In goodness-of-fit testing, the goal is to determine if data come from a particular distribution. One graphical approach to test goodness-of-fit is a probability plot. Two probability plots typically used are the probability-probability plot and the quantile-quantile plot, but to use these plots, plotting points are needed. Balakrishnan et al. (2010) proposed a new plotting point based on simultaneous closeness probabilities. This was followed up by a correlation-type goodness-of-fit test based on these plotting points. In this thesis, two tests based on the correlation coefficient test are proposed; in particular, a maximal-correlation coefficient test and a minimal-correlation coefficient test which are based on simultaneous closeness probabilities are developed. Two approaches are considered to investigate these two tests: a grid search method and an averaging method. Numerical results, including illustrative examples, critical values and a power study are also provided.

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SNA provides a wide range of tools that allow examination of telecommunications graphs. Those graphs contain vertices representing cell phone users and lines standing for established connections. Many sna tools do not incorporate the intensity of interaction. This may lead to wrong conclusions because the difference between best friends and random contacts can be defined by the accumulated duration of talks. To solve this problem, we propose a closeness centrality measure (ewc) that incorporates line values and compare it to Freeman's closeness. Small exemplary networks will demonstrate the characteristics of the weighted closeness compared to other centrality measures. Finally, the ewc will be tested on a real-world telecommunications graph provided by a large Austrian mobile service provider and the advantages of the ewc will be discussed. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

Differ from previous research which mainly focus on irrational decision making, using economical principle to consider how to get the maximum profit, and often say they have abilities to use each criteria for evaluating every option. They can solve their problem through analytical, rational and logical thinking. This study aim to discusses how emotional could influence on decision-making process, and people would have emotional involvement in the information selection. They would use the moment of emotion to predict and expect for future circumstances with positive emotional involvement, which the relationship is an emotional expression, and the event significant or not, depends on how important the incident to people (expected relationship would be frequency and strength). This study can improve the relationship in the decision-making play an important role.

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With around 50 percent of all dissolving marriages consisting of families with children, and around half of residential parents reporting some experience with dating new partners within 60 days of filing for divorce, there is a need to understand the influences on children’s relationships and the possible consequences or benefits that may be imposed on children due to not only divorce, but additional parental transitions such as repartnering. In this study, I used data from the Texas Families Project, a longitudinal, multi-informant, multi-method study, to examine the implications of mothers’ repartnering for children’s closeness and involvement with nonresident fathers. Resident mother’s dating status alone does not seem to impact children’s closeness and involvement with their nonresident fathers as much as the new relationship that children are forming with their mothers’ partners impacts these relationships. Mothers’ and children’s reports differ, providing competing results as to whether or not children’s relationships with their mothers’ partners is associated with changes in children’s relationships with their fathers. Children report a positive relationship between involvement with their mothers’ romantic partners and involvement with their nonresident fathers, suggesting that both children’s biological fathers and their alternative caretaker play a valuable role in their lives. Mothers’ reports show that there is a negative relationship between the amount of time spent with their mothers’ romantic partner and positive involvement with children’s nonresident father, suggesting that children could be substituting time with their fathers for time with their mothers’ romantic partner. Although contact may decrease due to the child and mothers’ romantic partner relationship, child’s closeness to their father is not affected, supporting research that states that children may continue to feel close to their fathers even when contact is low. / text

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This thesis presents three essays on audit quality tied up by a common thread: the implication of closeness in auditor-client relationship on audit quality and beyond. In Chapter II, I investigate the implications of close auditor-client relationships arising as time passes on clients’ operating decisions. I find long auditor tenure constrains clients’ discretion in accrual reporting, which in turn prompts firms to resort to real activity management if they are under pressure to achieve earnings targets. For a given length of auditor tenure, the presence of auditor industry expertise does not affect the association between tenure and clients’ engagement in real activity management. These findings highlight an unintended consequence of long auditor tenure and therefore contribute to the on-going debate concerning the merits and shortcomings of mandatory audit firm rotation. In Chapter III and IV, we examine the implications of close auditor-client relationships arising from economic bonding on audit quality reflected from clients’ accrual reporting and auditors’ going-concern decisions. In Chapter III, we find a significantly positive association between fee dependence and abnormal accruals prior to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (hereafter SOX), but not in the post-SOX period, suggesting that SOX has enhanced non Big-4’s ability to withstand client pressure arising from fee dependence. These results suggest strong economic bonding between auditors and clients may impair audit quality among smaller auditors, and tightening auditors’ external litigation exposures enhances small auditors’ abilities to withstand client pressure. In Chapter IV, we find that even for firms that are most targeted by SOX, auditors do not allow economic bonding to affect their going-concern decisions in either the pre- or the post-SOX period. These findings thus suggest potential litigation risks faced by auditors in the event of failures to warn the public about their clients’ severe financial distress prior to bankruptcy are high enough to deter auditors from compromising their independence in formulating going-concern decisions. In conclusion, audit quality is affected by closeness in the auditor-client relationship and regulatory intervene may be needed depending on specific setting in terms of auditor type and auditing decisions. / Accounting

The present research program was designed as an empirical investigation ofRelational Discrepancy Theory (RDT; Robins & Boldero, 2003). RDT proposes thatperceptions of discrepancies between relationship partners with respect to sharedaspirations and obligations (i.e., ideal and ought relational guides) have negativeemotional and relationship functioning consequences. Two kinds of relationaldiscrepancy are described: relational-guide discrepancies, which arise from theperception that one partner has more ambitious or demanding relational guides thanthe other; and relational-actual discrepancies, which arise from the perception that onepartner is actually better at meeting relational guides than the other. The fourempirical studies presented in this dissertation investigate the previously untestedpredictions of RDT regarding the impact of both kinds of discrepancies on closeness,conflict, disapproval of partners, and admiration of partners.

In this thesis we study the impact of time in the analysis of social networks. To do that we represent a knowledge mobilization network, Knowledge-Net, both as a standard static graph and a time-varying graph and study both graphs to see their differences. For our study, we implemented some temporal metrics and added them to Gephi, an open source software for graph and network analysis which already contains some static metrics. Then we used that software to obtain our results. Knowledge-Net is a network built using the knowledge mobilization concept. In social science, knowledge mobilization is defined as the use of knowledge towards the achievement of goals. The networks which are built using the knowledge mobilization concept make more visible the relations among heterogeneous human and non-human individuals, organizational actors and non-human mobilization actors. A time-varying graph is a graph with nodes and edges appearing and disappearing over time. A journey in a time-varying graph is equivalent to a path in a static graph. The notion of shortest path in a static graph has three variations in a time-varying graph: the shortest journey is the journey with the least number of temporal hops, the fastest journey is the journey that takes the least amount of time and the foremost journey is the journey that arrives the soonest. Out of those three, we focus on the foremost journey for our analysis.