Context-specific Measures Research Articles

The Role of Parent Brand Quality for Service Brand Extension Success

Although substantial differences between product quality and service quality have spurred service research for the past 30 years, studies of brand extension success drivers in a services context measure the core driver of parent brand quality, using scales developed for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). This study instead assesses parent brand quality with a context-specific measure, drawn from service quality research, and analyzes the relative effects of key brand extension success drivers for services. Partial least squares (PLS) modeling offers diagnostic information about the impact of three dimensions of perceived parent brand quality on the perceived service quality of an extension product, a key success metric for service brand extensions. In contrast with previous studies, the dominant success driver is parent brand quality rather than the perceived fit between the parent brand and the extension. Moreover, all three dimensions of parent brand quality constitute distinct drivers that should be considered when managers assess the chances of service brand extension success, with outcome quality having the strongest impact on service brand extension success. An importance performance analysis of the PLS estimates for 27 hypothetical service extensions demonstrates the diagnostic value of this approach and charts a ‘‘priority map’’ for managerial decisions.

Parenting Stress Among Parents of Deaf and Hearing Children: Associations with Language Delays and Behavior Problems

SYNOPSIS Objective. This study evaluates predictors of both general and context-specific parenting stress in a cross-sectional sample of hearing parents of young deaf and hearing children. Design. Participants were 181 children who were deaf and 92 children with normal hearing. Perceived parenting stress was measured using both general and context-specific measures. Predictors of parenting stress included parent-reported and observed child behavior problems and language delays. Results. After control for maternal education and family income, parents of deaf children reported more context-specific but not general parenting stress than parents of hearing children. Both parent-reported and observed behavior problems were higher in the deaf group compared with that in the hearing group. Children's hearing status related to child behavior problems by way of oral language delays. Furthermore, hearing status related to parenting stress by way of language delays and child behavior difficulties. Conclusions. Context-specific measures of parenting stress reflect unique challenges of this population. Both language delays and child behavior problems are associated with increased parenting stress. Identification of specific stressors related to parenting a deaf child helps to inform the development of early interventions.

Aiming for Efficiency Rather than Proficiency

The No Child Left Behind law is flawed for many reasons, but the most important is that it is built around proficiency targets. Proficiency rates are not useful metrics of school performance because universal proficiency is not a socially efficient goal for principals and teachers. Further, the variation in proficiency rates among schools reflects, in large part, interschool differences in student background characteristics. The designers of accountability systems must move away from systems designed around a one-size-fits-all standard and begin designing systems that organize and promote competition among schools. Well-organized competition among schools is the best vehicle for making sure that schools use public funds efficiently. If education officials pursue this paradigm, they must develop relative performance measures that assess the outcomes of these contests while making reasonable allowance for differences in student populations served by public schools. I will discuss a method for deriving context-specific measures of school performance. A percentile performance index tells public officials how often the students in a particular school or classroom perform better than students in other schools who began the year in similar circumstances with respect to their prior achievements, the compositions of their classmates, and their family backgrounds. This index of relative performance provides the information policymakers need to make preliminary judgments concerning when to reorganize a given school and give a new staff the opportunity to prove they can do better.

Encouraging Walking for Transport and Physical Activity in Children and Adolescents

In the post-World War II era, there have been dramatic changes to the environment that appear to be having a detrimental impact on the lifestyles and incidental physical activities of young people. These changes are not trivial and have the potential to influence not only physical health, but also mental health and child development. However, the evidence of the impact of the built environment on physical activity to date is inconsistent. This review examines the evidence on the association between the built environment and walking for transport as well as physical activity generally, with a focus on methodological issues that may explain inconsistencies in the literature to date. It appears that many studies fail to measure behaviour-specific environmental correlates, and insufficient attention is being given to differences according to the age of study participants. Higher levels of out-of-school-hours physical activity and walking appear to be significantly associated with higher levels of urban density and neighbourhoods with mixed-use planning, especially for older children and adolescents. Proximate recreational facilities also appear to predict young people's level of physical activity. However, there are inconsistencies in the literature involving studies with younger children. Independent mobility increases with age. For younger children, the impact of the built environment is influenced by the decision-making of parents as the gatekeepers of their behaviour. Cross-cultural differences may also be present and are worthy of greater exploration. As children develop and are given more independent mobility, it appears that the way neighbourhoods are designed - particularly in terms of proximity and connectivity to local destinations, including schools and shopping centres, and the presence of footpaths - becomes a determinant of whether children are able, and are permitted by their parents, to walk and use destinations locally. If older children and adolescents are to enjoy health and developmental benefits of independent mobility, a key priority must be in reducing exposure to traffic and in increasing surveillance on streets (i.e. 'eyes-on-the-street') through neighbourhood and building design, by encouraging others to walk locally, and by discouraging motor vehicle use in favour of walking and cycling. Parents need to be assured that the rights and safety of pedestrians (and cyclists) - particularly child pedestrians and cyclists - are paramount if we are to turn around our 'child-free streets', now so prevalent in contemporary Australian and US cities. There remains a need for more age- and sex-specific research using behaviour- and context-specific measures, with a view to building a more consistent evidence base to inform future environmental interventions.

Occupation-Specific Precursors of Stress among Greek Police Officers: The Roles of Rank and Gender

Although assessment of stress is typically performed using generic stress questionnaires, the context-specificity and generalisability of such assessments are often ignored. This study explored the differences in perceptions of work-related stressors in male/female and high/low rank police officers in Greece, by the application of a context-specific measure. 512 police officers representing the Hellenic police force responded to a questionnaire assessing precursors to work stress, and perceived level of stress. Results revealed that the nature of occupational stressors pertinent to Greek police officers differed as a function of their gender and their rank. Males and females differed in their perceptions of stressfulness of the context-specific issues assessed, with females reporting significantly higher stress in 21 work and organisational issues. High and low rank police officers also differed in their perceptions of stressfulness, with high rank police officers reporting more stress overall. The study highlighted the facts that work issues pertaining to female police officers' work and work issues pertaining to high and low rank police officers are of a specific nature. Women police officers are concerned more with issues related to career opportunities, roles and responsibility, and work–family issues. Risk assessment and stress management interventions should take these into consideration. Context-specificity is a good way forward in assessments of stress, and measures may need to be refined.

Team Familiarity, Role Experience, and Performance: Evidence from Indian Software Services

Much of the literature on team learning views experience as a unidimensional concept captured by the cumulative production volume of, or the number of projects completed by, a team. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that teams are stable in their membership and internal organization. In practice, however, such stability is rare, because the composition and structure of teams often change over time (e.g., between projects). In this paper, we use detailed data from an Indian software services firm to examine how such changes may affect the accumulation of experience within, and the performance of, teams. We find that the level of team familiarity (i.e., the average number of times that each member has worked with every other member of the team) has a significant positive effect on performance, but we observe that conventional measures of the experience of individual team members (e.g., years at the firm) are not consistently related to performance. We do find, however, that the role experience of individuals in a team (i.e., years in a given role within a team) is associated with better team performance. Our results offer an approach for capturing the experience held by fluid teams and highlight the need to study context-specific measures of experience, including role experience. In addition, our findings provide insight into how the interactions of team members may contribute to the development of broader firm capabilities.

Coping specificity: The case of women coping with infertility treatments

Customizing the measurement of coping to a specific situation can answer some of the concerns regarding its measurement by checklist. A context-specific measure of coping with infertility was developed on the basis of theoretical principles of coping, interviews with women and providers, and existing findings. Data on the resulting Coping with Infertility questionnaire was collected from 652 Israeli women undergoing treatment and meta-strategies of coping were identified on the basis of a hierarchical structure of the coping subscales. About half of the women also filled in adjustment measures and findings showed differential associations of coping strategies to negative and positive indicators of psychological adjustment. Taking into account coping specificity can highlight strategies that function in ways that are unique to the context. This approach could be useful as a step in the assessment and understanding of coping with a specific health threat, which can guide further research and interventions designed to improve coping effectiveness.

Evaluation of the implementation of a state government community design policy aimed at increasing local walking: Design issues and baseline results from RESIDE, Perth Western Australia

Objectives. To describe the design and baseline results of an evaluation of the Western Australian government's pedestrian-friendly subdivision design code (Liveable Neighborhood (LN) Guidelines). Methods. Baseline results (2003–2005) from a longitudinal study of people ( n = 1813) moving into new housing developments: 18 Liveable, 11 Hybrid and 45 Conventional (i.e., LDs, HDs and CDs respectively) are presented including usual recreational and transport-related walking undertaken within and outside the neighborhood, and 7-day pedometer steps. Results. At baseline, more participants walked for recreation and transport within the neighborhood (52.6%; 36.1% respectively), than outside the neighborhood (17.7%; 13.2% respectively). Notably, only 20% of average total duration of walking (128.4 min/week (SD159.8)) was transport related and within the neighborhood. There were few differences between the groups' demographic, psychosocial and perceived neighborhood environmental characteristics, pedometer steps, or the type, amount and location of self-reported walking ( p > 0.05). However, asked what factors influenced their choice of housing development, more participants moving into LDs reported aspects of their new neighborhood's walkability as important ( p < 0.05). Conclusions. The baseline results underscore the desirability of incorporating behavior and context-specific measures and value of longitudinal designs to enable changes in behavior, attitudes, and urban form to be monitored, while adjusting for baseline residential location preferences.

Biological context networks: a mosaic view of the interactome

Network models are a fundamental tool for the visualization and analysis of molecular interactions occurring in biological systems. While broadly illuminating the molecular machinery of the cell, graphical representations of protein interaction networks mask complex patterns of interaction that depend on temporal, spatial, or condition-specific contexts. In this paper, we introduce a novel graph construct called a biological context network that explicitly captures these changing patterns of interaction from one biological context to another. We consider known gene ontology biological process and cellular component annotations as a proxy for context, and show that aggregating small process-specific protein interaction sub-networks leads to the emergence of observed scale-free properties. The biological context model also provides the basis for characterizing proteins in terms of several context-specific measures, including ‘interactive promiscuity,' which identifies proteins whose interacting partners vary from one context to another. We show that such context-sensitive measures are significantly better predictors of knockout lethality than node degree, reaching better than 70% accuracy among the top scoring proteins.

Guest Editorial: Contaminant Source Zones: Remediation or Perpetual Stewardship?

Guest Editorial: Contaminant Source Zones: Remediation or Perpetual Stewardship?

Individual Risk Attitudes: New Evidence from a Large, Representative, Experimentally-Validated Survey

This paper presents new evidence on the distribution of risk attitudes in the population, using a novel set of survey questions and a representative sample of roughly 22,000 individuals living in Germany. Using a question that asks about willingness to take risks in general, on an 11-point scale, we find evidence of heterogeneity across individuals, and show that willingness to take risks is negatively related to age and being female, and positively related to height and parental education. We test the behavioral relevance of this survey measure by conducting a complementary field experiment, based on a representative sample of 450 subjects, and find that the general risk question is a good predictor of actual risk-taking behavior. We then use a more standard lottery question to measure risk preferences in our sample of 22,000, and find similar results regarding heterogeneity and determinants of risk preferences, compared to the general risk question. The lottery question also makes it possible to estimate the coefficient of relative risk aversion for each individual in the sample. Using five questions about willingness to take risks in specific domains - car driving, financial matters, sports and leisure, career, and health - the paper also studies the impact of context on risk attitudes, finding a strong but imperfect correlation across contexts. Using data on a collection of risky behaviors from different contexts, including traffic offences, portfolio choice, smoking, occupational choice, participation in sports, and migration, the paper compares the predictive power of all of the risk measures. Strikingly, the general risk question predicts all behaviors whereas the standard lottery measure does not. The best predictor for any specific behavior is typically the corresponding context-specific measure.

The emotional regulation during test-taking scale

The article describes the development and initial validity efforts for a context-specific measure of Emotional Regulation during Test-taking (ERT). Presented are results from both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis on independent half samples, one used for development and one used for validation, which supported a 39-item, four-dimensional structure (i.e., Task-Focusing, Emotion-Focusing, Regaining Task-Focus, and Cognitive-Appraising Processes). In addition, results examining the relationship between the ERT and relevant measures of test anxiety, mood regulation, and coping showed support for the construct validity of the ERT scale.

Sex, gender, and blood pressure: contributions to experimental pain report.

The current study investigated whether the relationship between sex and experimental pain report was explained by systolic blood pressure (SBP) at rest or during pain task, by gender-role socialization as assessed by the Bem Sex Role Inventory, or both. The influence of gender-role socialization on pain report is often inferred but rarely studied. Fifty female and 54 male healthy, young adults completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory and then underwent a cold pressor task. Blood pressure was assessed before and during pain testing. Univariate analyses indicated significant sex-related differences in pain threshold and pain tolerance. Baseline SBP was positively related to pain tolerance but did not explain sex differences, in accord with previous research. The Bem Sex Role Inventory demonstrated a relationship with pain, but did not explain sex differences. We suggest that context-specific measures of gender are needed to assess gender-related pain behaviors in specific situations. Results from the current study support our contention that gender is part of sex as commonly measured. Also, blood pressure does not appear to fully account for sex-related differences in pain.

Deal-Related Measures

Cognitive-based approaches to understanding promotional deals have increased during the past decade. In order to provide a solid basis for theory development, it is important that scales used to measure deal-related constructs display evidence of reliability and validity. To date, there has been no comprehensive review of the psychometric properties of deal-related measures to guide researchers and practitioners in the selection of these scales. The present study reviews thirty-three deal-related scale uses, with recommendations for their use. In particular, the domain-specific measures of deal proneness developed and used by Lichtenstein, Netemeyer, and Burton (1995) have considerable support for a claim of reliability and validity. However, support for context-specific deal-related measures have not provided adequate evidence of reliability and validity. Accordingly, a new, context-specific measure of ADeal was developed and tested. Support is provided for a claim of reliability and validity for the new ADeal measure, and recommendations are made regarding future research.

Identification and assessment of ongoing stressors in adolescents with a chronic illness: An application of the behavior-analytic model

Applied Goldfriend and D'Zurilla's (1969) Behavior-Analytic Model to the development of a context-specific measure of stressful situations for adolescents with a serious, chronic illness. In completing the situational analysis phase of the model, 45 adolescents with cystic fibrosis (CF), 20 parents of adolescents with CF, and 8 health care professionals completed structured interviews or daily diaries to obtain the widest range of problematic situations. The adolescent sample was recruited from two different medical centers, and stratified by sex and illness severity. A total of 1,174 problem situations were elicited across all participants and then content-analyzed into 164 nonredundant items in 10 domains (e.g., Medications and Treatment, and School). Few relations were found between demographic variables (e.g., age and illness severity) and the number or difficulty of problematic situations. Both adolescents and parents mentioned the greatest number of problematic situations in the domains of School, Medications and Treatment, and Parent-Teen Relationship. In terms of difficulty, all three respondents (i.e., teens, parents, and health care professionals) rated problems with Clinic and Hospital Visits as very difficult. For the adolescent sample, problems in the Parent-Teen Relationship and Health Concerns were also highly difficult. Significant associations were found between the problematic situations we identified and standardized measures of social and emotional functioning. Adolescents who rated their problems as more difficult also endorsed more symptoms of depression and lower perceptions of social competence. In a future study, the most salient items will be selected to create a role-play measure to elicit adolescents' coping strategies.

A factor replication approach to the measurement of coping

Contemporary definitions of stress emphasize the transaction between the individual and the environment. This transactional approach requires stress researchers to confront a range of measurement issues concerning how the transactional process should be operationalized in a work setting. One of the constructs that has received increased interest is that of coping. How in a work setting coping strategies should be measured, and more particularly classified, has resulted in considerable debate and discussion. This research explores the use of factor replication techniques, and more specifically FACTOREP, on a checklist of coping strategies devised for principals and deputy principals. The results suggest that when attempts are made to identify those coping factors that can be replicated across samples, there is general support for coping strategies to be classified as either problem-focused or emotion-focused. The implications of this finding are discussed in terms of the measurement of coping, coping taxonomies and issues such as coping styles versus coping behaviours and universal versus context-specific measurements.

Development of the role-play inventory of situations and coping strategies for parents of children with cystic fibrosis.

Critiqued previous conceptual and methodological approaches to the measurement of stress and coping. Applied Goldfried and D'Zurilla's behavior-analytic model to create a context-specific measure of problematic situations and coping strategies for parents of school-age children with cystic fibrosis (CF). The sample was stratified by child's gender and illness severity. Forty-seven families (46 mothers, 32 fathers) and 8 health care professionals completed structured interviews or daily diaries to obtain the widest range of problematic situations; 1,725 situations were elicited across all participants and then content-analyzed into 97 nonredundant categories in 11 domains (e.g., Discipline, Medical Care). Few differences were found in problem frequency or difficulty as a function of either gender or illness severity. Using empirical criteria, the most frequent and difficult problem situations were selected and developed into role-play vignettes that include relevant contextual, developmental, and interactional details. The Role-Play Inventory of Situations and Coping Strategies (RISCS) consists of 31 audiotaped vignettes designed to elicit and evaluate the coping strategies used by parents of children with CF.

A Maximum Decisional Efficiency Estimation Principle

This paper proposes a systematic approach to certain parameter estimation problems relevant to applied optimization models. A context-specific measure of decision maker performance called decisional efficiency is defined as a function of the unknown parameter vector. The values of this measure are considered to be distributed according to a performance density. Then a principle of Maximum Decisional Efficiency (MDE) is proposed and its relationship to the Maximum Likelihood principle of statistics is discussed. The principle is first illustrated on a problem of group ideal point estimation. Next, estimation of the ratio of ordering and holding costs in inventories managed by the EOQ model is considered. The results in both these examples are intuitively appealing, suggesting face validity of the principle. A more detailed illustration is developed for the problem of deriving a consensus scoring model for credit applicants which combines the data of more than one loan officer.

Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Information Systems Research: A Case Study

This article reports how quantitative and qualitative methods were combined in a longitudinal multidisciplinary study of interrelationships between perceptions of work and a computer information system. The article describes the problems and contributions stemming from different research perspectives and methodological approaches. It illustrates four methodological points: (1) the value of combining qualitative and quantitative methods; (2) the need for context-specific measures of job characteristics rater than exclusive reliance on standard context-independent instruments; (3) the importance of process measures when evaluating the information systems; and (4) the need to explore the necessary relationships between a computer system and the perceptions of its users, rather than unidirectional assessment of computer system impacts on users or of users characteristics on computer system implementation. Despite the normative nature of these points, the most important conclusion ins the desirability for a variety of approaches to studying information systems. No one approach to information systems research can provide the richness that information systems, as a discipline, needs for further advancement.