Can cities be held responsible for early school leaving? Evidence from the Netherlands

This paper examines if ‘naming and shaming’ is an effective tool to increase accountability in school dropout for cities with disadvantaged student populations. It argues that a comparison with other cities might be unfair if regional and population characteristics differ. It discusses the example of two Dutch new towns. The new town policy deliberately attracted low- and medium-income households in the past, such that today the population of those cities differs from other cities. We use a matching analysis to account for observed differences in population and regional characteristics. The results point out that ‘naming and shaming’ may be a dangerous policy to increase accountability: early school leaving differences are driven, to a large extent, by observed differences in population and regional characteristics.     

Women Auto Know: Automotive knowledge,auto activism,and women's online car advice

Although women influence nearly 85 percent of new car sales, their experience at automotive dealerships differs significantly from that of men. Not only are women subject to sexist and patronizing behavior from automotive personnel, but they also often wind up paying considerably more for a vehicle than a male customer. In the past two decades, the Internet has evolved as a significant source of automotive information and advice. While the majority of car advice websites offer guidance to the general public, a handful address the automotive concerns of the female driver. These sites are significant not only for the information they make accessible to female visitors, but for what women gain—as drivers, consumers, and political actors—by reading them. This paper examines four popular websites that cater specifically to the woman driver. Calling upon feminist epistemologies, it demonstrates how such online locations empower women to become more informed drivers and consumers through the accumulation and distribution of women's automotive knowledge. Not only does this automotive knowledge aid women as negotiators, but it also provides them with the tools necessary to radically transform the hostile auto dealership culture, ultimately benefiting all in the market for an automobile.     

Exploring the Hierarchical Structure of Pacific Identity and Wellbeing

To understand outcomes for Pacific peoples in New Zealand we need to further our psychological knowledge of the relationship between Pacific identity and wellbeing. We map the hierarchical organization of Pacific identity and wellbeing using a novel top-down factor analytic approach applied to the Pacific Identity and Wellbeing Scale (PIWBS; N = 586). Analyses indicated that Pacific identity experiences were organized within two broad dimensions reflecting Identity Engagement and Cultural Wellbeing. Critically, our analysis showed that Religious Centrality and Embeddedness emerged jointly from these dual broad domains. Religious identification provides a bridging link between identity and wellbeing for Pacific peoples. Identifying the relationships of Pacific identity and wellbeing factors, and how religious identification emerges jointly from these two broad domains, provides valuable information in how the Pacific self may be cognitively organized and may assist in future research directions in this area. We assert that this general statistical model provides broad conceptual insights into how Pacific peoples experience their identity and culture, and how this relates to various social indicators of health and wellbeing at a broad, theoretical level. In particular, we offer a conceptual analysis of possible insights from our hierarchical model of identity and wellbeing for understanding Pacific suicide in New Zealand.     

Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

In the span of four weeks, from late March to early April 2008, three important technical services conferences were held: the Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference, the New England Technical Services Librarians Conference, and the North Carolina Serials Conference.     

A meta-analytic framework to adjust for bias in external control studies

While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the gold standard for estimating treatment effects in medical research, there is increasing use of and interest in using real-world data for drug development. One such use case is the construction of external control arms for evaluation of efficacy in single-arm trials, particularly in cases where randomization is either infeasible or unethical. However, it is well known that treated patients in non-randomized studies may not be comparable to control patients—on either measured or unmeasured variables—and that the underlying population differences between the two groups may result in biased treatment effect estimates as well as increased variability in estimation. To address these challenges for analyses of time-to-event outcomes, we developed a meta-analytic framework that uses historical reference studies to adjust a log hazard ratio estimate in a new external control study for its additional bias and variability. The set of historical studies is formed by constructing external control arms for historical RCTs, and a meta-analysis compares the trial controls to the external control arms. Importantly, a prospective external control study can be performed independently of the meta-analysis using standard causal inference techniques for observational data. We illustrate our approach with a simulation study and an empirical example based on reference studies for advanced non-small cell lung cancer. In our empirical analysis, external control patients had lower survival than trial controls (hazard ratio: 0.907), but our methodology is able to correct for this bias. An implementation of our approach is available in the R package ecmeta .     

Semi-parametric estimation of ROC curves based on binomial regression modelling

This paper presents a method of estimating a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve when the underlying diagnostic variable X is continuous and fully observed. The new method is based on modelling the probability of response given X , rather than the distribution of X given response. The method offers advantages in modelling flexibility and computational simplicity. The resulting ROC curve estimates are semi-parametric and can, in principle, take an infinite variety of shapes. Moreover, model selection can be based on standard methods within the binomial regression framework. Statistical accuracy of the curve estimate is provided by a simply implemented bootstrap approach.     

How many Australians have slept rough?

How many Australians have experienced homelessness during their lifetime and how many people have slept rough? This paper draws on evidence from a random sample of the Australian population to answer these questions (N=1349). First, we explain the methodology for the research. Then we focus on the number of people who have experienced homelessness and the different experiences of men and women. Next, we investigate how many people have slept rough. We conclude that about 2.35 million people have experienced homelessness during their lifetime, and that 59 per cent of them (about 1.4 million people) have slept rough.