Professional development in national organizations: insights from Girls Incorporated

The largest national youth organizations have targeted, comprehensive professional development systems. For one of them, Girls Incorporated, its mission "to inspire all girls to be strong, smart, and bold" drives sophisticated, evaluated professional development for affiliate staff and trustees.     

How Much Do Liberal and Conservative Identifiers Differ in the United States?*

Recent scholarship has reported that identification as a liberal or conservative shapes lifestyle orientations and behaviors. Liberal/conservative differences with respect to such arenas as family and religion go beyond ideological identification research's traditional focus on policy attitudes and political processes. But are differences on non-political issues as large as those relating to political ones? This question has yet to be addressed, and it is critical to putting in firmer perspective the degree to which liberal and conservative identifiers differ in the United States. We take up investigation through analysis of 106 items from the General Social Survey 2006 panel. We compare ideological identification's influence with respect to political versus non-political orientations and behaviors. Application of Morgan and Winship's model of causal inference builds from past studies’ cross-sectional analysis. Results extend ideological identification scholarship, while cautioning against wide-ranging claims advanced by several public commentators.     

Outcome Evaluation of Therapeutic Effectiveness

Evaluation need not be a boring exercise, carried out under sufferance simply to please the demands of administration. Nor need it be so complicated that a research officer is required to undertake it. This article reports on an evaluation of therapeutic outcomes conducted by the Manly Warringah Adolescent Service. Apart from offering general evidence of therapeutic effectiveness, an evaluation of this kind has the potential for answering some of the more interesting questions posed by clinicians. It was discovered, for example, that there was a significant, positive association between the therapist's assessment of problem resolution at termination of therapy, and client's independent assessment made three months later. Support was also found for the practice of involving the family in therapy, with such an approach offering favourable results in fewer sessions and carrying with it the additional benefits of improved family relationships.     

Procurement process: Decision by exclusion and pairwise comparisons

Two case studies illustrate multicriteria decision making techniques frequently used in procurement practice: least-cost sufficient performance and weighted utility optimization. Both techniques have defects and are rarely robust. Decision by exclusion and pairwise comparisons is proposed as a third approach which eliminates inferior alternatives by generalized forms of minimum performance requirements established under multicriteria framework. It is more robust and maintains high level of accountability.     

An Observational Analysis of the Impact of Board Dynamics and Directors' Participation on Perceived Board Effectiveness

This study addresses calls for closer examination of board dynamics by offering an inside view of director interactions. Video observations of three board meetings at each of two Australian corporations matched with director interviews and secondary data reveal distinct patterns of director interactions, their sources of variation and their impact on perceived board effectiveness. The data reveal that director interactions are multidimensional and dynamic: while group interactions across agenda items are similar, with a few directors leading the discussion, the contributing directors change across items. Moreover, directors' inclusiveness and evenness of participation are associated with higher perceptions of board effectiveness. Lastly, the study found that director interactions change with the nature of the items, board climate and board meeting arrangements. The study contributes to the literature by moving beyond the individual‐level analysis of directors' skills or independence, and offering a detailed view of how the joint group and individual dimensions of board dynamics affect board functioning.     

Assessing population differentiation and isolation from single-nucleotide polymorphism data

Summary. We introduce a new, hierarchical, model for single-nucleotide polymorphism allele frequencies in a structured population, which is naturally fitted via Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. There is one parameter for each population, closely analogous to a population-specific version of Wright's F _ST , which can be interpreted as measuring how isolated the relevant population has been. Our model includes the effects of single-nucleotide polymorphism ascertainment and is motivated by population genetics considerations, explicitly in the transient setting after divergence of populations, rather than as the equilibrium of a stochastic model, as is traditionally the case. For the sizes of data set that we consider the method provides good parameter estimates and considerably outperforms estimation methods analogous to those currently used in practice. We apply the method to one new and one existing human data set, each with rather different characteristics—the first consisting of three rather close European populations; the second of four populations taken from across the globe. A novelty of our framework is that the fit of the underlying model can be assessed easily, and these results are encouraging for both data sets analysed. Our analysis suggests that Iceland is more differentiated than the other two European populations (France and Utah), a finding which is consistent with the historical record, but not obvious from comparisons of simple summary statistics.     

The Baby Boomer Effect: Changing Patterns of Substance Abuse Among Adults Ages 55 and Older

Between now and 2030, the number of adults aged 65 and older in the United States will almost double, from around 37 million to more than 70 million, an increase from 12% of the U.S. population to almost 20%. It was long held that, with only a few isolated exceptions, substance abuse simply did not exist among this population. In light of the impact of the baby boom generation, this assumption may no longer be valid. The authors examined admissions of persons 55 years and older (n = 918,955) from the Treatment Episode Data Set (1998–2006). Total admissions with a primary drug problem with alcohol have remained relatively stable over this time. Admissions for problems with a primary drug other than alcohol have shown a steady and substantial increase. Clearly, data from the Treatment Episode Data Set indicate a coming wave of older addicts whose primary problem is not alcohol. The authors suspect that this wave is led primarily by the continuing emergence of the baby boomer generation.