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This paper examines the problem of selectivity within the database and, in particular, the problem of identification of important literature. An examination was conducted on literature in a specific scientific area, quantum mechanics, identified as important using two means of selection. Four histories of quantum mechanics were examined and the references each author used were analysed. The second means of selecting important literature was a bibliometric analysis, using citation frequency literature spanning the years prior to 1937. Specific characteristics of the literature were examined as well as overall association between pairs of ranks in the two files. A gamma test of association was employed, producing an observed value interpreted as non‐significant and indicating no association between the ranks of references in the two files. Lack of association implies statistical independence. In the case of the specific attributes, the literature was examined for predictive ability. In all cases, the particular attributes showed no symmetric predictive ability. The results of this investigation have some impact in the online database area, specifically with respect to the selection and retention of items within a database.

The degree of association between sophistication in distribution management and service performance differs across industries. While there are significant associations with some of the indicators of management sophistication in all three industries used in this study, there was no consistency in the results. The only industry for which there was statistical support for a positive association between management sophistication and service performance is foodstuffs. Even this only indicates poor service providers were less sophisticated management. For all three industry groups there is evidence that factors, other than the level of management sophistication, have influenced the service rankings. The differences in the relevant importance of customer service and the various elements of distribution service may be one such factor. The inconclusiveness of association results may have been contributed to by the failure to take into account inter‐relationships between various subsets of management variables.

This is a very large subject area to discuss in forty minutes, therefore, I would like to begin by defining the aspects of the subject I intend to deal with. The statistics in the title refer to business and economic statistics only, examples of which are published by central statistical departments, trade associations and commercial publishers etc. Desk research is used to describe the process of gathering information available in published form, rather than obtaining the data directly.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control chart based on the Wilcoxon rank-sum (WRS) statistic using repetitive sampling to improve the sensitivity of the EWMA control chart to process mean shifts regardless of the prior knowledge of the underlying process distribution.

The proposed chart is developed without any distributional assumption of the underlying quality process for monitoring the location parameter. The authors developed formulae as well as algorithms to facilitate the design and implementation of the proposed chart. The performance of the proposed chart is investigated in terms of the average run-length, standard deviation of the run-length (RL), average sample size and percentiles of the RL distribution. Numerical examples are given as illustration of the design and implementation of the proposed chart.

The proposed control chart presents very attractive RL properties and outperforms the existing nonparametric EWMA control chart based on the WRS in the detection of the mean process shifts in many situations. However, the performance of the proposed chart relatively deteriorates for small phase I sample sizes.

This study develops a new control chart for monitoring the process mean using a two-sample test regardless of the nature of the underlying process distribution. The proposed control chart does not require any assumption on the type (or nature) of the process distribution. It requires a small number of subgroups in order to reach stability in the phase II performance.

Purpose: Media violence theorists made five methodological errors, which have muddled theory construction. As such, the validity of the claim that media violence must share blame for a rise in aggression in society is suspect.

Approach: Here, the authors explain those five errors: (1) Subclinical psychopathologies interact with media messages in detectable ways. Media violence researchers never paid attention to the composition of their participant samples. Consequently, they were never aware of the inherent vulnerabilities, or immunities, to media violence of their participants. (2) Media violence researchers used convenience samples when they should have used random samples to study media violence. The nature of the research questions they were asking required the use of random samples. But, with the use of convenience samples, those samples never matched the populations they were designed to examine. (3) Media violence researchers used expansive variable lists that probably triggered family-wise interaction effects, thus reporting interactions between independent and dependent variables that were meaningless. (4) Most media violence data are correlational. So, researchers used converged data from correlational studies to infer causation. But their convergence procedures were improperly executed, which led to incorrect interpretations. (5) Media violence researchers, from the outset of their work in the 1980s, pathologized media violence first, then set about trying to find out how it presumably harmed society. Those researchers should have considered the idea that media violence is nothing more than mere entertainment for most people.

Value: In addition to questioning the claims made by media violence researchers, these five errors serve as a cautionary tale to social media researchers. Scholars investigating the effects of social media use might consider the possibility that social media are nothing more than new modes of communication.

The U.S. Census Bureau, health data providers, and credit bureaus are information organizations (IOs). They collect, store, and process large sets of sensitive data on individuals, households, and organizations. Storage, processing, and dissemination technologies that IOs employ have grown in capability, sophistication, and cost‐effectiveness. These technologies have outpaced the design and implementation of procedures for protecting data in transfer from primary data provider to IO and from IO to data user. On the one hand, it is necessary to protect the confidentiality of such data; on the other hand, it is necessary to protect the accessibility to the data by users, including researchers and analysts. Conflicts ensue in the two corresponding arenas: between the IO and data providers concerned with inadequate privacy and confidentiality protection; and between the IO and data users who find their access to data restricted. In this article third‐party mechanisms for managing disputes in the privacy and information area are both theoretically justified and their empirical manifestations examined The institutional mechanisms considered include privacy and information clearinghouses, a “Better Data Bureau,” a privacy information advocate, a data ombuds, a privacy mediator, an internal privacy review board, and a data and access protection commission. Under appropriate circumstances, these arrangements promise a more flexible and responsive resolution of the conflict between privacy/confidentiality and legitimate information access than is possible through legislative action and administrative rulings alone.

This paper aims to review existing restaurant classifications within the literature in the restaurant management field. The authors discuss intra-industry ramifications of the limited use of recognized typologies and the need to prescriptively guide the description of restaurant context in the literature to communicate the internal and external validity of findings.

Restaurant categories from accepted typologies are used as keywords to collect 345 empirical studies from ten relevant journals serving the global restaurant management discipline. Content analysis of titles, abstracts and methodology sections is used to examine three propositions regarding the standardization, rationalization and efficiency of restaurant classification in imparting restaurant context in published works.

Findings show inconsistent use of existing typologies and limited use of effective restaurant descriptors to inform users about the situational context in which data were gathered or hypotheses were tested. There is a general preference for categories commonly associated with those of the National Restaurant Association.

Researchers should standardize descriptions of restaurants in manuscript titles, abstracts and methods sections, thereby enhancing integration of international research, the ability to conduct macro-level industry studies, and communication of findings to practitioners for operational use.

Recommendations are offered to optimize the use of restaurant classification so that the content of empirical studies may be more effectively accessed, digested and compared, thereby enhancing the communication of advances in the restaurant management body of knowledge to practitioners and other researchers.

The purpose of this article is intended to record the author’s personal reflections on his term of office as President of the American Marketing Association (AMA).

Personal reflections are provided in an autobiographical approach.

The article discusses the AMA situation during the 1970s, membership and conferences, the Office of the President and the author’s goals and objectives as President of the AMA. Other issues discussed include certification, Canadian affiliates, the New York Chapter and how the AMA handled the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Marketing during this period in time. International issues during the author’s Presidency included the International Marketing Federation, AMA’s International Activities and Strategic Plans and the Global Division. Political issues included dealing with the Doctoral Consortium, Bureau of the Census, the White House Department of Consumer Affairs, AMA Advocacy and a definition of Marketing.

This article records events and memories that might otherwise be forgotten. No other such account has been published of William Lazer’s term as President of the AMA.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the supply of and perceived demand for statisticians in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the past decade.

An exploratory study is conducted to examine the institutional and individual supply of statisticians in the UAE in relation to the perceived demand for such services. Supply data for the study was derived from UAE University, the Statistical Training Center and the Statistical Training Institute on statistics graduates and trainees.

It was found that the supply of statisticians and trainees from UAE universities and training bodies is falling short of meeting the actual needs of statisticians in UAE. As the demand continues for such services, concerted efforts are needed to identify and implement workable approaches to reduce the gap between supply and demand. This includes stronger collaboration between government agencies and academic institutions to create a genuine partnership utilizing the experience of developed countries in this field.

This study is the first of its kind in the UAE aimed at exploring the arising need for statistical services in the UAE. Recommendations from the study are intended to guide educational policy makers in addressing identified shortages of skilled Emirati statisticians as main contributors in supporting the knowledge-driven economy vision of UAE government.