Independent Variable. My theory generates predictions over outcomes related to judicial independence and the relationship between the government and the courts in authoritarian regimes as a result of shifting potential firm profits. In order to test the hypotheses outlined above, I need to be able to measure several theoretical concepts accurately. First, I need a measure of the potential profits that captures changes in the attractiveness of investment from the perspective of firms that does not depend on the action of the regime. Potential measures that might capture this include investor confidence, observed investment amounts, stock prices, lending interest rates, and economic growth. However, using these measures to estimate changes in judicial independence 1A list of countries included in the dataset can be found in Appendix A.1 and related measures raises major endogeneity concerns. In order to avoid this issue, I need a measure of potential profit that is exogenous to judicial independence. As a way to address this concern, I utilize global commodity price shocks as a measure of changes in potential profit. Specifically, I use a dataset of commodity price shocks from 1957 to 2007 constructed by Xxxxx and Xxxxxxxx 2014. This data measures export commodity price shocks at the country-year level constructed from price data on 65 legally traded commodities. The measure is constructed by taking the annual difference in each country’s log commodity export price index. The price index for each country is an average of all commodity export prices, weighted by the lagged export shares of that country. So if a country does not export a commodity, that commodity is given zero weight. If a country only exports one commodity, that commodity is given a weight of one. Further, these shocks are also weighted by the average of the ratio of commodity export values to GDP in the past five years. This helps capture that commodity price shocks are more important in nations where commodity exports make up a large proportion of GDP. I use export commodity price shocks as a measure of changes in potential investment profit, assuming that as the price of a commodity exported by a country increases, in general the potential for profit upon investment increases in that country. The logic is simple - if world prices for natural gas increase, it becomes more profitable to invest in natural gas extraction in countries which export natural gas. Thus, positive price shocks are indicators of an improve...
Independent Variable. Adolescents’ probable internalising disorder or probable externalising disorder SDQ subscales can be summarised into internalising (emotional and peer subscale) and externalising (conduct and hyperactivity subscales) problems (Xxxxxxx et al. 2010). Each of the subscale ranges from 0-10 with higher scores indicating more problems and with 80% of adolescents in the community having normal levels of problems in respective subscale and 10% either borderline or abnormal levels. Abnormal levels are used as an indication for having a probable emotional, conduct or hyperactivity disorder (Xxxxxxx 2001). For probable internalising disorder in this study: Cronbach’s (parent report)=0.62; Xxxxxxxx’s (adolescent report)=0.60. For probable externalising disorder in this study Cronbach’s (parent report)=0.70; Xxxxxxxx’s (adolescent report)=0.68. First, separately for adolescents and parents, probable internalising disorders were defined as reporting abnormal levels on the subscales emotional and/or peer problems; probable externalising disorders as reporting abnormal levels on conduct and/or hyperactivity problems. Second, we defined the presence of a probable internalising disorder as either adolescents or parents reporting it on an abnormal level, while we defined the absence of probable internalising disorder as both adolescents and parents reporting internalising disorders on a normal or borderline level. We proceeded accordingly for the presence and absence of externalising disorders. This was done before by (Xxxxx et al. 2013). Independent variable What was measured Measure (questionnaire or questions) How we used the measure (categories of measures are indicated in italic) Regression used as: Parents’ knowledge about adolescents’ feelings Question: ‘How much do your parents know about how you are feeling?’ Answered on a 4-point likert scale from ‘a lot’ to ‘not at all’. We collapsed four categories into two (‘a lot/some’ and ‘a little/not at all’). Independent variable General family functioning Reliable and valid six items version (Boterhoven De Haan et al. 1985) of the McMaster Family Functioning scale (Xxxxxxx et al. 1983). Items are rated on a 4-point likert scale, answers are summed up and divided by the number of items to receive a score between 1-6 (Xxxxxx et al. 1985). In this study including parents with adolescents aged 13-17, Xxxxxxxx’s =0.87. Used as proposed by Xxxxxx and colleagues (1985): score of >2 indicate healthy and 2 unhealthy family fu...
Independent Variable. • Occupation • Age of donor • Types of donors (regular or new) • Educational background • Vaccination • History of sexual behavior
Independent Variable. Place of Residence by region
Independent Variable. ⮚ Designing a guide of cooperative strategies for significant English learning.
Independent Variable. Electoral Turnover
Independent Variable. The independent variable for both research questions was a categorical measurement of religiosity. Respondents were asked in the NSDUH surveys to rank how much they agree with the following statement “Your religious beliefs influence how you make decisions in your life.” The available responses included “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “agree”, and “strongly agree”.
