Paying for Old Age: Can People on Lower Incomes Afford Domiciliary Care Costs?

The Labour government has made it clear that it will not countenance major changes in the financing of long–term care for older people in England and Wales. One consequence is that people on modest retirement incomes will continue to have to pay for elements of their care in their own homes. The government also implicitly assumes that people of working age, on average and below–average earnings, are expected to save in order to pay for long–term care. However, evidence about individuals' willingness and ability to save and to pay for long–term care is scanty. Accordingly, an interview survey of 100 people—today's and tomorrow's pensioners—was undertaken in June and July 2000. They were asked detailed questions about their financial circumstances, and about their ability to pay more towards their own health and social care costs, now and in the future. The results suggest that today's pensioners on average and lower incomes are experiencing difficulties in paying for care services in their own homes. Tomorrow's pensioners who are currently on average and lower incomes will struggle to pay for care services in their own homes. The results also support the view that people tend to overestimate their retirement incomes and do not understand how long–term care is financed. They think that the government can and should pay for long–term care.     

On the uniqueness of the maximum likelihood estimator in truncated regression models

In this short note it is demonstrated that although the log-likelihood function for the truncated normal regression model may not be globally concave, it will possess a unique maximum if one exists. This is because the hessian matrix is negative semi-definite when evaluated at any possible solution to the likelihood equations. Since this rules out any saddle points or local minima, more than two local maxima occuring is impossible.     

'A man in the making': sexual masculinities within changing training cultures

The academic representation of social transformation in Britain has underplayed the key contribution of sexual politics. More specifically, sociological accounts of changing social relations within institutional sites has served to make invisible sexual identities. From research on a Modern Apprenticeship in the mid 1990's, empirical material is used to make visible male sexualities within Further Education. Importantly, we suggest that in order to capture the dynamics of the interplay between labour process restructuring and regendering, there is a need to refocus upon sexual cultures. In this local site, currently experiencing rapid institutional changes in training practices, a range of young male sexual cultures are identified. With reference to institutional spaces and micro-cultural relations, we illustrate how these sexual cultures construct themselves through sexual difference. Finally, we also consider the importance of sexual knowledges in young people's post-16 education and training.     

Measuring the impacts of community development initiatives: a new application of the adjusted interrupted time-series method

The authors contribute to the development of empirical methods for measuring the impacts of place-based local development strategies by introducing the adjusted interrupted time-series (AITS) approach. It estimates a more precise counterfactual scenario, thus offering a stronger basis for drawing causal inferences about impacts. The authors applied the AITS approach to three community development initiatives using single-family home prices as the outcome indicator and found that it could measure impacts on both the base level of prices and the rate of price appreciation. The authors also found a situation in which the method appears unreliable, however. The AITS approach benefits from more recurrent data on outcomes during the pre-and post-intervention periods, with an intertemporal pattern that avoids great volatility. The AITS approach to measuring effects of community development initiatives holds strong promise, with caveats.     

Effects on high school students of teaching a cross-age alcohol prevention program

This study examined the impact on high school students who taught elementary students MADD's Protecting You/Protecting Me (PY/PM), an alcohol use prevention and vehicle safety program. High school students (N = 188) enrolled in a peer helping course completed surveys before and after teaching PY/PM, and a comparison group of peer helper students (N = 141) from matched schools completed surveys at the same times. Results indicated that, relative to the comparison group, those exposed to PY/PM gained knowledge of alcohol's effects, increased their perceptions of the risks of high levels of alcohol use, gained teaching skills, and showed less frequent episodes of binge drinking. No effects were found for attitudes toward future drinking, perceptions of the risk of low levels of alcohol use, alcohol use, or vehicle safety. This cross-age prevention program may be successful in changing high school students' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding high levels, but not low levels, of alcohol use.     

"Eurokid": An innovative pedagogical approach to developing intercultural and anti-racist education on the Web

Most schools in today's Europe have a high percentage of immigrant students. This percentage has increased in typical immigration countries such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, France and the UK. However, this is also true for countries such as Sweden or Spain. Aware of this multicultural picture, in this paper we present the methodological approach of a European Comenius project, "Eurokid", based on the template "Britkid" (see www.britkid.org), which addresses intercultural education and anti-racism. Three countries are involved in the project: the UK, Sweden and Spain. The project is an educational and innovative tool and a learning and teaching resource for students and teachers in secondary schools. How? Through websites where a group of adolescents (minorities and majorities) "meet" and "talk" about issues of acceptance, difference, racism, mixed cultures, (multiple) identitie, and integration. Their "talks" in the three websites--written in each country's language(s) and in English--as well as the characters, are based on original research (via interviews and questionnaires). The project's objectives, content, pedagogical approaches and authentic classroom material, created to facilitate and promote dialogue among minorities and majorities, form the basis of this paper.     

Public Perceptions of Everyday Food Hazards: A Psychometric Study

In this paper, we discuss the conduct and results of a study aimed at eliciting public perceptions of food-related hazards. This study employs the psychometric approach of Paul Slovic and colleagues and aims to extend the recent work of Sparks and Shepherd⁽¹⁾ on defining the primary dimensions of food-related risk perceptions. The study surveyed a nationally representative sample of the general public (respondents = 293; adjusted response rate = 30.1%). Respondents provided ratings on subsets of 22 potential food hazards (e.g., food irradiation and presence of listeria) on a total of 19 risk characteristics (e.g., "perceived severity of risk" and "adequacy of governmental regulations"). In spite of the use of a number of new characteristics and food hazards, Principal Components Analysis revealed a broadly similar factor structure to that obtained by Sparks and Shepherd,⁽¹⁾ suggesting the generalizability of the key dimensions (concerning the severity and awareness of hazards). Interestingly, the positioning in the factor space of potential hazards about which little was generally known (e.g., campylobacter) as being serious and in need of regulation, may suggest a possible "starting position" in the perception of new hazards that have not previously been the subject of risk communications.