Environmental assessment in forestry: the initial experience

This study analyses the effectiveness of the European Community's Environmental Assessment Directive of 1985 in its application in the U.K. forestry sector. It assesses the applicability of the regulations in the provision of the public and private outputs of forestry. The environmental assessment regulation may contribute to the provision of the optimal amount of these public and private goods in theory, but it is concluded that, in common with initial results of the environmental assessment process in other sectors, the regulations do not make this contribution in practice in the forestry sector. The main deficiencies of the environmental statements examined were the failure to identify the significant potential impacts; to present alternative project sites and design features; and the erroneous measure of particular externalities. The environmental assessment process was also found to be unsatisfactory in the lack of public accessibility and consultation. The need for revision of the process in the forestry sector is highlighted.     

Morbidity measures in the presence of recurrent composite endpoints

The analysis of recurrent event data in clinical trials presents a number of difficulties. The statistician is faced with issues of event dependency, composite endpoints, unbalanced follow‐up times and informative dropout. It is not unusual, therefore, for statisticians charged with responsibility for providing reliable and valid analyses to need to derive new methods specific to the clinical indication under investigation. One method is proposed that appears to have possible advantages over those that are often used in the analysis of recurrent event data in clinical trials. Based on an approach that counts periods of time with events instead of single event counts, the proposed method makes an adjustment for patient time on study and incorporates heterogeneity by estimating an individual per‐patient risk of experiencing a morbid event. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that, with use of a real clinical study data, the proposed method consistently outperforms other measures of morbidity. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pitfalls in Drawing Policy Conclusions from Retrospective Survey Data: The Case of Advertising and Underage Smoking

Measuring the impact of potentially controllable factors on the willingness of youth to undertake health risks is important to informed public health policy decisions. Typically the only data linking these factors with risk-taking behavior are retrospective. This study demonstrates, by means of a recent example, that there can be serious pitfalls in using even longitudinal retrospective data to draw conclusions about causal relations between potentially controllable factors and risk-taking behavior.     

Trade-offs in Online Purchase Decisions:: Two Empirical Studies in Europe

The Internet offers firms a new way to market their products and services and to interact with their end-consumers. While many firms have developed websites, very little is known about the trade-offs consumers are willing to make when making online purchases. With millions of websites competing for attention, online firms need to know in what way consumers make purchase decisions online. Consumers mainly evaluate websites on the basis of choice and convenience. In this paper, we present the results of two European studies that examine what consumers actually value in an online environment. In study 1, we assess choice-related trade-offs in terms of number of product categories, variety of products within a given category and product-related information. Conjoint analysis revealed that product-related information represents an important decision-making variable. In study 2, we assess convenience-related trade-offs in terms of logistics, fulfilment and security. Conjoint analysis revealed that fulfilment is the most important variable related to online handling. Finally, our study clearly indicates that firms have to distinguish different consumer segments on the basis of their preferences. This knowledge enables online firms to use their resources more effectively.     

The rejuvenation of community studies? Neighbours,networks and policy

Why have community studies in Britain undergone such a decline? Several reasons are suggested for the decrease in popularity of this type of research since the mid-1960s, but several signs of possible resurgence are detected. Sociologists may also have something to learn from applied work in this area. The definition of the field is shifting from the geographical community to the study of primary group relations among neighbours, friends and kin. An effective methodological strategy which avoids hypostatising geographical space is social network analysis. Current theoretical issues are exemplified from Philip Abrams's work. There is revival too in the study of local-level political action.     

Editorial

Helmut Anheier is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Research Associate, Institute for Policy Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.     

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Turnover Intentions with Organizational Identification and Job Satisfaction*

The social identity approach is a powerful theoretical framework for the understanding of individuals' behaviour. The main argument is that individuals think and act on behalf of the group they belong to because this group membership adds to their social identity, which partly determines one's self‐esteem. In the organizational world, social identity and self‐categorization theories state that a strong organizational identification is associated with low turnover intentions. Because identification is the more general perception of shared fate between employee and organization, we propose that the relationship between identification and turnover will be mediated by job satisfaction as the more specific evaluation of one's task and working conditions. In four samples we found organizational identification feeding into job satisfaction, which in turn predicts turnover intentions.     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Chris Beyrer, War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia Caroline H. Bledsoe et al. (eds.), Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World Donald J. Hernandez and Evan Charney (eds)., From Generation to Generation: The Health and Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families Nana Poku and David T. Graham (eds.), Redefining Security: Population Movements and National Security Jyoti Shankar Singh, Creating a New Consensus on Population Jael Silliman and Ynestra King (eds.), Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment, and Development; A Project of the Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay Winter, A Question of Numbers: High Migration, Low Fertility, and the Politics of National Identity United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Monitoring 1997 Anthony Young, Land Resources: Now and for the Future