Utilizing Primary Study Quality in Meta-Analyses: A Step-by-Step Tutorial [Preprint]

E-print/Working paper (2023)

Evaluating the quality of primary studies is a key step in meta-analytic reviews to reduce the risk of bias and establish the validity of the meta-analytic inferences. However, the extant body of research ... [more ▼]

Evaluating the quality of primary studies is a key step in meta-analytic reviews to reduce the risk of bias and establish the validity of the meta-analytic inferences. However, the extant body of research offers little guidance on how to represent and incorporate primary study quality (PSQ) in meta-analyses, and some common procedures, such as creating sum scores from a set of quality indicators, often lack the backing from measurement models. Addressing these issues, we present a tutorial that guides meta-analysts in their analytic decisions and approaches to represent and incorporate PSQ. Specifically, we describe, review, and illustrate approaches to (a) select or create quality indicators or scores a priori or as part of the meta-analytic model; (b) examine the possible moderator effects of PSQ; and (c) test the sensitivity of moderator effects to PSQ. We illustrate these approaches with three examples and present a step-by-step tutorial with analytic code for researchers’ guidance. Overall, we argue for representing PSQ model-based if multiple quality indicators are available, the testing of moderator effects of PSQ on the effect sizes and their heterogeneity, and performing moderator sensitivity analyses. [less ▲]

Environmental Policy and Equity Prices

Scientific Conference (2023, June 15)

History and the Paradoxes of Digitisation: A Global Perspective

Scientific Conference (2023, June 14)

History in the digital present currently faces a paradoxical situation. When seen from a global perspective, the current state of cultural heritage digitisation is highly uneven and inequities in access ... [more ▼]

History in the digital present currently faces a paradoxical situation. When seen from a global perspective, the current state of cultural heritage digitisation is highly uneven and inequities in access abound. Global North/South divisions play a key role, yet are neither immutable nor the sole explanation as the existence of digital Norths in the South and digital Souths in the North shows. Moreover, while postcolonial legacies can reinforce global power and knowledge assymetries and impact local heritage digitization efforts in adverse ways, digitization can also function as a means to address some of those legacies. This paper will discuss the global dimensions of the politics of digitisation with concrete examples from Europe and Africa. While doing so it will simultaneously ask how they feed into selection for digitisation processes and thereby shape “history in the digital present”. [less ▲]

La standardisation des artefacts médiatiques dans les "longues" années 1960. Publicité et popularisation des radios, tourne-disques, magnétophones et téléviseurs en Allemagne, en France et au Luxembourg

Presentation (2023, June 14)

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL SUSTAINABILITY OF FREE MOBILITY POLICIES

Doctoral thesis (2023)

Second generation Iraqi migrants in Germany – what can I tell my parents and how? A qualitative study exploring the intergenerational relationship quality

Scientific Conference (2023, June 14)

While the importance of family is recognized in migration research, few studies examine how migration impacts on intergenerational relationships. The acculturation challenges for the first and second ... [more ▼]

While the importance of family is recognized in migration research, few studies examine how migration impacts on intergenerational relationships. The acculturation challenges for the first and second generation are quite different, potentially providing sources of conflict and impacting the relationship between parents and children. The factors affecting the relationship quality are poorly understood. In this qualitative study we focus on the experiences of second-generation migrants, born and raised in Germany, whose parents fled Iraq to escape conflict and war. Iraq and Germany are very distant in terms of values (see Inglehart & Welzel world cultural map, 2022 and Hofstede dimensions) and we explore the process of negotiating these different cultural influences. Six young Iraqi/ German citizens, aged between 21 – 30 years, half male/ female, were recruited to participate in this study. The second author conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews and explored the relationship with their parents – the perception of parental values and expectations and level of agreement with these. In the interviews, the tension of felt obligations and own aspirations come to the surface. Inclusive identities cannot really be achieved. The different value systems are negotiated by compartmentalization, keeping the cultural influences quite separate. Certain experiences are not shared as communications gaps – in terms of language and common understanding cannot be bridged. These affect the relationship quality of with parents. Theoretical and practical implications will be discussed. [less ▲]

School integration of immigrant children in Belgium

in Children and Society (2023)

Perspectives on Youth Work in Luxembourg (PYL): Eine empirische Studie über Verständnis, Interpretationen und Perspektiven auf Jugendarbeit in Luxemburg - Vorstellung des Forschungskonzepts

Speeches/Talks (2023)

Spatial adaptive settlement systems in archaeology. Modelling long-term settlement formation from spatial micro interactions

Doctoral thesis (2023)

Despite research history spanning more than a century, settlement patterns still hold a promise to contribute to the theories of large-scale processes in human history. Mostly they have been presented as ... [more ▼]

Despite research history spanning more than a century, settlement patterns still hold a promise to contribute to the theories of large-scale processes in human history. Mostly they have been presented as passive imprints of past human activities and spatial interactions they shape have not been studied as the driving force of historical processes. While archaeological knowledge has been used to construct geographical theories of evolution of settlement there still exist gaps in this knowledge. Currently no theoretical framework has been adopted to explore them as spatial systems emerging from micro-choices of small population units. The goal of this thesis is to propose a conceptual model of adaptive settlement systems based on complex adaptive systems framework. The model frames settlement system formation processes as an adaptive system containing spatial features, information flows, decision making population units (agents) and forming cross scale feedback loops between location choices of individuals and space modified by their aggregated choices. The goal of the model is to find new ways of interpretation of archaeological locational data as well as closer theoretical integration of micro-level choices and meso-level settlement structures. The thesis is divided into five chapters, the first chapter is dedicated to conceptualisation of the general model based on existing literature and shows that settlement systems are inherently complex adaptive systems and therefore require tools of complexity science for causal explanations. The following chapters explore both empirical and theoretical simulated settlement patterns based dedicated to studying selected information flows and feedbacks in the context of the whole system. Second and third chapters explore the case study of the Stone Age settlement in Estonia comparing residential location choice principles of different periods. In chapter 2 the relation between environmental conditions and residential choice is explored statistically. The results confirm that the relation is significant but varies between different archaeological phenomena. In the third chapter hunter-fisher-gatherer and early agrarian Corded Ware settlement systems were compared spatially using inductive models. The results indicated a large difference in their perception of landscape regarding suitability for habitation. It led to conclusions that early agrarian land use significantly extended land use potential and provided a competitive spatial benefit. In addition to spatial differences, model performance was compared and the difference was discussed in the context of proposed adaptive settlement system model. Last two chapters present theoretical agent-based simulation experiments intended to study effects discussed in relation to environmental model performance and environmental determinism in general. In the fourth chapter the central place foragingmodel was embedded in the proposed model and resource depletion, as an environmental modification mechanism, was explored. The study excluded the possibility that mobility itself would lead to modelling effects discussed in the previous chapter. The purpose of the last chapter is the disentanglement of the complex relations between social versus human-environment interactions. The study exposed non-linear spatial effects expected population density can have on the system and the general robustness of environmental inductive models in archaeology to randomness and social effect. The model indicates that social interactions between individuals lead to formation of a group agency which is determined by the environment even if individual cognitions consider the environment insignificant. It also indicates that spatial configuration of the environment has a certain influence towards population clustering therefore providing a potential pathway to population aggregation. Those empirical and theoretical results showed the new insights provided by the complex adaptive systems framework. Some of the results, including the explanation of empirical results, required the conceptual model to provide a framework of interpretation. [less ▲]

The relation between Self-Control, Need for Cognition and Action Orientation in secondary school students: A conceptual replication study

in PLoS ONE (2023)

Self-Control can be defined as the self-initiated effortful process that enables individuals to resist temptation impulses. It is relevant for conducting a healthy and successful life. For university ... [more ▼]

Self-Control can be defined as the self-initiated effortful process that enables individuals to resist temptation impulses. It is relevant for conducting a healthy and successful life. For university students, Grass et al. (2019) found that Need for Cognition as the tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking, and Action Orientation as the flexible recruitment of control resources in cognitively demanding situations, predict Self-Control. Further, Action Orientation partially mediated the relation between Need for Cognition and Self-Control. In the present conceptual replication study, we investigated the relations between Self-Control, Need for Cognition, and Action Orientation in adolescence (N = 892 9th graders) as a pivotal period for the development of Self-control. We replicated the findings that Need for Cognition and Action Orientation predict Self-Control and that Action Orientation partially mediates the relation between Need for Cognition and Self-Control. In addition, Action Orientation moderates the relation between Need for Cognition and Self-Control. This result implies that in more action-oriented students Need for Cognition more strongly predicted Self-Control than in less action-oriented students. Our findings strengthen theoretical assumptions that Need for Cognition and Action Orientation are important cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that contribute to the successful exertion of Self-Control. [less ▲]