents in a large database of published Fractals articles was examined for redundancy. Three different text matching techniques were used on published Abstracts to identify redundancy candidates, and predictions were verified by reading full text versions of the redundancy candidate articles. A small fraction of the total articles in the database was judged to be redundant. This was viewed as a lower limit, because it excluded cases where the concepts remained the same, but the text was altered substantially. Far more pervasive than redundant publications were publications that did not violate the letter of redundancy but rather violated the spirit of redundancy. There appeared to be widespread publication maximization strategies. Studies that resulted in one comprehensive paper decades ago now result in multiple papers that focus on one major problem, but are differentiated by parameter ranges, or other stratifying variables. This ‘paper inflation’ is due in large part to the increasing use of metrics (publications, patents, citations, etc) to evaluate research performance, and the researchers’ motivation to maximize the metrics. The views in this paper are solely those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of the Navy or any of its components, UNAM, University of Virginia or University of Karlsruhe.     

Personal identity: moving beyond essence

Education’s ancient and profoundly important pursuit to ‘know thyself’, is often realised through engaging with the question ‘who am I?’ In order to the identify who in this search, it is argued in this paper that personal identity should be understood to be embedded in the purposes one has for one’s life through how one relates, and is therefore spiritual. This spiritual quality of personal identity is therefore existential in character – not essential.

However, often when children respond to this question ‘who am I?’, they rely upon socially constructed categories and labels such as religious, feminine, cool, punk and the like. The application of such labelling assumes that meaningfulness lies in their essence; that is, they identify what is. This can become most problematic when individuals accept and apply such essentialist labelling to themselves, because such a process can only answer ‘what am I?’ and not the educationally more important question of ‘who am I?’ This paper therefore challenges the inadequacy of such an approach and offers a conceptualisation of personal identity which is spiritually embedded in a purpose for one’s life.     

Chronometric evidence for entrained attention

Recent theories of dynamic attention have renewed the interest in temporal context as a determinant of attention. The mechanism of dynamic attention remains unclear, and both stochastic time perception processes and deterministic oscillators are possible. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that attention can be guided by isochronous series of warning stimuli and that elapsed time cannot fully account for this effect. Experiment 2 indicates that temporal structure can be used over a limited range of time. The results of Experiment 3 indicate that temporal pattern, rather than variability, is a determinant of temporally focused attention. The results of Experiment 4 demonstrate that a coupled oscillator is a better predictor of reaction time than a stochastic timing mechanism is, under certain assumptions.     

Comparing market orientation culture of businesses and schools of business: an extension and refinement

This study extends previous work concerning the market orientation culture within specialty businesses and schools of business. Specifically, member schools of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International are separated into public and private universities. Data were collected via a mailed survey to business schools holding membership. 106 public school deans and 35 private school deans responded, for a 23% response rate. Input from the deans was sought on their perceptions of the market orientation culture within the schools. Respondents' perceptions, rated on a 7-point scale, measured four dimensions of market orientation: customer orientation, competitor orientation, organizational coordination, and overall market orientation. Data for specialty businesses were drawn from a previous study. Comparison testing between the public and private business schools' deans and business managers was conducted. Analysis indicated perceived market orientation was significantly higher for deans of private business schools than public business schools. Compared with business managers, private school deans were statistically different on only one of the four dimensions, whereas public business school deans' scores were significantly different from those of business managers on all four. Compared with each other, business school deans were statistically different on three dimensions, with private school deans reporting greater market orientation.     

An Exploratory Analysis of a Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale

Three studies investigated the psychometric properties of the newly developed self-assessed wisdom scale (SAWS). Study 1 investigated the reliability of a 30-item questionnaire assessing 5 interrelated dimensions of wisdom. Results indicated the scale had good reliability ( = .78) and adequate factor structure. Study 2 demonstrated clear differences in people's implicit theories of wisdom using the SAWS: persons instructed to complete the measure according to their implicit theories of wisdom scored significantly higher (t = 9.40, p = .000) than persons completing the measure according to their implicit theories of foolishness. Study 3 demonstrated the construct validity of the SAWS by showing significant relationships between it and two independent measures thought to reflect aspects of wisdom, namely, generativity and ego integrity. Preliminary analyses of the SAWS suggests it has good initial reliability and validity. Suggestions for scale refinement and future research are examined.     

The reminiscence circumplex and autobiographical memory functions

This study investigated the potential of a circumplex model to represent the functions of both reminiscence and autobiographical memory. Participants from four pre-existing data bases (i.e., Culley, LaVoie, & Gfeller, 2001; Webster, 1997, 2002; Webster & McCall, 1999) were combined, resulting in a total of 985 participants ranging in age from 17 to 96 (M age = 36.63 years). A total of 392 men (39.8%) and 591 women (60.1%), with two persons not reporting their gender, completed the Reminiscence Functions Scale (RFS) as part of the original four studies. The eight RFS factors were submitted to second-order factor analysis resulting in two orthogonal dimensions (self versus social and reactive/loss-oriented versus proactive/growth-oriented) accounting for 79.57% of the variance. Further, multidimensional scaling indicated that the original eight factors could be arranged in a circular fashion such that more closely related (i.e., more highly correlated) factors were placed closer together while factors less highly related were placed further apart. Advantages of a circumplex perspective for future theory and model development are illustrated.