Estimation of Several Intraclass Correlation Coefficients

An intraclass correlation coefficient observed in several populations is estimated. The basis is a variance-stabilizing transformation. It is shown that the intraclass correlation coefficient from any elliptical distribution should be transformed in the same way. Four estimators are compared. An estimator where the components in a vector consisting of the transformed intraclass correlation coefficients are estimated separately, an estimator based on a weighted average of these components, a pretest estimator where the equality of the components is tested and then the outcome of the test is used in the estimation procedure, and a James-Stein estimator which shrinks toward the mean.     

Environmental practices and firm performance in emerging markets: the mediating role of product quality

Environmental practices have not received as much research attention in emerging market contexts as traditional topics like quality. However, the importance of environmental practices for a firm’s production strategy has been increasing at an unprecedented level across the globe. Our research objective is, therefore, to investigate the interplay between environmental practices and quality in the pursuit of firm performance. Relying on 492 responses from Turkish manufacturers to test our hypotheses, we show that environmental practices directly improve the quality of products over and above the effect of quality management practices in emerging markets. Product quality, in turn, is important for increasing firm performance, acting as a mediator for the positive effects of environmental practices on performance. Thus, we reveal that product quality functions as an instrumental conduit between environmental practices and firm performance in emerging markets like Turkey where stakeholder pressures are weak, and regulations are often not properly enforced.     

Crisis of Natural Building Materials and Institutionalised Self-Help Housing: The Case of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh

Traditional rural housing is largely based on the use of locally available natural resources as prime building materials, usually in a process of self-help building undertaken by the community. Such housing is well adapted to a natural environment with widely available resources, and supports people's direct involvement in the construction of their dwellings. However, the advent of a cash economy and current scarcity of natural resources has greatly affected the self-help building process. In rural Bangladesh, affluent households are shifting to manufactured materials and skilled builders, and the quality of housing of low-income households is declining. For the latter, self-help is the only option, and recognition of this fact and of the increasing decline in the quality of their housing has prompted institutional intervention. This paper discusses the Grameen Bank's rural housing programme in Bangladesh which provides loans for manufactured building components for low-income rural households to build houses on a self-help basis. A review of this programme indicates some of its strengths and shortcomings in the context of scarcity of natural building materials and widespread poverty.     

Simultaneous estimation of means of two sensitive variables

In this paper, we introduce a new problem of simultaneous estimation of means of two quantitative sensitive variables by using only one randomized response another pseudo response from a respondent in a sample. The proposed estimators are extended to stratified random sampling, and the relative efficiency values are computed for equal, proportional, and optimum allocation with respect to the newly introduced naïve estimators.     

Generalized neighbor designs with block size 3

A generalized neighbor design relaxes the equality condition on the number of times two treatments as neighbors in the design. In this article, we have considered the construction of some classes of generalized neighbor designs with block size k=3 by using the method of cyclic shifts. The distinguishing feature of this construction method is that the properties of a design can easily be obtained from the sets of shifts instead of constructing the actual blocks of the design. A catalog of generalized neighbor designs with block size k=3 is compiled for v∈{5,6,…,18} treatments and for different replications. We provide the reader with a simpler method of construction, and in general the catalog that gives an open choice to the experimenter for selecting any class of neighbor designs.     

Social Work Student Views on Palliative Care Learning Resources

Abstract

Many social workers are expected to work with individuals and families who are dealing with life-limiting illnesses, yet during their university education they may not have been exposed to materials that address issues related to death and dying. The Social Work Department of University of New England in Armidale, Australia designed and delivered a palliative care teaching and learning session using publicly funded online materials. Themes emerging from questionnaire and focus group data analysis included appreciation for the importance and emotional demands of the materials, sensitivity and flexibility among educators who ideally have work experience in the field, expanding presence of social work philosophy in curriculum materials and exploring spirituality, and examining culture-informed practice in greater depth. Among the implications is the need for concerted efforts to teach about death and dying using high quality accessible materials, while ensuring social work values and approaches are reflected in the content.     

Sugar,Land Markets and the Williams Thesis: Evidence from Jamaica's Property Sales, 1750–1810

The economic-history literature of eighteenth-century British America is rich in its quantitative measures of staple production, output prices and demography, but relatively thin in its analysis of input prices. This paper addresses one aspect of this gap by, for the first time, applying a hedonic regression technique to land sales in Britain's most important colony. The results indicate that land values increased over the course of the late eighteenth century, despite economic challenges such as the American Revolution and a series of punishing hurricanes in the 1780s. The model estimates that values reached their peak in 1800, only to decline during the first decade of the nineteenth century.     

Blended Learning in Rural Social Work Education: Reflections from a New Australian Bachelor of Social Work Course

This paper explores the developmental stages and phases of a new blended learning social work course at a rural Australian university. The background to the development of the discipline will be presented, with an exploration of the challenges and outcomes of designing an interactive online environment for a single cohort of on-campus and distance students. Themes explored cover engaging students, motivation, acculturation and facilitation. The paper concludes with the presentation of data from wave one of a longitudinal survey to ensure student expectations are being met, while at the same time providing an accredited programme of study.     

Prospective study of birth interval dynamics in rural Bangladesh

A group of 209 married, fecund women in rural Bangladesh were studied prospectively for 24 months from 1969 to 1971 to define some of the biological and sociological factors relating to fertility performance. These women were selected from a larger study population of 112,000 that had been followed with a daily house-to-house vital registration programme since 1966. The selected women were interviewed bi-weekly and were asked questions about menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, husband's occupational absences, and monthly urine tests for pregnancy were taken. The results for 193 non-contracepting women revealed that the seasonal pattern of births previously observed in this population could be associated with a corresponding seasonal pattern of conceptions and that this was due to a seasonal trend in fecundability. The highest conception rates were in the coolest months of the year. Post-partum lactational amenorrhoea was very prolonged, averaging 17 months for women with a surviving child. The appearance of the first post-partum menstrual flow (onset of ovulation) also had a seasonal trend which could not be adequately explained. The median waiting time to conception, once menstruation had resumed was eight months. This interval was influenced by seasonal fluctuations, as well as by the age of women and by husbands' absences. The foetal wastage rate was 15·0 per 100 conceptions, with 62 per cent of the foetal losses occurring during the second month of gestation. Overall, the average birth interval was 33 months, with the prolonged lactational amenorrhoea accounting for almost 45 per cent of this interval.