A ranking pattern approach is proposed to build item response theory (IRT) models for forced-choice (FC) items. This new approach is an addition to the two existing approaches, sequential selection and Thurstone’s law of pairwise comparison. A new dominance IRT model, the multidimensional generalized partial preference model (MGPPM), is proposed for FC items with any number (greater than 1) of statements. The maximum marginal likelihood estimation using an expectation-maximization algorithm (MML-EM) and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation are developed. A simulation study is conducted to show satisfactory parameter recovery on triplet and tetrad data. The relationships between the newly proposed approach/model and the existing approaches/models are described, and the MGPPM, Thurstonian IRT (TIRT) model, and Triplet-2PLM are compared when applied to simulated and real triplet data. The new approach offers more flexible IRT modeling than the other two approaches under different assumptions, and the MGPPM is more statistically elegant than the TIRT and Triple-2PLM.

Citizens’ Assemblies (CAs) are a specific form of deliberative mini-publics that are increasingly used to address complex policy challenges, especially in climate governance (Boswell, Dean, and Smith 2023; Smith 2024; Willis, Curato, and Smith, 2022). They involve randomly selected citizens who deliberate and provide policy recommendations (Curato 2021). However, their implementation and uptake largely depend on political parties and elites, which may perceive these novel instruments as challenging their authority (Elstub and Escobar 2019; Setälä 2017). Given the growing use of deliberative mini-publics by representative institutions (Paulis et al. 2021), research has explored their interaction with political parties (Gherghina 2024; Gherghina, Soare, and Jacquet 2020a).

This paper introduces a quantitative approach to assessing the effectiveness of student–tutor crit interactions in fostering constructivist learner-centred education in design studios. Implementing the learner-centred education approach is highly encouraged in constructivist education. However, methodological gaps in the quantitative assessment of its implementation restrict comparative studies and implementation across different settings. Based on the design practices learned and taught in studio crits, a quantitative measure of learner-centred education is developed. This measure accounts for the student’s cognitive engagement in introducing new design issues and active practice in developing these issues towards a design solution. The analysis techniques combine the syntactic tracking of the first occurrence of design issues, a coding of their types and the transitions between them using the Function–Behaviour–Structure ontology. A case study is presented to demonstrate the application of this learner-centred education metric in a natural experiment involving student–tutor interactions in six design critiques throughout a single semester. Critiques alternated between two different educational media. Results indicate that this approach can determine differences in the interaction and across media. This demonstrates the potential of the approach for assessing the effectiveness of student–tutor interactions for implementing learner-centred education in studio-based education.

This paper is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of a family of solutions of the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation called general rogue waves of infinite order. These solutions have recently been shown to describe various limit processes involving large-amplitude waves, and they have also appeared in some physical models not directly connected with nonlinear Schrödinger equations. We establish the following key property of these solutions: they are all in $L^2(\mathbb{R})$ with respect to the spatial variable but they exhibit anomalously slow temporal decay. In this paper, we define general rogue waves of infinite order, establish their basic exact and asymptotic properties, and provide computational tools for calculating them accurately.

Bayesian hierarchical models offer a principled framework for adjusting for study-level bias in meta-analysis, but their complexity and sensitivity to prior specifications necessitate a systematic framework for robust application. This study demonstrates the application of a Bayesian workflow to this challenge, comparing a standard random-effects model to a bias-adjustment model across a real-world dataset and a targeted simulation study. The workflow revealed a high sensitivity of results to the prior on bias probability, showing that while the simpler random-effects model had superior predictive accuracy as measured by the widely applicable information criterion, the bias-adjustment model successfully propagated uncertainty by producing wider, more conservative credible intervals. The simulation confirmed the model’s ability to recover true parameters when priors were well-specified. These results establish the Bayesian workflow as a principled framework for diagnosing model sensitivities and ensuring the transparent application of complex bias-adjustment models in evidence synthesis.

The number of global environmental institutions has increased dramatically over the past decade. Yet environmental governance is widely seen as failing. Focusing on biodiversity politics, we argue that many key governance institutions, particularly those advancing market solutions, are themselves deeply implicated in this persistent failure. Drawing on the sociology of expertise, we show how two recently established institutions – the European Business and Nature Platform and the Network for Greening the Financial System – attempt to address the uncomfortable reality of biodiversity governance failures and the risks of their own future failures by creating a series of diversions to deflect attention and by displacing the focus of biodiversity governance from core issues to their own efforts to develop metrics. These dynamics render these institutions both ‘failure-proof’ and inherently ‘failure-prone’, ultimately reinforcing rather than resolving the problems they aim to address.

Although not explicitly a socialist, in his political philosophy Kant provides arguments that can be deployed by socialists to argue for radically different forms of social and economic organisation. In this article I contrast Karl Marx’s criticism of capitalist property relations with the general theory of property which Kant outlines in his Doctrine of Right. I demonstrate that Kant’s concept of property provides a sounder ethical basis for the regulating and reform of capitalist economic organisations than Marx’s historical materialist view of economic and social development. Kant’s theory of property relations may fall short of Marx’s in terms of the sociological and historical insights it affords but Kant’s theory more than makes up for this is with its greater moral and political astuteness.