The future from the top: Presidential perspectives on planning—Part two

This is the second part of Dr. Rosen's article and follows on from the section published in the April 1974 issue of Long Range Planning. This section is concerned with examining and selecting the most suitable form of the variety of possible approaches to planning, balancing the involvement of the Chief Executive and relating forecasts to the development and life of the company.     

The Validity of Observational Measures in Detecting Optimal Maternal Communication Styles: Evidence from European Americans and Latinos

This study examined the sensitivity of an observational coding system for assessing positive and negative maternal behaviors of Latino and European American mothers toward their adolescent children. Ninety Latino (54 Spanish speaking and 35 English speaking) and 20 European American mother–adolescent dyads participated in an observational study of conversations about sexuality, AIDS, and conflicts. Associations were examined between observed maternal positive and negative behaviors and adolescent‐reported relationship quality. Results indicated that maternal negative responsiveness was negatively associated with relationship quality for all ethnic/language groups. However, maternal positive responsiveness was related to relationship quality for European Americans but not for Latinos. These findings suggest a need for a broader definition of positive parenting in Latino families.     

Kollegiale Supervision — ein Instrument der Qualitätsentwicklung für die Hochschullehre?

The enhancement of quality inhigher education is an important task for German universities. As this article point out, peer supervision might serve as an important instrument to accomplish this task, if the interchange of ideas on higher education leads to agreements on goals and the development of behavioral standards. Some requirements that should be met to make sure that peer supervision has these effects are described at the end of the article.     

A network of services for severely disturbed adolescents.

A centralized network of facilities offering a comprehensive package of treatment modalities avoids the difficulties involved in the coordination of scattered services.     

Men,Resources, and Family Living: The Determinants of Union and Parental Status in the United States and Sweden

Household fatherhood (living with a partner and her children) is increasingly common, which also increases the types of family situations men can choose. This paper examines factors distinguishing men's partnership and parental statuses in the United States and Sweden. These countries differ in state support to families. Unlike the United States, in Sweden the presence of a man in a relationship with a woman with children has little effect on receipt of alternative forms of income support and health insurance, lowering the cost of men's membership in families. We examine how resources (earned income and education) affect men's family relationships in these two countries.     

Negotiating dilemmas in the practices of street‐level welfare work

Hjörne E, Juhila K, van Nijnatten C. Negotiating dilemmas in the practices of street‐level welfare work Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 303–309 © 2010 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and International Journal of Social Welfare. The theme of this mini‐symposium is based on the core ideas of two influential books published about 30 years ago, namely Michael Lipsky's Street‐Level Bureaucracy – Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services (1980) and Jeffrey Prottas's People‐Processing – The Street‐Level Bureaucrat in Public Service Bureaucracies (1979). In these books, three dilemmas were identified that have great importance for welfare workers' position as mediators between institutions and citizens: autonomy versus control, responsiveness versus standardisation, and demand versus supply. In this editorial, we discuss these dilemmas with regard to the present context of street‐level welfare work, which is strongly influenced by managerialist policies (also called new public management). It is emphasised that in the era of managerialism, the dilemmas should be approached as empirical matters: how they are present, talked into being and negotiated in naturally occurring practices of street‐level welfare work, and with what consequences.     

Total least squares solution for compositional data using linear models

The restrictive properties of compositional data, that is multivariate data with positive parts that carry only relative information in their components, call for special care to be taken while performing standard statistical methods, for example, regression analysis. Among the special methods suitable for handling this problem is the total least squares procedure (TLS, orthogonal regression, regression with errors in variables, calibration problem), performed after an appropriate log-ratio transformation. The difficulty or even impossibility of deeper statistical analysis (confidence regions, hypotheses testing) using the standard TLS techniques can be overcome by calibration solution based on linear regression. This approach can be combined with standard statistical inference, for example, confidence and prediction regions and bounds, hypotheses testing, etc., suitable for interpretation of results. Here, we deal with the simplest TLS problem where we assume a linear relationship between two errorless measurements of the same object (substance, quantity). We propose an iterative algorithm for estimating the calibration line and also give confidence ellipses for the location of unknown errorless results of measurement. Moreover, illustrative examples from the fields of geology, geochemistry and medicine are included. It is shown that the iterative algorithm converges to the same values as those obtained using the standard TLS techniques. Fitted lines and confidence regions are presented for both original and transformed compositional data. The paper contains basic principles of linear models and addresses many related problems.     

Helpful citizens and caring families: Patterns of informal help and caregiving in Sweden in a 17‐year perspective

Jegermalm M, Grassman EJ. Helpful citizens and caring families: patterns of informal help and caregiving in Sweden in a 17‐year perspective This article reports on an analysis of informal help and caregiving in Sweden with, for the first time, a focus on patterns of change over 17 years regarding scope, type of caregivers and the recipients of help. The discussion is based on results from a national survey repeated four times between 1992 and 2009. In the 1990s, the figures were stable, but from the late 1990s to 2009, there seems to have been a dramatic increase in the extent of informal help giving. Concerning types of helpers, the patterns implied involvement not only from family members, but also from other types of helpers. Two interpretative perspectives were used in the analysis: the first from recent welfare state changes and the substitution argument; the second from the present debate on civil society and its possible and changing role. These perspectives represent two partly complementary approaches to the understanding of the dynamics of informal involvement in contemporary Swedish society.     

Statistical Inference for Transformation Inhomogeneous Point Processes

Abstract.  Statistical inference for exponential inhomogeneous Markov point processes by transformation is discussed. It is argued that the inhomogeneity parameter can be estimated, using a partial likelihood based on an inhomogeneous Poisson point process. The inhomogeneity parameter can thereby be estimated without taking the interaction into account, which simplifies the statistical analysis considerably. Data analysis and simulation experiments support the results.