Title of Document: THE MIXTURE DISTRIBUTION POLYTOMOUS RASCH MODEL USED TO ACCOUNT FOR RESPONSE STYLES ON RATING SCALES: A SIMULATION STUDY OF PARAMETER RECOVERY AND CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY Youngmi Cho, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Directed By: Professor Jeffrey R. Harring Professor George B. Macready Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology Response styles presented in rating...

The Preference for Larger Cities in China: Evidence from Rural-Urban Migrants China has long aimed to restrict population growth in large cities but encourages growth in small and medium-sized cities. At the same time, various government policies favor large cities. We conjecture that larger cities in China have more urban amenities and a better quality of life. We thus predict that a typical r...

Throughout mnany less developed economies of the world, especially those of tropical Africa, a curious economic phenomenon is presently taking place. Despite the existence of positive marginal products in agriculture and significant levels of urban unemployment, rural-urban labor migration not only continues to exist, but indeed, appears to be accelerating. Conventional economic models with the...

A standard approach to model how selection shapes phenotypic traits is the analysis of capture-recapture data relating trait variation to survival. Divergent selection, however, has never been analyzed by the capture-recapture approach. Most reported examples of differences between urban and nonurban animals reflect behavioral plasticity rather than divergent selection. The aim of this paper wa...

Climate change is increasingly exacerbating existing population health hazards, as well as resulting in new negative health effects. Flooding is one particularly deadly example of its amplifying and expanding effect on public health. This systematic review considered evidence linking green building strategies in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design® (LEED) Rating System with the po...

this article presents the findings of an environmental evaluation carried out for the city of tehran . in year 2001 evaluation was based on a mathematical model, the subject of another study prepared for the evaluation of the urban environmental quality of major iranian cities. the model includes qualitative and quantitative features of a city, forming the whole structure of the model. those ch...

A method to calculate geometrical input parameters for urban dispersion models is presented. Two cases are considered according to the relative size of the pollutant plume compared to the building size. Applying image processing techniques to urban Digital Elevation Models (DEMs, 3-D urban databases), simple geometrical parameters over extensive urban areas are calculated. Some preliminary resu...

The Change of Support Problem (COSP) reflects a possibility that the outcome of an urban analysis may critically depend on the researcher’s choice of territorial units. To verify this assumption, the present study examines the association between population growth and population size of localities, using population growth data for two levels of geographic resolution 4,667 local administrative u...

Risk assessment of urban trees is an incipient practice in Latin America, generally performed with foreign methods, due to the lack qualified personnel and locally validated or adapted methodology. This article evaluates application three methods on street Montevideo city, Uruguay: Tree Hazard Evaluation Treatment System (THREATS), Quantified Assessment (QTRA) Best Management Practices - (ISA B...