Reviews and abstracts

Brecher, Edward M. The Sex Researchers. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969. xxiv & 354 pp.

Davajan, Val, Robert Nakamura and Khalil Kharma. Spermatozoan Transport in Cervical Mucus. Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey, 25: I, January 1970.

P. H. Gebhard, J. Raboch and H. Giese. Die Sexualität der Frau. (Female Sexuality.) Hamburg. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, No. 8001, 1968. 157 pp.

Frahm, H. Empfängnisverhütung. (Birth Control). Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, No. 8003, 1968, 126 pp.

Giese, Hans (ed.) Die sexuelle Perversion. Frankfurt a.M.: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft. Akademische Reihe. 1967.

Population Council, The Studies in Family Planning. U.S.S.R.: Views on Population/Family Planning. Nr. 49, January 1970.

Masters, William H., M.D. and Johnson, Virginia E. Human Sexual Inadequacy. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970. 450 pages. $12.50

Neubeck, Gerhard: (Ed.) Extramarital Relations. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1969. 205 pages. Price $2.45.

Pomeroy, Wardell B.: Girls and Sex. Delacorte Press, New York, 1969. 159 pages. Price: $4.50.

Sagarin, Edward. Odd Man In. Societies of Deviants in America. Chicago, Ill.: Quadrangle Books. 1969. 286 pages. Price §6.95.

Siecus (Compiled and edited by). Sexuality and Man. Introduction by Mary S. Calderone, M.D. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970. xii & 239 pp.     

An improved comorbidity summary score for measuring disease burden and predicting mortality with applications to two national cohorts

Abstract

Research involving administrative healthcare data to study patient outcomes requires the investigator to account for the patient’s disease burden in order to reduce the potential for biased results. Here we develop a comorbidity summary score based on variable importance measures derived from several statistical and machine learning methods and show it has superior predictive performance to the Elixhauser and Charlson indices when used to predict 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year mortality. We used two large Veterans Administration cohorts to develop and validate the summary score and compared predictive performance using the area under ROC curve (AUC) and the Brier score.     

Editorial

The UK Government agencies have an interest in making greater use of administrative data. This paper discusses the methodological challenges of using administrative data held by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for constructing an alternative sampling frame for the Family Resources Survey (FRS) and for replacing income data collected in the FRS. The analysis shows that administrative data would provide a good basis for sampling the FRS by linking to socio-demographic data held administratively, which would be advantageous for sampling specific sub-populations (e.g. types of benefit recipients or households with children). Sampling using administrative data also potentially offers more representative population sampling by including some addresses currently excluded from the small users Postcode Address File (PAF) but which are important to DWP, such as people living in care homes. However, comparing FRS questions and income data held administratively, suggests little overlap. Therefore, limited gains may be realised from shortening the length of the FRS by using income data from administrative sources.     

Ethical Sharing and Reuse of Qualitative Data

The objective of this paper is to attempt to move beyond the impasse of ethical objections to reusing qualitative data. In doing so, there is no intention of dismissing the importance of ethical debates, in fact, quite the opposite. The debate about ethical reuse needs to be deepened and broadened. First, the current terrain of research ethics will be summarised and situated in the context of broader philosophical ethical frameworks. In contrast, the debates around ethics of archiving have often been narrowly focused on participants' rights. The framework of debate should be broadened first by recognising other entities traditionally deemed within the scope of research ethics, namely the scholarly community and the public. The second useful broadening of the framework is provided by a deontological ethical stance with its focus on duties. In the final section, this expanded framework will be used to rebut several common ethical arguments against archiving qualitative data: archiving violates confidentiality; informed consent for reusing data is impossible; reusing data violates trust between researcher and participant; and, archiving creates an unacceptably high risk of data misrepresentation. If a more general philosophical debate on ethics has something to contribute, the central message must be that no single ethical claim is incontestable. The conclusion will position these debates in a wider context by asking what is at stake when the boundaries of ethical discourse about sharing data are drawn too narrowly.     

Communicating Research to Policymakers

This piece offers suggestions based on some things we expected to learn and from some things we did not expect to learn about communicating research to congressional policymakers. Some of these are insider discoveries from working as a professional staff member for a joint committee of the US Senate and the US House of Representatives. Other things we learned came largely as surprises from attempts to provide basic information and issue awareness about socioeconomic conditions in the Southern Black Belt directly to the Congress as well as indirectly through public interest and grassroots groups. One of the surprising discoveries, working professionally both on the inside of Congress and on the outside as social scientists, is how well social interaction actually works. And there were other surprises as well. This article is based on an August 16 panel presentation by the first author at the 2003 meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta. The panel was organized by Larry Burmeister of the University of Kentucky. Material written in the first person singular in the first section of this article, “From the Inside,” is from the first author’s experiences. Later, portions of the text beginning with the subhead, “On the Outside,” and stated in the first person plural are by both authors.     

Indigenous People and the Miserable Failure of Australian Planning

Abstract

Major changes in Australian law and significant research efforts have re-positioned Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as important actors in planning. Yet, this has barely penetrated the consciousness of the mainstream professional community. Current requirements for professional competencies and planning curricula fall well short of preparing planners to productively engage with Indigenous people. The profession itself barely acknowledges the significant changes advanced in Indigenous studies and planning, and the new imperatives. This paper details the contemporary position of planning practice in Australia with regard to Indigenous people and considers the changes required to more justly engage with Indigenous rights.