Contesting Claims on Measuring Performance in the Public Sector Using Performance Audits: Evidence from the Literature

Based on desk study, this article adduces theoretical and empirical evidence to analyze the claims of advocates and critics of performance audit (PA). The paper establishes that the application of PA in some developed countries has led to improvement in aspects of public sector performance albeit sometimes short of the often highlighted effects of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. The article further provides evidence to support the claim that despite its touted contribution to performance, PA could rather lead to anti-innovation, nit-picking, expectations gap, lapdog, headline hunting, unnecessary systems and hollow ritual. The paper questions the quality of reported PA systems in the literature and advocates a PA regime that strikes a delicate balance between compliance and performance.     

Restoring Hope for Syrian Refugees: Social Support Students Need to Excel at School

This qualitative, phenomenological case study was designed to elicit Syrian refugee students’ perceptions regarding the individuals who provide them with the social support needed for academic success. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 male Syrian eighth graders at a public middle school in Lebanon. House's social support framework guided this study and served as the theoretical lens through which data were collected and analysed. Findings from this study revealed teachers, supervisors, and administrators as expected major providers of the social supports that Syrian refugee students need to excel in their studies. However, when students do not find support where they might expect it to be, they adopt coping strategies such as independence, perseverance, self-efficacy, and peer-teaching. These findings are of primary importance to school administrators, humanitarian aid agencies, and policymakers. The article concludes with recommendations for practice and future research.     

Whistle blowing and research integrity: Potential remedy for research misconduct in Malaysian institutions of higher education

This study found that less than half of the respondents are willing to blow the whistle. The results reveal that a lack of protection with regard to the whistleblower’s identity, the tedious investigative process, and the notion of avoiding confrontation, which is more apparent in Asian cultures as compared to the West, are among the reasons why individuals who witnessed misconduct chose to remain silent. Adhering to the Asian cultural upbringing where the young must respect the old, those of lower rank must obey those with higher authority, and subordinates do not question the actions of their superior, has become a norm even in the working environment. Therefore, emphasize the need for better protection for whistleblowers including using experienced individuals with a research ethics background to handle allegations from whistleblowers. In addition, established guidelines and procedures for whistleblowers with regard to voicing their allegations against colleagues engaged in research misconduct is still lacking or, to a certain extent, is still unknown to researchers. Thus, the concern indicates a need for institutions to create awareness among researchers regarding the existing platform for whistleblowers, or to develop a systematic and clear procedure which is reliable and independent to promote professionalism in academia.     

The Dyadic Effects of Controlling Emotional Abuse on Subjective Emotional Experience in Iranian Older Married Couples

This randomised control trial study examines the impact of an emotional‐focused intervention on emotional abuse and subjective emotional experience in Iranian older married couples. In the study, 57 older couples were randomly assigned into control and experimental groups with the latter taking part in an intervention program over 4 weeks, twice a week, with sessions lasting 90 minutes. In the experimental group, significant improvements were found for reducing emotional abuse behaviours and increasing subjective emotional experience. Dyadic analysis revealed that a partner's ability to control their own emotional abuse significantly effects both his/her subjective emotional experience and that of their spouse.     

Is Tourism Marriage of Young Girls in Egypt a Form of Child Sexual Abuse? A Family Exploitation Perspective

Tourism marriage in Egypt is considered a part of the child marriage phenomenon, as parents following false interpretations of Islamic teachings offer up their daughters for short-term sexual relationships in return for money from tourists. This exploratory study used qualitative methods to interview 42 parents who reside in the city of Darasa, Giza, Egypt, whose daughters were persuaded to engage in tourism marriage. Eight social work students utilized an interview guide that contained 10 questions exploring how parents strike deals with tourists and avoid all legal and traditional procedures of marriage in Egypt. The findings of this study were summarized in six distinct themes, which show evidence of family exploitation of young women. This experience likely increases the child’s vulnerability to psychological, social, and physical consequences.     

Immigrant workers in the Libyan labour force

Using a series of statistical analyses, this study assesses the importance of foreign labour in the Libyan economic and social structures over the last 30 years. It notes the development of a particular series of dependencies on such labour, especially in skilled and professional occupations. Despite the government's declared policy of Libyanization, the authors note the development of a parallel labour market of nationals and non‐nationals and the consequential difficulties of moving towards full implementation of such a policy.     

Comparing the Explanatory and Predictive Power of Intention-Based Theories of Personal Monetary Donation to Charitable Organizations

The theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) have been found to have predictive capability in a wide range of personal behaviors. The aim of the study is twofold: firstly, to assess the applicability of the TRA, the TPB, and a newly developed revised version of the TPB in the context of individuals’ monetary donations to charitable organizations; and secondly, to compare the explanatory and predictive power of these three theoretical models. Data relating to intention to give monetary donation, attitudes toward helping others and toward charitable giving, social norms, moral responsibility, and perceived behavioral control were collected in the first phase of the study by means of a self-completion mail questionnaire distributed to 432 residents of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In the second phase, 1 month later, telephone interviews were conducted with 221 of the first-phase respondents who had agreed to take part in a follow-up survey of their actual monetary-donating behavior. The findings show that the revised TPB is the best of the three models for predicting individuals’ intention to donate and their future monetary-donation behavior, mainly because moral responsibility is included in the theoretical framework. It thus offers superior explanatory and predictive power.     

Prior elicitation, variable selection and Bayesian computation for logistic regression models

Bayesian selection of variables is often difficult to carry out because of the challenge in specifying prior distributions for the regression parameters for all possible models, specifying a prior distribution on the model space and computations. We address these three issues for the logistic regression model. For the first, we propose an informative prior distribution for variable selection. Several theoretical and computational properties of the prior are derived and illustrated with several examples. For the second, we propose a method for specifying an informative prior on the model space, and for the third we propose novel methods for computing the marginal distribution of the data. The new computational algorithms only require Gibbs samples from the full model to facilitate the computation of the prior and posterior model probabilities for all possible models. Several properties of the algorithms are also derived. The prior specification for the first challenge focuses on the observables in that the elicitation is based on a prior prediction y ₀ for the response vector and a quantity a ₀ quantifying the uncertainty in y ₀. Then, y ₀ and a ₀ are used to specify a prior for the regression coefficients semi-automatically. Examples using real data are given to demonstrate the methodology.     

Using auxiliary data for parameter estimation with non-ignorably missing outcomes

We propose a method for estimating parameters in generalized linear models when the outcome variable is missing for some subjects and the missing data mechanism is non-ignorable. We assume throughout that the covariates are fully observed. One possible method for estimating the parameters is maximum likelihood with a non-ignorable missing data model. However, caution must be used when fitting non-ignorable missing data models because certain parameters may be inestimable for some models. Instead of fitting a non-ignorable model, we propose the use of auxiliary information in a likelihood approach to reduce the bias, without having to specify a non-ignorable model. The method is applied to a mental health study.     

A simple method for estimating a regression model for κ between a pair of raters

Agreement studies commonly occur in medical research, for example, in the review of X-rays by radiologists, blood tests by a panel of pathologists and the evaluation of psychopathology by a panel of raters. In these studies, often two observers rate the same subject for some characteristic with a discrete number of levels. The κ-coefficient is a popular measure of agreement between the two raters. The κ-coefficient may depend on covariates, i.e. characteristics of the raters and/or the subjects being rated. Our research was motivated by two agreement problems. The first is a study of agreement between a pastor and a co-ordinator of Christian education on whether they feel that the congregation puts enough emphasis on encouraging members to work for social justice (yes versus no). We wish to model the κ-coefficient as a function of covariates such as political orientation (liberal versus conservative) of the pastor and co-ordinator. The second example is a spousal education study, in which we wish to model the κ-coefficient as a function of covariates such as the highest degree of the father of the wife and the father of the husband. We propose a simple method to estimate the regression model for the κ-coefficient, which consists of two logistic (or multinomial logistic) regressions and one linear regression for binary data. The estimates can be easily obtained in any generalized linear model software program.