More Property,Better Sex? The Relationship Between Property Ownership and Sexual Satisfaction Among Married Vietnamese Women

Since the first sexuality research in Vietnam was conducted in the late 1980s, scholarship on this field has proliferated and the topic is now less of a taboo in public discourse. Nevertheless, little is known about the area of sexual satisfaction as well as factors determining a satisfying sexual life for Vietnamese women. Using data from 2783 married women collected from a national survey, we explore the relationships among their sexual satisfaction, socio-demographic factors, and sexual experiences with a focus on their association with ownership of property. Results demonstrated that income, ethnicity, living region, frequency of sex, and sexual experience had a strong relationship with a satisfying sexual life for married women. Additionally, we found that property ownership was a strong predictor of sexual satisfaction: Women who had a savings or bank account in their own name as well as held ownership over their housing or residential land had higher odds of feeling more sexually satisfied. The present study is an important step toward follow-up research that should delve deeper into the field of human subjective sexual well-being not only from the health point of view, but also through a social and cultural lens. The study also has useful implications for those working on sexual health rights as well as for practitioners of women’s rights in development programs and projects that aim to empower women through altering traditional discourses and practices over women’s role in property ownership.     

Parents’ attitudes toward the perceived usefulness of Internet-related instruction in preschools

Integrating Internet-related applications into preschool instructional activities can enable children to develop multiple aspects of their learning abilities as well as their cognitive, affective, and relevant skills. Because of the trends toward an Internet society and parents’ expectations from preschools, many teachers have considered parents’ perceptions about the usefulness of the Internet in daily life and in workplace settings. This study examined the impacts of parents’ attitudes toward Internet use and their expectations of preschools to use Internet-related applications. We administered a questionnaire in Taiwan comprising five factors: usefulness, work value, preschool expectations, teacher competence, and learning performance. The survey data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings revealed that parents perceived the Internet as an innovative and useful tool that enhances their lives and improves their work performance. Their perceptions toward the usefulness and work value of Internet-related practices positively influenced their attitudes toward preschool expectations, and acknowledge the pedagogical advantages associated with integrating Internet-related applications into teaching for developing young children’s learning abilities. The implications of the findings are also discussed in this paper.     

Psychological Hardiness in Learning and Quality of College Life of Business Students: Evidence from Vietnam

Vietnam’s continuing economic transformation has sharply increased the demand for highly-qualified business graduates. Vietnamese universities have responded to this increase in demand by improving the quality of their programs and raising their performance standards. The degree to which high-quality competitive programs increase students’ satisfaction with their educational experience is determined by their psychological hardiness in learning, their learning motivation, and their assessments of the functional value of business education. This study gathered survey data from a convenience sample of 1,024 business students in Vietnam, then validated measures of four constructs: Quality of College Life, psychological hardiness in learning, learning motivation, and perceived functional value of business education. The relationships among the constructs were estimated by Structural Equation Modeling. The results demonstrate that psychological hardiness in learning and learning motivation have statistically significant positive impacts on students’ perceived Quality of College Life. The impacts are significantly stronger for students with higher assessments of the functional value of a business education. These findings suggest that universities could enhance the Quality of College Life and academic performance by offering programs to cultivate students’ psychological hardiness in learning and their learning motivation, and by providing them with objective information about the functional value of business careers.     

Socially Anxious and Peer-Victimized Preadolescents: “Doubly Primed” for Distress?

We examined independent and interactive associations linking preadolescents' socially anxious feelings and peer victimization experiences with their social behaviors (rated by parents and teachers) and psychophysiological arousal during lab simulations of salient peer stress situations in preadolescence (peer evaluation and peer rebuff). Sixty-three preadolescents and one parent per preadolescent participated. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), skin conductance level (SCL), and heart rate (HR) were assessed during peer stress situations. Preadolescents provided reports of social anxiety; preadolescents and parents reported on peer victimization; and parents and teachers rated prosocial and aggressive behaviors. Peer victimization moderated associations between social anxiety and both physiological arousal and social-behavior problems. As hypothesized, social anxiety was more strongly associated with lower RSA, higher HR, and higher aggressive behavior among preadolescents who experienced higher levels of peer victimization, compared to preadolescents who experienced lower levels of peer victimization.     

Modeling Concordance Correlation Coefficient for Longitudinal Study Data

Measures of agreement are used in a wide range of behavioral, biomedical, psychosocial, and health-care related research to assess reliability of diagnostic test, psychometric properties of instrument, fidelity of psychosocial intervention, and accuracy of proxy outcome. The concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) is a popular measure of agreement for continuous outcomes. In modern-day applications, data are often clustered, making inference difficult to perform using existing methods. In addition, as longitudinal study designs become increasingly popular, missing data have become a serious issue, and the lack of methods to systematically address this problem has hampered the progress of research in the aforementioned fields. In this paper, we develop a novel approach to tackle the complexities involved in addressing missing data and other related issues for performing CCC analysis within a longitudinal data setting. The approach is illustrated with both real and simulated data.     

一种简单有效的Q矩阵估计方法开发：基于非参数化方法视角

摘要：Q矩阵是认知诊断的基础,错误的Q矩阵会影响参数估计和被试诊断正确率,开发一种简单而有效的Q矩阵估计方法有助于Q矩阵的正确界定。相对于参数化的Q矩阵估计方法,本研究将海明距离（Hamming Distance,HD）用于Q矩阵估计,开发出一种简单有效的非参数化的Q矩阵估计方法。采用Monte Carlo模拟方法与实证研究相结合的研究范式,对该方法的科学性与合理性及其效果进行研究,研究结果发现（1）基于海明距离的Q矩阵估计法具有较高的估计正确率,并且该方法不受被试样本容量影响。（2）该方法简单易懂,运算时间短,是一种简单而有效的Q矩阵估计方法。（3）新方法对于Tatsuka（1990）分数减法测验的Q矩阵的估计准确率尚可,说明新方法在实践中具有较好的潜在应用前景与应用价值。     

超越启蒙心态

启蒙心态(the enlightenment mentality)作为人类历史上最具活力和转化力的意识形态,是现代西方崛起的基础。实际上,作为现代特征的,人们关注的所有主要领域,比如科学技术、工业资本、市场经济、民主政治等等,都从启蒙心态中受惠或汲取养分。而且,我们追求的那些被视为属于现代意识的价值,比如自由、平等和人权等等,如果不是在结构上,就是在起源上,与启蒙心态密不可分。