Short-term Residential Therapy for the Family: The Eastling Parentcraft Centre Project

This paper describes a short-term residential family therapy project which has been developed at the Eastling Parentcraft Centre, Christchurch, New Zealand. The Eastling Parentcraft Centre provides a community based residential programme for families who have difficulties in family relationships and child management, and with parental self-esteem. The problems may concern bonding, separation, neglect and risk of abuse, lack of social support, and feelings of isolation. The Centre's project is described together with an evaluation of the work with families during the second year of the project's operation. Some aspects of this type of residential work with families are also discussed.     

Dog catchers: A descriptive study

This ethnographic study examines the dog catcher in regard to work duties and role performances inherent in the occupation. Meanings associated with the occupation are considered in the light of the Sociology of Occupations. Dogcatchers were found to have devised mechanisms to subtly “get back at” an unappreciative public, behaviors which appear similar to those found in other low status or status inconsistent occupations.     

An application of catastrophe theory to management science process

Practicing management scientists often complain of the alleged irrational behavior on the part of the managers they are trying to serve, particularly when a manager suddenly and unexpectedly shifts behavior from one of support to one of resistance. The authors feel such behavior is only believed to be irrational because the management scientist is using the wrong mental model when projecting past behavioral patterns into the future. This paper attempts to solve this problem by using the newly developed catastrophe theory to develop a different model where sudden shifts in behavior are considered perfectly rational and explainable. The basic implication that is drawn from this new model is that successful implementation of management science depends on a sequence of interactions with the ultimate model user and that care in the structuring of these interactions can greatly enhance the probability of eventual user acceptance.     

Econometric analysis and managerial decision making

Econometric analysis is concerned with the quantitative relationships between economic variables and it can provide an important input into the decision making process of managers. Typically econometrics differs from other apsects of management science in that it considers problems primarily, though not exclusively, from a background of economics rather than of other disciplines and behaviour is usually dealt with at higher levels of data aggregation than the individual firm.This paper considers some applications of typical econometrics to the general area of managerial decision making, where primarily the techniques have a role to play in assisting the general process of data analysis. Initially discussion is pointed towards the use of the analysis for predictive purposes and the contrast with time series methods. Subsequently examples are presented where the objective is to obtain a better understanding of individual economic relationships that aim to be important inputs into the decision making process, for example cost and revenue analysis. Finally, an example is given of how these ideas contribute more generally to the activity of model building for the firm as a whole both for the purpose of forecasting and policy simulation.     

Consumer racial discrimination: A reassessment of the market for baseball cards

Research on the presence of consumer racial discrimination in the baseball labor and memorabilia markets has produced contradictory empirical results. While studies of baseball salaries find no evidence of discrimination, Nardinelli and Simon (1990) and Andersen and La Croix (1991) use data from the baseball card market to show that the price that consumers pay for a card depends on the player’s race. In this paper, we reconsider the evidence of consumer discrimination in the baseball card market. Our study improves on previous research by applying more appropriate econometric methods and using a data set in which card supply is constant and incentives for speculative demand are weaker. In contradiction to the aforementioned studies, we find little evidence of racial discrimination. This result proves robust across variable specifications and econometric models. The authors thank Tyler Cowen, Kevin Grier, David Levy, Barb McKiernan, Don Palmer, Dan Sutler, and Bob Tollison for helpful suggestions on an earlier draft.     

Longitudinal associations among adolescents’ organized activity involvement and sociopolitical values

Organized activities represent a potentially important context for the development of adolescent sociopolitical values, but few studies have examined longitudinal associations between youths’ sociopolitical values and activity involvement. Adolescents (N = 299, Time 1 M_age = 15.49, SD = .93, 62% female) reported on their organized activity involvement (volunteering, church, sports, arts/music, school and community clubs) and sociopolitical values (materialism, social dominance, authoritarianism, patriotism, spirituality) at baseline and one year later. Greater involvement in arts/music predicted lower spirituality and patriotism one year later and greater involvement in church predicted higher levels of spirituality and lower levels of social dominance one year later. Higher levels of materialism predicted less involvement in arts/music one year later and higher social dominance values predicted less involvement in volunteering one year later. Findings support the importance of organized activities in sociopolitical development, and suggest that sociopolitical values may guide decisions concerning future organized activity involvement.     

The Pacific Rim Library: A Surprising Pearl

The Pacific Rim Library (PRL) is an initiative of the Pacific Rim Digital Library Association (PRDLA). The project began in 2006 using the OAI-PMH paradigm and now holds over 300,000 records harvested from OAI data provider libraries around the Pacific. PRL's goal is to enable the sharing of digital collections amongst PRDLA members and the world, but greater unexpected benefits have been discovered. Through mirroring their metadata, PRL increases the chance that their data will be discovered in Google and other general search engines. With its many disparate collections, PRL is not a repository for traditional information discovery and retrieval. Initially users will bounce from a Google hit to the PRL metadata record in Hong Kong and then begin an intensive search on the original site which hosts the full digital object, in Vancouver, Honolulu, Wuhan, Singapore, or other PRDLA member location.