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Olympic Advertisers Win Gold, Experience Stock Price Gains During and After the Games (오운선수작위엄고대언인영득금패(奥运选手作为广告代言人赢得金牌), 비새중화비새후적고표개격상양(比赛中和比赛后的股票价格上扬))

  • Tomovick, Chuck;Yelkur, Rama
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.80-88
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    • 2010
  • There has been considerable research examining the relationship between stockholders equity and various marketing strategies. These include studies linking stock price performance to advertising, customer service metrics, new product introductions, research and development, celebrity endorsers, brand perception, brand extensions, brand evaluation, company name changes, and sports sponsorships. Another facet of marketing investments which has received heightened scrutiny for its purported influence on stockholder equity is television advertisement embedded within specific sporting events such as the Super Bowl. Research indicates that firms which advertise in Super Bowls experience stock price gains. Given this reported relationship between advertising investment and increased shareholder value, for both general and special events, it is surprising that relatively little research attention has been paid to investigating the relationship between advertising in the Olympic Games and its subsequent impact on stockholder equity. While attention has been directed at examining the effectiveness of sponsoring the Olympic Games, much less focus has been placed on the financial soundness of advertising during the telecasts of these Games. Notable exceptions to this include Peters (2008), Pfanner (2008), Saini (2008), and Keller Fay Group (2009). This paper presents a study of Olympic advertisers who ran TV ads on NBC in the American telecasts of the 2000, 2004, and 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Five hypothesis were tested: H1: The stock prices of firms which advertised on American telecasts of the 2008, 2004 and 2000 Olympics (referred to as O-Stocks), will outperform the S&P 500 during this same period of time (i.e., the Monday before the Games through to the Friday after the Games). H2: O-Stocks will outperform the S&P 500 during the medium term, that is, for the period of the Monday before the Games through to the end of each Olympic calendar year (December 31st of 2000, 2004, and 2008 respectively). H3: O-Stocks will outperform the S&P 500 in the longer term, that is, for the period of the Monday before the Games through to the midpoint of the following years (June 30th of 2001, 2005, and 2009 respectively). H4: There will be no difference in the performance of these O-Stocks vs. the S&P 500 in the Non-Olympic time control periods (i.e. three months earlier for each of the Olympic years). H5: The annual revenue of firms which advertised on American telecasts of the 2008, 2004 and 2000 Olympics will be higher for those years than the revenue for those same firms in the years preceding those three Olympics respectively. In this study, we recorded stock prices of those companies that advertised during the Olympics for the last three Summer Olympic Games (i.e. Beijing in 2008, Athens in 2004, and Sydney in 2000). We identified these advertisers using Google searches as well as with the help of the television network (i.e., NBC) that hosted the Games. NBC held the American broadcast rights to all three Olympic Games studied. We used Internet sources to verify the parent companies of the brands that were advertised each year. Stock prices of these parent companies were found using Yahoo! Finance. Only companies that were publicly held and traded were used in the study. We identified changes in Olympic advertisers' stock prices over the four-week period that included the Monday before through the Friday after the Games. In total, there were 117 advertisers of the Games on telecasts which were broadcast in the U.S. for 2008, 2004, and 2000 Olympics. Figure 1 provides a breakdown of those advertisers, by industry sector. Results indicate the stock of the firms that advertised (O-Stocks) out-performed the S&P 500 during the period of interest and under-performed the S&P 500 during the earlier control periods. These same O-Stocks also outperformed the S&P 500 from the start of these Games through to the end of each Olympic year, and for six months beyond that. Price pressure linkage, signaling theory, high involvement viewers, and corporate activation strategies are believed to contribute to these positive results. Implications for advertisers and researchers are discussed, as are study limitations and future research directions.

A Case Study for Developing 'Personal Practical Knowledge(PPK)' of Pre-service Chemistry Teachers: Based on the Reflective Discussion of Community of Practice(CoP) Activity (예비 화학교사들의 실천적 지식(PPK) 함양을 위한 사례연구 -실행공동체(CoP) 활동의 반성적 논의를 중심으로-)

  • Kim, Yu-Jung;Hong, Hun-Gi
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.37 no.2
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    • pp.347-358
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    • 2017
  • The purpose of this study is to research on the professional development of pre-service chemistry teachers in terms of personal practical knowledge(PPK), and draw a discussion for pre-chemistry teacher education. A reflective discussion through a Community of Practice(CoP) activity has been conducted with 5 pre-service chemistry teachers studying in a college of education located in Seoul. The analysis of the results reveals that 'Subject-matter knowledge' is leaning toward massive chemical contents, 'Curriculum knowledge' is below the level of selecting, analyzing, and applying curriculum materials. 'Instruction knowledge', especially the knowledge of chemistry experiment and research, is not enough to lead secondary students' scientific experiment. 'Milieu of school knowledge' is stunted in growth for the reason of communication-deficiency between a college of education and a community, and among education- related groups. 'Self-knowledge' has been diminished not only because there is a bad influence from college classmates not wanting to be a teacher, but also a lack of communication in the chemistry-education department which can make pre-teachers' belief strong. In conclusion, it is especially needed for the chemistry-education department to strengthen pre-teachers' 'Self-knowledge' in order to develop PPK. This study suggests operating 'a professional community' that has a periodic meeting with pre-service teachers, teachers, professors, community people, education practitioners, and researchers. In addition, it would be effective for increasing pre-teachers' PPK to reconsider depth and direction of 'Subject-matter knowledge', to give an opportunity to examine curriculum materials critically and reorganize them, to improve the course of chemistry experimental subject to the way of improving pre-teachers' leadership in chemistry inquiry experiment, and to raise the quality of educational service activities.

A Convergence Analysis of the Ethnographic Method for Doctoral Dissertations in Korea : Focused on Research Participants, Data Collection Methods, and Trustworthiness Criteria (국내 박사학위 논문의 문화 기술적 연구방법에 대한 융복합적 분석 -연구 참여자, 자료 수집방법, 신뢰성 준거를 중심으로-)

  • Oh, Ho-young;Cho, Hong-Joong
    • Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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    • v.8 no.10
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    • pp.333-338
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    • 2017
  • Ethnography is concerned about specifically-based behavior and belief and the learned pattern of language and aims to describe and interpret them. Therefore, it is a classical form of qualitative research that was developed by anthropologists who spent for long time in conducting fieldworks within the cultural group. The results of analyzing ethnographic research methods of doctoral dissertations in Korea are as follows. First, the number of research participants in data collection methods was 1-10(32 dissertations, 44.4%), 11-20(18, 25%), 21-30(13, 18.1%), 31-40(2, 2.7%), and others(7, 9.8%). Second, data collection methods were in-depth interview(71, 98.6%), participant observation(70, 97.2%), document data(38, 52.7%), engineering device(12, 16.6%), and others(8, 11.1%). Data collection periods were 3-5 months(7 dissertation, 9.8%), 6-8 months(15, 20.8%), 9-11 months(14, 19.6%), 12-14 months(13, 18.1%), more than 15 months(17, 23.6%), and unpresented(4, 5.4%). Third, trustworthiness criteria were triangulation(46 dissertation, 63.9%), research participants' evaluation of study results 44(61.1%), peer researchers' advice and indication(33, 45.8%), follow-up(25, 34.7%), use of reference(20, 27.8%), reflexive subjectivity(17, 23.6%), intensive observation for a sufficient period(10, 13.9%), in-depth description(7, 9.8%), and others(7, 9.8%).

A Study on the Consumer's Service Quality Perception Based on the Types of Life-style (소비자의 라이프스타일에 따른 서비스품질 지각 차이에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Yoon-Seo;Lee, Seung-In;Choi, In
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.53-67
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    • 2009
  • For the last decades, service quality has been studied as one of the most important tools for a service company to compete with the other companies. Based on these past researches, it has been agreed that the service quality is a basic and powerful tool to create the competitive advantage. Due to similar reason, many service marketing practitioners have been also focused on the service quality to retain the existing consumers and collect the new consumers. However, service quality is subjectively perceived by individual consumers. Consumer evaluation of service quality can be different from each other. Especially consumers with one life-style may evaluate the service quality differently from the consumers with the other life-styles. Therefore we need to know whether there are differences in service quality perception on the categories of life-style. Life-style refers to a distinctive mode of living in its aggregate and broadest sense. It embodies the patterns that were developed and emerged from the dynamics of living in a society. Since the concept of life-style and its relationship to marketing was introduced in 1963 by William Lazer, methods of measuring the life-style and their application have been developed. Life-style has been usually used to segment the marketplace because it offers marketers a unique and important view of the market. When Life-style is combined with clustering methods, life-style segmentation can generate identifiable whole persons rather than isolated fragment. Life-style segmentation begins with people instead of products and classifies them into different life-style types, each characterized by a unique style of living based on a wide range of activities, interests, and opinions(Plummer, 1974). In this study we applies the life-style segmentation based on the AIO(Activities, Interests, and Opinions) to the consumers of the large discount stores. In Korea, the large discount store market has entered into maturity stage so that the market differentiation strategy is becoming a more critical issue to the marketing practitioners. One of the most important tools to differentiate from the competitors in large discount store market is continuously to provide service of better quality than competitors. This study tries to find answers about the following questions: 1) How can we categorize the consumer life-styles in the large discount store? 2) What are the characteristics of the categorized groups? 3) Are there any differences in service quality perception among the consumers with different life-styles 4) Are there any differences in consumer behavior among them in the large discount store? For the purpose, we collected survey data from consumers and analyzed the data with the SPSS package where we had $X^2$-test, factor analysis, ANOVA, MANOVA, and cluster analysis. The survey was made during one month in the April of 2008. Among the collected 306 copies of questionnaires, 281 copies were chosen as the effective samples for empirical analysis except 25 copies with wrong responses. To identify the life-style patterns, we used the measures employed by Kim and Kwon(1999), where 44 items on a seven-point scale were used to measure factors of the life-style patterns. The Principal Component Method was used for factor extraction, and the VARIMAX orthogonal factor rotation was employed. The 7 items showing low factor loading were eliminated. The results of the factor analysis suggested that nine factors of the life-style patterns were identified as follows: 1) the equality-of-sexes and pursuit-of-independence tendency 2) self-management tendency 3) sociable tendency 4) self-display tendency 5) degree of a dilettante life 6) pursuit-of-information tendency 7) bargain hunter tendency 8) TV preference tendency 9) pursuit-of-leisure tendency. Next, after the K-means cluster analysis was performed with nine factors of the life-style patterns, the life-styles of the respondents were classified into four groups which are named as the 'progressive practicality-oriented group', 'positive success-oriented group', 'sociable ostentation-oriented group', 'stable conservation-oriented group'. The analysis results for usage behavior between the market segments showed statistically significant differences in the frequency of usage, duration time in the store, consumer satisfaction, and loyalty. Also, we tried to investigate whether the large discount store consumers differently perceive the quality of service based upon the types of life-style. To measure the service quality of large discount store, we adapted several measurement models measuring the service quality such as SERVPERF, BCP, R-SERVPERF, R-BCP. MANOVA and One-Way ANOVA were performed to confirm the difference in service quality perception based on the market segments. The results have also shown significant differences between life-style types in service quality perception. These findings show that the large discount store marketers should consider consumer life-style as one of the most important market segments for marketing and understand the difference in service quality perception between life-style types. Our findings give important implications to marketers of large discount stores as well as life-style researchers. First, this study showed there were significant differences in consumer's service quality perception and usage behavior between the types of life-style. It provides evidence that the life-style approach can be a important basis in segmenting the large discount store market and will make consumers perceive the service quality high. Second, most previous researches on service quality have been in aggregate level. However, our results imply that the future research on service quality have to focus on segment level.

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A Theory Construction on the Care Experience for Spouses of Patients with Chronic Illness (만성질환자 배우자의 돌봄 경험에 대한 이론 구축)

  • Choi, Kyung-Sook;Eun, Young
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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    • v.30 no.1
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    • pp.122-136
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    • 2000
  • Chronic illness requiring attention and management during a long period of time puts great burden onto patients, their family and society. For patients with chronic illnesses, providing social support is the most important, and the fundamental support comes from their spouses. Amount and quality of support from spouses seems to differentiated according to the sex of patients. Female patients tend to believe that their spouses are not very supportive. Therefore, the researchers assessed the burden of husbands of female arthritis patients to discover the factors that result in greater burden. Also, they developed a theoretical model of husbands′ care for their wives through a qualitative research into husbands′ experience. Method 1: The study material was 650 female arthritis patients registered in an arthritis clinic. The questionnaire about the disease experience of female arthritis patients and the burden of husbands were sent. Returned questionnaires numbered 210(32.3%) and 27 were excluded because of inadequate answers. The remaining 183 questionnaires were analyzed. The mean age of the patients was 51 years and the mean age of spouses was 55 years. The mean marital period was 28 years. The average duration since diagnosis was 9.1 years. Education level was varied from primary school to graduate school, and average income/month was 1,517,300 won. Method 2: Initial questionnaire studies on the burden of husbands were performed. Among 183 responding husbands, 23 consented to participate for a qualitative research. Data was obtained by direct and telephone interviews. The mean age of participants was 58 years, and the educational level and socioeconomic status also varied. Result: 1. Husbands′ burden: The average burden was 57.68 with a range of 6-96. 2. Burden and general characteristics: The husband′s burden correlated with the age of the patients, numbers in the family, therapy methods, patient′s level of discomfort, patient′s disease severity, patient′s level of dependence and the husband′s understanding of the level of severity. 3. Linear correlation analysis on burden: The husbands′ burden is explained in 22.5% by husband′s recognition of level of severity and husbands′ age. 4. There were four patterns of the burden on husbands: both objectve burden and subjective burden were high(pattern I), both of objectve burden and subjective burden were low(pattern II), objective burden was high but subjective burden was low(pattern III), objective burden was low but subjective burden was high(pattern IV). The pattern was correlated with the family income, educational level of the patients and their husbands, therapy methods, patient′s level of discomfort, patient′s disease severity, patient′s level of dependence and husband′s understanding of level of severity. 5. The core category of the caring experience of the husbands with arthritis patients was "companionship". The causal factor was the patients′ experience due to symptoms : physical disfigurement, pain, immobility, limitation of house chores, and limitation of social activities. Contextural factors are husbands′ identification of housework and husbands′ concern about the disease. The mediating factors are economic problems, fear of aging, feeling of limitation and family support. The strategy for interaction is mind control and how to solve emotional stress. The "companionship" resulted from caring activities, participation of household activities, helping patients′ to coping with emotional experience. 6. Companionship is established through the process of entering intervention, and caring state of mind. Entering intervention is the phase of participation of therapy and involvement of houseworks. The caring phase consists of decision on therapy, providing therapy, providing direct care, and taking over the household role of wife. Through caring phase, the changing phase set a stage in which husbands consolidate the relationship with their wives, and are reminded of the meaning of marriage. As a result, in changing phase, husbands′ companionship is enhanced. In conclusion, nursing care of chronic illnesses should include a family member especially the spouse. All information on disease shoud be provided to patients and whole family member. Strong support should also be provided to overcome difficulties in taking over role of other sex. Then the quality of life of patients and families will be much improved.

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The Patterns of Students' Conceptual Changes on Force by Age (나이에 따른 학생들의 힘에 관한 개념 변화 특성)

  • Kim, Yeoun-Soo;Kwon, Jae-Sool
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.221-233
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    • 2000
  • Many investigators have reported difficulties in changing the high school students' misconceptions on mechanics. By one possible solution to this problem, some researchers suggested that the students should be taught mechanics at a younger age to make conceptual changes possible. because as they get older they become less willing to change their ideas. The purpose of this study was to compare the patterns of students' conceptual changes on force by age, to find out whether older students were less ready to change their conceptions than younger students. Individual interviews were carried out with 35 students (average ages 13) in middle school class and 50 students (average ages 17) in high school class near by the middle school. Those students who held the misconcetpion that "motion-implies-force (Impetus conception)" were asked to read a student-centered refutational text (anomalous data). In the immediate and delayed posttest, the types of responses of the students were analyzed to find out the patterns of student's conceptual changes on force by age. In result, first, most of students had impetus conception. Some of the students aged 13 understood the force as terminologies related with everyday experiences, while the students aged 17 understood the force as scientific terminologies. Second, there was no evidence to suggest that conceptual change is more difficult for the students aged 17 than aged 13. Third, the students aged 13 showed diverse responses (plain acceptance, critical acceptance, plain rejection, critical rejection) to the refutational text, while the students aged 17 showed restricted responses (critical acceptance, critical rejection). A month later those students who showed the plain acceptance retrogressed unscientific conceptions, while those students who showed critical acceptance maintained scientific conceptions. We did not find out any evidence to suggest that conceptual change is more difficult for older students. These results need deeper investigation on the nature of the loss of plasticity in comparison with other important variables.

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A Study of the Evolving Process of Wealthy Major Donors' Sharing Lives in Korea (부유층의 기부과정에 관한 연구)

  • Kang, Chul-Hee;Kim, Mi-Ok
    • Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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    • v.59 no.2
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    • pp.5-38
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    • 2007
  • This study attempts to develop a theory on the evolving process of wealthy major donors' sharing lives in Korea through a grounded theory approach. To conduct this study, the researchers have in-depth interviews with 11 exemplary wealthy major donors who have more than one million US dollars in his or her own asset and donate more than ten thousand US dollars annually. In data analysis, this study identifies 161 concepts on the evolving process of wealthy major donors' sharing lives; and the concepts are categorized with 33 sub-categories and 14 categories. In the paradigm model on the evolving process of wealthy major donors' sharing lives, it is identified that the central phenomenon, 'practicing sharing lives as noblesse oblige', is related with the causal conditions such as 'learning through memories and observation', 'realizing my duties', and 'emphasizing'; and the central phenomenon is related with the contingent conditions such as 'being sensitive to external evaluation', 'having limited information on giving', 'distrusting donation related environments'. The action/interactional sequences such as 'utilizing relationships' and 'strengthening active participation' are accomplished by moderating conditions such as 'having internal and external supports' and 'guiding by firm conviction'. It reveals that as a result, wealthy major donors enjoy the feeling of becoming a ideal and true wealthy person, establish sharing lives as firm and major parts of overall lives, and experience strong desires for better future and society. In this study, 'generous sharing that shares personal heritages and social benefits' is analyzed as a core category; it shows that sharing of wealthy major donors is related to the characteristics of generosity practice based on moral self-benefiting rather than complete altruistic characteristics or self-sacrificial characteristics. The process analysis reveals that it has the following stages: first, initial giving by exposure to causes or requests; second, routine practice of giving; third, evolution of practice of giving with gradual expansion in quantities and qualities; and fourth, living with giving. In the process, the following four types are identified: devoted wealthy donors for sharing, wealthy donors practicing sharing in daily life, wealthy donors practicing sharing with learning on external stimulus, and wealthy donors practicing sharing on empathy. Finally, this study discusses both meanings of identifying and developing a theory on the evolving process of wealthy major donors' sharing lives and implications of the research results in cultivating and developing potential wealthy major donors in Korea.

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The Content Analysis of the Clothing Life Unit in the Technology.Home Economics Textbooks of Middle School Based on the Elaboration Theory (정교화 교수이론에 근거한 중학교 기술.가정 교과서 의생활 영역 분석)

  • Heo, YoungSun;Choi, MinJi;Son, Juyoung;Kim, SaetByeol;Baek, MinKyung;Shim, Huensup
    • Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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    • v.26 no.3
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    • pp.35-52
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    • 2014
  • This study analyzed the 12 different technology home economics textbooks I, II for middle school students and the content systems of the textbooks by 7 instructional strategies in Reigeluth's elaboration theory. The units analyzed were 'Clothing and self-expression' and 'Eco-friendly clothing life and recycling by reform'. The purpose of this study was to provide basic information for the development of textbooks and teaching materials by analyzing current textbooks. Researchers analyzed the textbooks individually using pre-developed analysis frame using Reigeluth's elaboration theory. The results of the study were as follows. The conceptual elaboration process was used in the unit of 'Clothing and self-expression' of all the textbooks used in this study, and procedural elaboration process was mostly used in the unit of 'Eco-friendly clothing life and recycling by reform'. The strategies of advance learning ability were presented mostly in the forms of 'Learning Objective', 'Thought Opening', 'Key terms' in either unit and sub unit. The strategies of summarizer were presented as 'Unit Summary', 'Cleanup' and 'Assessment'. The strategies of synthesizer were used in all the textbooks as the 'Exploration' to increase the students interest through the promotion of the learning content in a variety of activities and projects. The cognitive activator strategies were shown in all of the textbooks using mostly 'Figure,' and others such as 'Table,' 'Diagram', and 'Explanation of Terms'. The strategies of learner control were used to guide the supplement and deepen the learning by various forms. However the analogy strategies were hardly used in units of textbooks analyzed in this study. As a result, the technology home economics textbooks I, II for middle school students applied the Reigeluth's elaboration theory, except the analogy strategies. It is recommended to utilize th analogy strategies and various activities to enhance the students' understanding and participation.

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Study on the Developmental Standard of Short Sensory Profile: Application to Korean Children Aged Seven to Nine Years Old (7~9세 아동의 단축감각력 발달적 기준에 관한 일연구)

  • Kim, Mi-Sun;Ji, Seok-Yeon;Keum, Hyo-Jin;Kim, Sung-Hee
    • The Journal of Korean Academy of Sensory Integration
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    • v.7 no.1
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    • pp.37-46
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    • 2009
  • Background : Theory of Sensory Integration (SI) was initially developed with an effort to understand children's behavior by Jean Ayres and has been evolved with extensive research by occupational therapist practitioners and researchers since in the latter of the 20 century. With extension of recognition to SI, various professions begin to refer their clients who are children with sensory integration dysfunction. Upon those referrals, occupational therapists normally use Short Sensory Profile (SSP) to screen and decide whether SI therapeutic intervention is needed or not. Objective : Purpose of this study is (1) to examine any difference between different age groups and genders for children who are seven to nine years old; (2) to compare the score results of those Korean children with the original Standard which is established for American children: and (3) to compare tendency of response for each item between children with- and without SI dysfunction. This study was intended to validate test items of the SSP and determine whether the original standard of SSP is applicable for Korean children. Method : 155 students (81 for male, 74 for female) underwent SI evaluation using the Korean-translated SSP. 52 student (22 for male, 30 for female) were 7 years old, 54 students (32 for male, 22 for female) were 8 years old, 49 students (27for male, 22 for female) were 9 years old. Results : There is no significant difference of SSP score by neither age nor gender. In comparison the average score and sensory integrative disorder with the American Standard, there is significant difference on score of sub-item and total score. For six items, there is no significant difference on the tendency of response between children with- and without SI dysfunction. Conclusions : It is concluded that the original standard is suitable for Korean children aged seven to nine. The six test items that children without SI dysfunction shown similar tendency to respond are questionable to be appropriate as screening test item. It is suggested to proceed to do further item analysis study and extend the study to broad age groups, so develop the most appropriate Standard of SSP for Korean children.

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Corporate Bond Rating Using Various Multiclass Support Vector Machines (다양한 다분류 SVM을 적용한 기업채권평가)

  • Ahn, Hyun-Chul;Kim, Kyoung-Jae
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.157-178
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    • 2009
  • Corporate credit rating is a very important factor in the market for corporate debt. Information concerning corporate operations is often disseminated to market participants through the changes in credit ratings that are published by professional rating agencies, such as Standard and Poor's (S&P) and Moody's Investor Service. Since these agencies generally require a large fee for the service, and the periodically provided ratings sometimes do not reflect the default risk of the company at the time, it may be advantageous for bond-market participants to be able to classify credit ratings before the agencies actually publish them. As a result, it is very important for companies (especially, financial companies) to develop a proper model of credit rating. From a technical perspective, the credit rating constitutes a typical, multiclass, classification problem because rating agencies generally have ten or more categories of ratings. For example, S&P's ratings range from AAA for the highest-quality bonds to D for the lowest-quality bonds. The professional rating agencies emphasize the importance of analysts' subjective judgments in the determination of credit ratings. However, in practice, a mathematical model that uses the financial variables of companies plays an important role in determining credit ratings, since it is convenient to apply and cost efficient. These financial variables include the ratios that represent a company's leverage status, liquidity status, and profitability status. Several statistical and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have been applied as tools for predicting credit ratings. Among them, artificial neural networks are most prevalent in the area of finance because of their broad applicability to many business problems and their preeminent ability to adapt. However, artificial neural networks also have many defects, including the difficulty in determining the values of the control parameters and the number of processing elements in the layer as well as the risk of over-fitting. Of late, because of their robustness and high accuracy, support vector machines (SVMs) have become popular as a solution for problems with generating accurate prediction. An SVM's solution may be globally optimal because SVMs seek to minimize structural risk. On the other hand, artificial neural network models may tend to find locally optimal solutions because they seek to minimize empirical risk. In addition, no parameters need to be tuned in SVMs, barring the upper bound for non-separable cases in linear SVMs. Since SVMs were originally devised for binary classification, however they are not intrinsically geared for multiclass classifications as in credit ratings. Thus, researchers have tried to extend the original SVM to multiclass classification. Hitherto, a variety of techniques to extend standard SVMs to multiclass SVMs (MSVMs) has been proposed in the literature Only a few types of MSVM are, however, tested using prior studies that apply MSVMs to credit ratings studies. In this study, we examined six different techniques of MSVMs: (1) One-Against-One, (2) One-Against-AIL (3) DAGSVM, (4) ECOC, (5) Method of Weston and Watkins, and (6) Method of Crammer and Singer. In addition, we examined the prediction accuracy of some modified version of conventional MSVM techniques. To find the most appropriate technique of MSVMs for corporate bond rating, we applied all the techniques of MSVMs to a real-world case of credit rating in Korea. The best application is in corporate bond rating, which is the most frequently studied area of credit rating for specific debt issues or other financial obligations. For our study the research data were collected from National Information and Credit Evaluation, Inc., a major bond-rating company in Korea. The data set is comprised of the bond-ratings for the year 2002 and various financial variables for 1,295 companies from the manufacturing industry in Korea. We compared the results of these techniques with one another, and with those of traditional methods for credit ratings, such as multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), multinomial logistic regression (MLOGIT), and artificial neural networks (ANNs). As a result, we found that DAGSVM with an ordered list was the best approach for the prediction of bond rating. In addition, we found that the modified version of ECOC approach can yield higher prediction accuracy for the cases showing clear patterns.