title: Tukua Kia Rere! Maori Adult Students Succeeding at University

authors: Williams, Daphne Christina (Tina)

subjects: Maori students in higher education

abstract: A considerable amount of research has focussed on Māori underachievement in mainstream education. There is, however, much less research that celebrates Māori academic success. Even less has been written about the experiences of adult Māori students who return to study long after leaving school and go on to become academically successful in higher education. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge regarding Māori academic success at university. It sought to explore the experiences of sixteen adult Māori students who entered university via special admission and went on to attain undergraduate degrees. The study examined the challenges that these individual’s experienced on their way to becoming academically successful and identified the main factors that helped them to achieve educational success. An overarching Kaupapa Māori theoretical framework was employed in this study. A qualitative research methodology was implemented and Kaupapa Māori research principles informed both the research processes and the interpretation of research outcomes. The findings suggest four major factors contributed to the success of the participants in this study: a strong determination to succeed (whāia te iti kahurangi), the extended family (whānau), strong social support networks with peers and faculty (whakawhanaungatanga) and Te Ao Māori (the Māori World). However, some of these same factors were also found to hinder academic success in the university setting. The Manu Tukutuku (kite) model was developed directly from the research findings. In addition to providing a theoretical frame for understanding the experiences of Māori special admission students at university, this model also provides a useful ‘toolkit’ for those wanting to support Māori students within the university context. The implications of this study suggest that New Zealand Universities can better support Māori special admission students by being more inclusive of their cultural capital, by eliminating racism and discrimination in the university environment and by fostering better relationships between staff and students. Creating opportunities for Māori students to develop social networks at University was also identified as important.

text: Tukua Kia Rere! Maori Adult Students Succeeding at University A considerable amount of research has focussed on Māori underachievement in mainstream education. There is, however, much less research that celebrates Māori academic success. Even less has been written about the experiences of adult Māori students who return to study long after leaving school and go on to become academically successful in higher education. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge regarding Māori academic success at university. It sought to explore the experiences of sixteen adult Māori students who entered university via special admission and went on to attain undergraduate degrees. The study examined the challenges that these individual’s experienced on their way to becoming academically successful and identified the main factors that helped them to achieve educational success. An overarching Kaupapa Māori theoretical framework was employed in this study. A qualitative research methodology was implemented and Kaupapa Māori research principles informed both the research processes and the interpretation of research outcomes. The findings suggest four major factors contributed to the success of the participants in this study: a strong determination to succeed (whāia te iti kahurangi), the extended family (whānau), strong social support networks with peers and faculty (whakawhanaungatanga) and Te Ao Māori (the Māori World). However, some of these same factors were also found to hinder academic success in the university setting. The Manu Tukutuku (kite) model was developed directly from the research findings. In addition to providing a theoretical frame for understanding the experiences of Māori special admission students at university, this model also provides a useful ‘toolkit’ for those wanting to support Māori students within the university context. The implications of this study suggest that New Zealand Universities can better support Māori special admission students by being more inclusive of their cultural capital, by eliminating racism and discrimination in the university environment and by fostering better relationships between staff and students. Creating opportunities for Māori students to develop social networks at University was also identified as important.

year: 2010

title: Māori loanwords: a corpus of New Zealand English tweets

authors: Trye, David

abstract: Māori loanwords are widely used in New Zealand English for various social functions by New Zealanders within and outside of the Māori community. Motivated by the lack of linguistic resources for studying how Māori loanwords are used in social media, we present a new corpus of New Zealand English tweets. We collected tweets containing selected Māori words that are likely to be known by New Zealanders who do not speak Māori. Since over 30% of these words turned out to be irrelevant (e.g., mana is a popular gaming term, Moana is a character from a Disney movie), we manually annotated a sample of our tweets into relevant and irrelevant categories. This data was used to train machine learning models to automatically filter out irrelevant tweets.

text: Māori loanwords: a corpus of New Zealand English tweets Māori loanwords are widely used in New Zealand English for various social functions by New Zealanders within and outside of the Māori community. Motivated by the lack of linguistic resources for studying how Māori loanwords are used in social media, we present a new corpus of New Zealand English tweets. We collected tweets containing selected Māori words that are likely to be known by New Zealanders who do not speak Māori. Since over 30% of these words turned out to be irrelevant (e.g., mana is a popular gaming term, Moana is a character from a Disney movie), we manually annotated a sample of our tweets into relevant and irrelevant categories. This data was used to train machine learning models to automatically filter out irrelevant tweets.

year: 2019

title: Three essays on stated choice experiments  for nonmarket valuation of landslide protection

authors: Mattea, Stefania

subjects: choice experiments

abstract: This thesis consists of three essays that improve the general understanding of the public demand for safety programmes in the context of natural hazards. With the growing importance of this topic around the world, this study provides a practical and methodological contribution to the literature on Environmental Economics and Policy, especially local policy.
In particular, this research examines people’s preferences and their willingness-to-pay for landslide mitigation programmes. The primary aim is to assess how the residents of and visitors to a mountain valley in the Alps value and trade off the multiple attributes of protection programmes for landslide risk reduction by applying Discrete Choice Modelling methodology. To address the current needs of local decision-makers, the investigation of the determinants of preference heterogeneity is the central theme of the research. The study is based on a panel choice dataset created from a Discrete Choice Experiment, based on full ranking, administered in person by the author to 250 respondents in the Boite Valley, Italy.
The first essay examines the stability of preferences, investigating to what extent additional information has an impact on estimated values. Specifically, it studies whether respondents adjust their preferences based on scientific information provided on one specific attribute. A mixed logit model in willingness-to-pay space is implemented to account for preference heterogeneity. The findings suggest that respondents perceive the existing protection measures as insufficient. The provision of information affects only the attribute subject to additional information and the consideration of the current status of protection. Preferences for the other attributes remained stable. Preliminary evidence of spatial heterogeneity is also detected.
The second essay addresses the issue of the stability of parameter estimates obtained through simulation using choice models with latent variables. Specifically, it analyses the stability of the coefficients to the number of simulation draws and the increasing number of latent variables. Three Random Parameter logit models with respectively one, two and three latent variables are fitted with six sets of increased numbers of draws. The landslide risk perceptions of respondents are modelled as latent sources of heterogeneity in the consideration of the riskiest scenario. Overall, the results show very stable estimates for the attributes’ coefficients but not for the latent variables. Thus, increasing the complexity by adding more latent factors into the model implies the necessity of additional draws in the simulation process to ensure empirical identification. The results also show how preferences are strongly related to the underlying perceptions of own mortality risk due to landslides and risk severity.
The third essay explores multiple sources of preference heterogeneity, accounting for its spatial determinants. It emerges that the inclusion of more observables allows for a better segmentation of the policy based on respondents’ and municipalities’ characteristics. The findings show the importance of distinct spatial effects, such as geographical characteristics, spatial error components for road tracts and site-specific choice-sets, with relevant insights into the priority of intervention. In addition, residual unobserved heterogeneity is analysed at a higher hierarchical scale using spatial models at the municipality level.
Overall, the empirical results of this thesis provide important policy implications for local decision-makers in charge of public safety, given the relevant information on the distributional effects of protection across different groups of beneficiaries.

text: Three essays on stated choice experiments  for nonmarket valuation of landslide protection This thesis consists of three essays that improve the general understanding of the public demand for safety programmes in the context of natural hazards. With the growing importance of this topic around the world, this study provides a practical and methodological contribution to the literature on Environmental Economics and Policy, especially local policy.
In particular, this research examines people’s preferences and their willingness-to-pay for landslide mitigation programmes. The primary aim is to assess how the residents of and visitors to a mountain valley in the Alps value and trade off the multiple attributes of protection programmes for landslide risk reduction by applying Discrete Choice Modelling methodology. To address the current needs of local decision-makers, the investigation of the determinants of preference heterogeneity is the central theme of the research. The study is based on a panel choice dataset created from a Discrete Choice Experiment, based on full ranking, administered in person by the author to 250 respondents in the Boite Valley, Italy.
The first essay examines the stability of preferences, investigating to what extent additional information has an impact on estimated values. Specifically, it studies whether respondents adjust their preferences based on scientific information provided on one specific attribute. A mixed logit model in willingness-to-pay space is implemented to account for preference heterogeneity. The findings suggest that respondents perceive the existing protection measures as insufficient. The provision of information affects only the attribute subject to additional information and the consideration of the current status of protection. Preferences for the other attributes remained stable. Preliminary evidence of spatial heterogeneity is also detected.
The second essay addresses the issue of the stability of parameter estimates obtained through simulation using choice models with latent variables. Specifically, it analyses the stability of the coefficients to the number of simulation draws and the increasing number of latent variables. Three Random Parameter logit models with respectively one, two and three latent variables are fitted with six sets of increased numbers of draws. The landslide risk perceptions of respondents are modelled as latent sources of heterogeneity in the consideration of the riskiest scenario. Overall, the results show very stable estimates for the attributes’ coefficients but not for the latent variables. Thus, increasing the complexity by adding more latent factors into the model implies the necessity of additional draws in the simulation process to ensure empirical identification. The results also show how preferences are strongly related to the underlying perceptions of own mortality risk due to landslides and risk severity.
The third essay explores multiple sources of preference heterogeneity, accounting for its spatial determinants. It emerges that the inclusion of more observables allows for a better segmentation of the policy based on respondents’ and municipalities’ characteristics. The findings show the importance of distinct spatial effects, such as geographical characteristics, spatial error components for road tracts and site-specific choice-sets, with relevant insights into the priority of intervention. In addition, residual unobserved heterogeneity is analysed at a higher hierarchical scale using spatial models at the municipality level.
Overall, the empirical results of this thesis provide important policy implications for local decision-makers in charge of public safety, given the relevant information on the distributional effects of protection across different groups of beneficiaries.

year: 2018