A Multilevel Analysis of Asian Immigrant Children’s Reading Achievement in the Early Years:Evidence from the ECLS-K Data

This study investigates 1.5 generation1 Asian immigrant children’s(n=264)early literacy achievement patterns,treating them as a heterogeneous group.Specifically,the within-group variances in reading achievement from kindergarten to third grade are examined,drawing on four waves of data from the ECLS-K class of 1998-1999.Our analysis shows that ethnicity plays a role in shaping the children’s initial reading readiness and later growth,but the effects of languages spoken at home are not significant.Our analysis also demonstrates a persistent achievement gap between low-and high-socioeconomic status(SES)Asian groups.However,gender difference in terms of children’s reading development is not found to be significant.There is also no interaction between SES and the other factors such as gender,ethnicity and language backgrounds.

Automatic Generation of Graduation Thesis Comments Based on Multilevel Analysis

In the evaluation of graduation theses,teachers’evaluation criteria for graduation theses are inconsistent,subjective and not completely reasonable and fair.This paper proposes using the BERT model to analyze the existing graduation papers in colleges and universities and make quantitatively evaluate students’graduation projects according to the given relevant parameters.The purpose of this method is to use standards to make comprehensive,systematic and accurate evaluations and avoid the phenomenon of high repetition and similarity caused by a large number of teachers’comments.This can not only effectively improve the efficiency of graduation design evaluation but also improve the fairness of evaluation.In this paper,changing the review work of the graduation thesis from pure manual operation to machine review combined with manual operation can not only reduce manpower consumption but also make the review work more objective and fair,making it more objective on the basis of traditional subjective review.

An Assessment of Association between Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status and Infant Mortality in High Focus States in India

Neighbourhood characteristics influence infant mortality above and beyond individual/household factors. In India, there are very few studies discussing the effects of neighbourhood characteristics on infant mortality. This study examined the effect of neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics on infant mortality using data from the India’s Third District Level Household Survey conducted in 2007-2008. Multilevel analyses applied on the representative sample of 168,625 nested within 14,193 communities using MCMC procedure. Results established that place of residence, neighbourhood socio-economic factors as important determinants of infant mortality. Overall, being born in affluent (OR: 0.79, p < 0.01), more educated (OR: 0.86, p < 0.01) and socially disadvantaged caste (OR: 0.83, p < 0.01) neighbourhood was associated with the significant reduction in hazards of infant death. The finding of this study suggests that effort should be made to reduce infant mortality in these high focus states by including policies which aim at improving infant survival in the neighbourhood that is economically and socially deprived.

What contributes to individual innovativeness? A multilevel perspective

It is well-established that individual innovativeness is an indispensable quality for employees working in a variety of workplace environments.However,the interaction between the psychological and organizational factors influencing innovativeness remains unclear.This study seeks to address that research gap by examining a model comprising a mix of psychological factors(implicit theory and goal orientation)and organizational culture.Data were collected from 315 staff members working in 34 different departments/schools at Tampere University,Finland.The study employed a Bayesian multilevel path analysis that matched the hierarchical structure of the data to test the hypotheses.The results suggest that psychological factors reflecting goal orientation are the most important for interpreting individual innovativeness.Specifically,mastery goal orientation was shown to be a positive predictor and performance-approach goal orientation a negative predictor of innovativeness.Unexpectedly,departmental culture had neither a direct effect on innovativeness nor a moderation effect on the relationships between the psychological variables and innovativeness.Plausible explanations for these results and implications for future research are discussed.

The Determinants of China's Minimum Wage Rates

We use a highly disaggregated panel of macro data and minimum wages at the county level to investigate the processes behind minimum wage adjustments in China.Relying on random effects models,spatial econometrics techniques,and multilevel analyses,we document that a comparatively small number of economic variables-including the local price level and GDP per capita-are important determinants of minimum wage rates.Interactions between adjacent counties and counties of the same administrative type,and centralized mechanisms,particularly at the provincial level,also play an important role in explaining the variance in minimum wage rates across counties.Finally,we show that China's provinces are the key players for setting minimum wage rates and that,when they do so,they are not uniform in the way they weigh different economic variables.

Economic development level and urban settlement intentions of the new-generation migrants in China: direct or interaction effect?

Based on a theoretical framework,this paper uses a multilevel model to examine the factors that correlate with the settlement intentions of China’s new-generation migrants.The level of regional economic development exerts not only random effects,but also an interaction effect with social integration on urban settlement intentions.Economic factors,including household income and home ownership,have a significant positive correlation with settlement intentions,while social char-acteristics such as social integration and social identification also have a positive correlation with the settlement intentions of new-generation migrants.Moreover,family migration strategies,parental migration experiences,short migration dis-tances,and long migration durations enhance urban settlement intentions.The set-tlement intentions exhibit significant inter-group differences between the migrants born in the 1980s and in the 1990s.Differences in the effects of the determinants are observed between these group samples and the total sample.