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This study aims to provide a response to the commentary by Yuan on the paper “Marketing or Methodology” in this issue of EJM.

Conceptual argument and statistical discussion.

The authors find that some of Yuan’s arguments are incorrect, or unclear. Further, rather than contradicting the authors’ conclusions, the material provided by Yuan in his commentary actually provides additional reasons to avoid partial least squares (PLS) in marketing research. As such, Yuan’s commentary is best understood as additional evidence speaking against the use of PLS in real-world research.

This rejoinder, coupled with Yuan’s comment, continues to support the strong implication that researchers should avoid using PLS in marketing and related research.

Marketing researchers should avoid using PLS in their work.

This rejoinder supports the earlier conclusions of “Marketing or Methodology,” with additional argumentation and evidence.

Over the past 20 years, partial least squares (PLS) has become a popular method in marketing research. At the same time, several methodological studies have demonstrated problems with the technique but have had little impact on its use in marketing research practice. This study aims to present some of these criticisms in a reader-friendly way for non-methodologists.

Key critiques of PLS are summarized and demonstrated using existing data sets in easily replicated ways. Recommendations are made for assessing whether PLS is a useful method for a given research problem.

PLS is fundamentally just a way of constructing scale scores for regression. PLS provides no clear benefits for marketing researchers and has disadvantages that are features of the original design and cannot be solved within the PLS framework itself. Unweighted sums of item scores provide a more robust way of creating scale scores.

The findings strongly suggest that researchers abandon the use of PLS in typical marketing studies.

This paper provides concrete examples and techniques to practicing marketing and social science researchers regarding how to incorporate composites into their work, and how to make decisions regarding such.

This work presents a novel perspective on PLS critiques by showing how researchers can use their own data to assess whether PLS (or another composite method) can provide any advantage over simple sum scores. A composite equivalence index is introduced for this purpose.

This paper aims to assess the face validity to inform content validity of the Quality of Life – Aged Care Consumers (QOL-ACC), a new measure for quality assessment and economic evaluation in aged care.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with older adults (66–100 years) receiving aged care services at home (n = 31) and in residential care (n = 28). Participants provided feedback on draft items to take forward to the next stage of psychometric assessment. Items were removed according to several decision criteria: ambiguity, sensitive wording, not easy to answer and/or least preferred by participants.

The initial candidate set was reduced from 34 items to 15 items to include in the next stage of the QOL-ACC development alongside the preferred response category. The reduced set reflected the views of older adults, increasing the measure’s acceptability, reliability and relevance.

Quality of life is a key person-centred quality indicator recommended by the recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Responding to this policy reform objective, this study documents a key stage in the development of the QOL-ACC measure, a new measure designed to assess aged care specific quality of life.

This study proposes a novel method utilising a speech-word pair bipartite network to examine the correlation structure between members of parliament (MPs) in the context of the UK- China relationship.

We construct MP-word pair bipartite networks based on the co-occurrence relationship between MPs and words in their speech content. These networks are then mapped into monopartite MPs correlation networks. Additionally, the study calculates correlation network indicators and identifies MP communities and factions to determine the characteristics of MPs and their interrelation in the UK-China relationship. This includes insights into the distribution of key MPs, their correlation structure and the evolution and development trends of MP factions.

Analysis of the parliamentary speeches on China-related affairs in the British Parliament from 2011 to 2020 reveals that the distribution and interrelationship of MPs engaged in UK-China affairs are centralised and discrete, with a few core MPs playing an integral role in the UK-China relationship. Among them, MPs such as Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, David Cameron, Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Howell of Guildford formed factions with significant differences; however, the continuity of their evolution exhibits unstableness. The core MP factions, such as those led by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and David Cameron, have achieved a level of maturity and exert significant influence.

The research has several limitations that warrant acknowledgement. First, we mapped the MP-word pair bipartite network into the MP correlation network for analysis without directly analysing the structure of MPs based on the bipartite network. In future studies, we aim to explore various types of analysis based on the proposed bipartite networks to provide more comprehensive and accurate references for studying UK-China relations. In addition, we seek to incorporate semantic-level analyses, such as sentiment analysis of MPs, into the MP-word -pair bipartite networks for in-depth analysis. Second, the interpretations of MP structures in the UK-China relationship in this study are limited. Consequently, expertise in UK-China relations should be incorporated to enhance the study and provide more practical recommendations.

Firstly, the findings can contribute to an objective understanding of the characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations, thereby informing adjustments of focus accordingly. The identification of the main factions in the UK-China relationship emphasises the imperative for governments to pay greater attention to these MPs’ speeches and social relationships. Secondly, examining the evolution and development of MP factions aids in identifying a country’s diplomatic focus during different periods. This can assist governments in responding promptly to relevant issues and contribute to the formulation of effective foreign policies.

First, this study expands the research methodology of parliamentary debates analysis in previous studies. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study the UK-China relationship through the MP-word-pair bipartite network. This outcome inspires future researchers to apply various knowledge networks in the LIS field to elucidate deeper characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations. Second, this study provides a novel perspective for UK-China relationship analysis, which deepens the research object from keywords to MPs. This finding may offer important implications for researchers to further study the role of MPs in the UK-China relationship.

This study proposes a novel scheme for analysing the correlation structure between MPs based on bipartite networks. This approach offers insights into the development and evolving dynamics of MPs.

While there is research that has explored how institutions have responded to various crises, these are usually locally or regionally situated. However, no event has impacted higher education globally like COVID-19 and it will certainly alter the way top administrators lead and how institutions move forward. Thus, this chapter will explore how to better understand how presidents and top administrators navigate the (inter)national geopolitics as they move the institution forward. In addition, clear and up-to-date communication has proven to be important in battling this crisis. Thus, how presidents at national universities have communicated with students, faculty, staff, and various off-campus communities members regarding COVID-19 and how they have achieved is important to explore. Our findings suggest that presidents and top administrators need to build support to help them navigate the political roadblocks they may encounter. Findings also suggest that communication is the main role they play as leaders on their campus. On/off-campus community members see the presidents as the face of the university and key communicator as relates to communicating what the institutions is doing and how they are addressing the crisis. This chapter helps in better understanding the roles presidents and top administrators play during a global crisis.