| 1. |
- Buch, S., et al.
(författare)
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Genetic variation in TERT modifies the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in alcohol-related cirrhosis: results from a genome-wide case-control study
- 2023
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Ingår i: Gut. - : BMJ. - 0017-5749 .- 1468-3288. ; 72:2, s. 381-391
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) often develops in patients with alcohol-related cirrhosis at an annual risk of up to 2.5%. Some host genetic risk factors have been identified but do not account for the majority of the variance in occurrence. This study aimed to identify novel susceptibility loci for the development of HCC in people with alcohol related cirrhosis. Design Patients with alcohol-related cirrhosis and HCC (cases: n=1214) and controls without HCC (n=1866), recruited from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and the UK, were included in a two-stage genome-wide association study using a case-control design. A validation cohort of 1520 people misusing alcohol but with no evidence of liver disease was included to control for possible association effects with alcohol misuse. Genotyping was performed using the InfiniumGlobal Screening Array (V.24v2, Illumina) and the OmniExpress Array (V.24v1-0a, Illumina). Results Associations with variants rs738409 in PNPLA3 and rs58542926 in TM6SF2 previously associated with an increased risk of HCC in patients with alcohol-related cirrhosis were confirmed at genome-wide significance. A novel locus rs2242652(A) in TERT (telomerase reverse transcriptase) was also associated with a decreased risk of HCC, in the combined meta-analysis, at genome-wide significance (p=6.41x10(-9), OR=0.61 (95% CI 0.52 to 0.70). This protective association remained significant after correction for sex, age, body mass index and type 2 diabetes (p=7.94x10(-5), OR=0.63 (95% CI 0.50 to 0.79). Carriage of rs2242652(A) in TERT was associated with an increased leucocyte telomere length (p=2.12x10(-44)). Conclusion This study identifies rs2242652 in TERT as a novel protective factor for HCC in patients with alcohol-related cirrhosis.
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| 2. |
- Jonauskaite, D., et al.
(författare)
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Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion Associations Are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity
- 2020
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Ingår i: Psychological Science. - : SAGE Publications Inc.. - 0956-7976 .- 1467-9280. ; 31:10, s. 1245-1260
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many of us “see red,” “feel blue,” or “turn green with envy.” Are such color-emotion associations fundamental to our shared cognitive architecture, or are they cultural creations learned through our languages and traditions? To answer these questions, we tested emotional associations of colors in 4,598 participants from 30 nations speaking 22 native languages. Participants associated 20 emotion concepts with 12 color terms. Pattern-similarity analyses revealed universal color-emotion associations (average similarity coefficient r =.88). However, local differences were also apparent. A machine-learning algorithm revealed that nation predicted color-emotion associations above and beyond those observed universally. Similarity was greater when nations were linguistically or geographically close. This study highlights robust universal color-emotion associations, further modulated by linguistic and geographic factors. These results pose further theoretical and empirical questions about the affective properties of color and may inform practice in applied domains, such as well-being and design. © The Author(s) 2020.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Buckley, Noah, et al.
(författare)
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Endogenous Popularity: How Perceptions of Support Affect the Popularity of Authoritarian Regimes
- 2022
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Autocracies with popular leaders tend to survive longer. A growing body of scholarship therefore focuses on the factors that influence authoritarian popularity. However, it is possible that the perception of popularity itself breeds popularity in nondemocratic regimes, impacting incumbent approval. Here we use framing experiments embedded in four recent surveys in Russia to examine the extent to which information about the support an authoritarian leader enjoys influences the level of support respondents report for him. We find that negative information about the Russian president's popularity decreases support for him, while positive information has no effect. Additional analyses, which rely on a novel combination of framing and list experiments, provide evidence that these changes are not due to preference falsification. This study has implications for research on the origins of incumbent approval and dramatic defection cascades in nondemocratic regimes.
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| 5. |
- Knutsen, Carl Henrik, et al.
(författare)
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Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Assessing Democratic Backsliding
- 2023
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper addresses three interrelated questions. First, how strong is the evidence that democracy has declined globally over the last decade? Second, how should we best measure (change in) democracy? Third, given that much of the recent evidencefor global backsliding comes from measurement projects that rely on expert ratings, is there evidence that experts have become harsher judges of democratic quality in recent years? We begin our analysis with a discussion of how to conceptualize democracy and democratic backsliding, stressing that for contested concepts such as democracy, no one operationalization is likely to reign supreme. We then dissect the distinction between “subjective” and “objective” measures, examining how measurement error can affect even seemingly objective indicators, and highlight how subjectivity pervades all measurement enterprises. Next, focusing on V–Dem’s methodology, we show—through both theoretical considerations and empirical tests—that it is highly unlikely that time-varying expert biases drive recent declines in estimates of the state of global democracy. Finally we evaluate Little and Meng’s (2023) recent attempt to assess the prevailing case for global backsliding using “objective” measures. We demonstrate multiple issues that make their measurement strategy ill-suited to studying trends in global democracy.
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| 6. |
- Knutsen, Carl Henrik, et al.
(författare)
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Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Assessing Democratic Backsliding
- 2024
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Ingår i: PS-POLITICAL SCIENCE & POLITICS. - 1049-0965 .- 1537-5935.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- During the past decade, analyses drawing on several democracy measures have shown a global trend of democratic retrenchment. While these democracy measures use radically different methodologies, most partially or fully rely on subjective judgments to produce estimates of the level of democracy within states. Such projects continuously grapple with balancing conceptual coverage with the potential for bias (Munck and Verkuilen 2002; Przeworski et al. 2000). Little and Meng (L&M) (2023) reintroduce this debate, arguing that "objective" measures of democracy show little evidence of recent global democratic backsliding.1 By extension, they posit that time-varying expert bias drives the appearance of democratic retrenchment in measures that incorporate expert judgments. In this article, we engage with (1) broader debates on democracy measurement and democratic backsliding, and (2) L&M's specific data and conclusions.
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| 7. |
- Lührmann, Anna, 1983, et al.
(författare)
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Constraining Governments: New Indices of Vertical, Horizontal, and Diagonal Accountability
- 2020
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Ingår i: American Political Science Review. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 0003-0554 .- 1537-5943. ; 114:3, s. 811-820
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Accountability-constraints on a government's use of political power-is one of the cornerstones of good governance. However, conceptual stretching and a lack of reliable measures have limited cross-national research on this concept. To address this research gap, we use V-Dem data and innovative Bayesian methods to develop new indices of accountability and its subtypes: the extent to which governments are accountable to citizens (vertical accountability), other state institutions (horizontal accountability), and the media and civil society (diagonal accountability). In this article, we describe the conceptual and empirical framework underlying these indices and demonstrate their content, convergent, and construct validity. The resulting indices have unprecedented coverage (1900-present) and offer researchers and policymakers new opportunities to investigate the causes and consequences of accountability and its disaggregated subtypes. Furthermore, the methodology provides a framework for theoretically driven index construction to scholars working with cross-national panel data.
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| 8. |
- Marquardt, Kyle L., 1983
(författare)
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How and how much does expert error matter? Implications for quantitative peace research
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Peace Research. - : SAGE Publications. - 0022-3433 .- 1460-3578. ; 57:6, s. 692-700
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Expert-coded datasets provide scholars with otherwise unavailable data on important concepts. However, expert coders vary in their reliability and scale perception, potentially resulting in substantial measurement error. These concerns are acute in expert coding of key concepts for peace research. Here I examine (1) the implications of these concerns for applied statistical analyses, and (2) the degree to which different modeling strategies ameliorate them. Specifically, I simulate expert-coded country-year data with different forms of error and then regress civil conflict onset on these data, using five different modeling strategies. Three of these strategies involve regressing conflict onset on point estimate aggregations of the simulated data: the mean and median over expert codings, and the posterior median from a latent variable model. The remaining two strategies incorporate measurement error from the latent variable model into the regression process by using multiple imputation and a structural equation model. Analyses indicate that expert-coded data are relatively robust: across simulations, almost all modeling strategies yield regression results roughly in line with the assumed true relationship between the expert-coded concept and outcome. However, the introduction of measurement error to expert-coded data generally results in attenuation of the estimated relationship between the concept and conflict onset. The level of attenuation varies across modeling strategies: a structural equation model is the most consistently robust estimation technique, while the median over expert codings and multiple imputation are the least robust.
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