On the Consequences of Frequent Applicants in Adverse Impact Analyses: A demonstration study

Electronic résumés, online applications, and automated personnel systems have reduced the effort required for a candidate to apply for employment opportunities like selection and promotion. The nature of these systems may affect analyses of adverse impact. For example, candidates that can easily apply to many positions multiple times could strongly influence analyses of adverse impact under particular circumstances. This study demonstrates some potential consequences of including frequent applicants in adverse impact analyses. Using workforce simulation methodology, we illustrate some conditions where a lesser qualified frequent applicant substantially influences the statistical significance of adverse impact detection. In some cases, the adverse impact against a subgroup may be accounted for by a single frequent applicant; in other cases, statistically significant adverse impact may be disguised by a single frequent applicant. We also consider methods for identifying frequent applicants and present options for handling these cases in analyses.     

Old Testament and Church Ministries in Two Ecumenical Dialogues

Abstract: To understand any church institution as founded by Jesus, one must take account of its relationship to his work of bringing the Old Testament revelation and its institutions to their eschatological realization. A sample of the work of recent ecumenical dialogues (BEM and the international Lutheran– Roman Catholic document on church and justification) shows that their discussions of church institutions have failed to do this adequately. This failure has complicated the efforts at unity to which these dialogues intend to contribute. Attention to the Old Testament roots of church institutions can help ecumenical ecclesiology to focus better on some important issues.     

Clergy-Congregation Mismatches and Clergy Job Satisfaction

Clergy are sometimes matched with congregations that are not as liberal or conservative as they are. We develop two arguments that predict different effects of clergy-congregation mismatches in theological conservatism/liberalism on clergy job satisfaction. One argument predicts no effect of a mismatch on job satisfaction because clergy have been socialized to expect challenges and frustrations in their ministry. The other argument predicts a reduction in clergy job satisfaction because of the clergy-congregation conflict produced by the theology mismatch. National data ( N = 2,467) from two Protestant denominations are used to test these two hypotheses. We find support for the conflict argument: theology mismatches do produce clergy job dissatisfaction, net of numerous other factors. However, this happens only when the minister is more liberal (not more conservative) than the congregation. Additional analysis also showed that these mismatched clergy are more likely to intend to leave their current churches.     

The relation between body semantics and spatial body representations

The present study addressed the relation between body semantics (i.e. semantic knowledge about the human body) and spatial body representations, by presenting participants with word pairs, one below the other, referring to body parts. The spatial position of the word pairs could be congruent (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or incongruent (MOUTH / EYE) with respect to the spatial position of the words’ referents. In addition, the spatial distance between the words’ referents was varied, resulting in word pairs referring to body parts that are close (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or far in space (e.g. EYE / FOOT). A spatial congruency effect was observed when subjects made an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) but not when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1). In addition, when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1) reaction times increased with increased distance between the body parts but when making an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) reaction times decreased with increased distance. These findings suggest that the processing of body-semantics results in the activation of a detailed visuo-spatial body representation that is modulated by the specific task requirements. We discuss these new data with respect to theories of embodied cognition and body semantics.     

Why Do So Many Children of Immigrants Attend University? Evidence for Canada

The children of Canadian immigrants from some source regions, Asia, Africa and China in particular, attend university at extraordinarily high rates. Most others participate at lower rates, but still compare favourably with non-immigrant Canadians. In this paper, the Youth in Transition Survey is used to analyse the role of various background factors on these outcomes, including parental education, family income, parental expectations, high school grades and PISA test scores. To some degree, the children of immigrants go to a university because they have higher levels of the background attributes associated with university attendance, parental education in particular. But by allowing these effects to vary by immigrant group, this research finds that the high immigrant university participation rates are largely driven by those possessing “unfavourable” characteristics (low levels of parental education in particular) attending university in spite of these apparent disadvantages.     

Constructing Gender in Chat Groups

We investigated the construction of gender in chat groups. Four unacquainted persons chatted in two gender-anonymous conditions and a non-anonymous control condition. In one anonymous condition, the gender focus was made salient. The other groups did not know about the gender focus. All participants had to guess the gender of the others and give reasons for their decisions. Results suggest that (a) overall, 2/3 of gender guesses fit the sex category of the targets, (b) gender anonymity was more comfortable for women, (c) participants used mostly gender-stereotypic cues to infer gender, however, men and women used syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cues (with different predictive value) to different degrees, (d) conversational behavior varied depending on gender anonymity, and (e) degree of gender salience was irrelevant for the use of gender as an organizing category.