Models of disability support governance: a framework for assessing and reforming social policy

In many developed countries, the provision of disability services has undergone significant transformations, from institutional to community based care, and from oganisational to personalised funding. Yet delivering disability support remains an ongoing challenge for governments. Specifically, the relative success of different types of disability support governance is convoluted and problematic given the diversity and complexity of disability support systems and the people they serve. To enhance the systematic analysis and evaluation of disability support governance, this paper conceptually advances four distinct models based on the locus of control and coordination of such support: uncoordinated; casework governance; dwelling‐based governance; and user‐coordinated. Using illustrations from case studies of individuals receiving care, the identification of these ideal types enables their relative strengths, weaknesses, and the occasions of governance failure to be articulated. No one model is universally applicable to people, nor immune to failure. Furthermore, the paper presents a novel approach to visualising actual disability support arrangements as social networks. The utility of such visualisations for analysing individual and system‐ wide arrangements is outlined. In the context of Australia's developing National Disability Insurance Scheme, these conceptual and analytical developments are argued to be important tools for policy and service analysis and reform.     

Formal network studies and the anthropological perspective

Anthropological social network studies are primarily of interest for an original formulation of the classic sociological problem of reconciling structural and action aspects of social organization. In general, however, these studies have produced disappointing substantive results owing to serious methodological and theoretical difficulties. Within the anthropological tradition are two types of research, viz., structural kinship studies and cognitive anthropological decision models, which have produced sound substantive results and which, if generalized and properly combined, could provide the methodological and theoretical tools which eluded the network scholars.     

MAFALDA: An Argentina Comic Strip

Mafalda, the acutely sensitive little girl well-known to both Argentinian and other Latin American readers, has been used by Quino, her creator, as the vehicle to comment on national foibles and pretentions. David Foster analyzes several strips to show how Mafalda's cleverness is based on literary strategems of what he calls “judicious inuerosimilitude.” While he asserts that Quino's work is a remarkably accurate representation of the details of Argentine bourgeois daily life, the dominant Buenos Aires sociodialect, and patterns of behavior that underlie social and ethic values, the strip is also singularly inverosimilar in its handling of sociological types. The object o f the strip thus is artful verbal and visual representation. Readers familiar with literary criticism will be interested in Foster's employment o f some general semiological principles to highlight the complex ironies which pervade Quino's work and to show how much of the strip's worth derives from contrasting Mafalda's unique perceptions and the stereotypic behavior of those around her.     

Alternative methods for handling attrition: an illustration using data from the Fast Track evaluation

Using data from the evaluation of the Fast Track intervention, this article illustrates three methods for handling attrition. Multiple imputation and ignorable maximum likelihood estimation produce estimates that are similar to those based on listwise-deleted data. A panel selection model that allows for selective dropout reveals that highly aggressive boys accumulate in the treatment group over time and produces a larger estimate of treatment effect. In contrast, this model produces a smaller treatment effect for girls. The article's conclusion discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the alternative approaches and outlines ways in which researchers might improve their handling of attrition.     

Reports of Conferences, Institutes, and Seminars

The Scholarly Communication Interest Group of the New England Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries sponsored a workshop titled “Partnering with Faculty: Scholarly Communication Conversations,” held on July 29, 2010, at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts. Partnering with EBSCO and the North American Serials Interest Group, Mississippi State University (MSU) Libraries hosted the ninth MidSouth eResource Symposium at MSU's Mitchell Memorial Library in Starkville, Mississippi, on Thursday, September 16, 2010. ITHAKA Sustainable Scholarship was a two-day meeting at the Westin Times Square, New York City, September 27-28, 2010. Finally, published herein is a summary of the NISO Webinar “It's Only as Good as the Metadata: Improving OpenURL and Knowledge Base Quality,” held October 13, 2010.     

Examining the Impact of Speed of Quality Improvement on Quality-Related Costs

The Fine (1986) quality-based learning curve model is extended to include the consideration of speed of quality improvement. The model demonstrates that under different circumstances rapid quality improvement effects are either beneficial or detrimental to improvement in quality-related costs. Hypotheses are developed from the analysis of this speed of quality improvement model. The hypotheses are tested in an automotive parts manufacturing company with five similar plants. Results show that with an increase in the speed of quality improvement, the rate of growth in prevention and appraisal costs decrease and the rate of growth in failure costs are unaffected. Rapid speed of quality improvement does yield lesser decreases in failure costs than slower, steadier improvement. However, rapid speed of quality improvement does not yield the predicted lesser decrease in prevention and appraisal costs than slower, steadier improvement. Rapid speed of quality improvement might or might not benefit the organization, perhaps an explanation for some Total Quality Management (TQM) failures. A more deliberate, learning organization is suggested from this research.