Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and Governmentprogram on intra-societal violence and conflict as well as on a widerange of other quality of life variables (e.g., Dillbeck, 1990; Dillbecket al., 1987).Alternative Explanations. One possible alternative interpretationof the results reported in this paper is that the significant estimatedeffect of the Assemblies on Soviet behavior may simply reflect a spuriouscorrelation. In this view, the finding of a significant effect of theAssemblies may arise from the coincidental association of instancesof improved Soviet-US relations with the four periods (totaling sixmonths) in which the number of participants in these Assembliesapproached or exceeded the √1% global threshold.The plausibility of the view that these results may be simply due tocoincidence is open to question given that these four Assemblies wereorganized several months in advance for the declared purpose of promotingworld peace, including more harmonious relations between thesuperpowers. The purpose of the Assemblies and specific predictionsabout their effect in promoting an improved international climate werepublicly lodged with the press, government officials, and the scientificcommunity. Thus the empirical findings presented in this paper may beseen as the analysis of the outcome of a prospective quasi-experimentin international relations (Cook and Campbell, 1979).Spurious correlation could also arise from improper treatment oftrends or cycles in the statistical time series analysis. Successful modelingof any trends or cyclical patterns in the behavior of the ratings ofSoviet behavior, however, was indicated by diagnostic checks indicatingthat the residuals from TF model were uncorrelated white noise.Likewise, formal tests for mean stationarity (unit root tests) indicatedthat no significant deterministic or stochastic trends were found in theratings of Soviet or US behavior. The rejection of non-stationarity forboth the US and Soviet ratings (p = .01) indicates that the results ofthis study were not affected by the well-known “spurious regression”phenomenon (Granger and Newbold, 1986: 205–15). The latter cangive rise to spurious indications of a significant relationship betweenunrelated, nonstationary variables and invalidate all statistical tests.Diagnostic tests indicated the possibility that the residuals fromthe unadjusted model shown in Table 2 were not drawn from a normallydistributed population. In this case, statistical inferences for480