Report on matching procedures of a dual record system in the southern Philippines

There are generally three stages to the development of rules for matching vital events data from two sources covering the same population: (a) establishing a set of “true” matches and nonmatches; (b) determining the best tolerance limits for each single characteristic which might be used in matching; and (c) experimenting to determine the set or sets of characteristics and the weights to be used in classifying a pair of records as matched or nonmatched. Specific examples, based on early matching experiments with data from the dual record system of the Mindanao Center for Population Studies (MCPS), are presented. Successive application of different sets of characteristics (differential valence rule) to the remaining unmatched events produced an acceptable rule for matching in this study.     

Money and Journal of Organizational Behavior Management Interventions: A Review

Practitioners and business leaders can use monetary data to quantify the financial outcomes of interventions in organizational behavior management (OBM). The primary purpose of this review was to investigate the occurrence and classification of monetary data in the OBM literature. Other purposes were to demonstrate ways in which such data contribute to the measurement of value and to provide recommendations for its reporting and publication. Accordingly, a review was conducted of publications in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management. Cumulative yearly results showed that cost data were reported more often than cost plus benefit data, and cost plus benefit data were reported more often than benefit data alone. More cost than benefit data were reported, most often with social validity, followed by institutionalization, then maintenance measures. However, more cost plus benefit data were reported than either cost or benefit data with a maintenance measure. It is concluded that reporting cost and benefit data would be beneficial to the field of OBM.     

Women's Voices: Explaining Poverty and Plenty in a Rural Community*

Abstract This paper explores how a multiclass sample of white rural women in an economically depressed, overwhelmingly nonfarm community explain both their own families' economic circumstances and those of the most disadvantaged families in their community. All women in the sample—even those with a history of economic instability and welfare receipt—articulate an ethic of family self‐sufficiency. They uniformly believe that anyone who can work should work, although they vary in their definition of who “can work.” In general, the lower the social class, the greater the understanding of the social processes that precipitate and perpetuate poverty. Both working‐class and poor women clearly recognize the limitations of the local market for labor. Sample women are ambivalent about welfare receipt and welfare reform. Although they believe that families should be self‐supporting, many recognize the necessity of welfare for the survival of some families in the community.     

Condoms and Contexts: Profiles of Sexual Risk and Safety Among Young Heterosexually Active Men

Heterosexual men's sexual safety behavior is important to controlling the U.S. epidemic of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). While sexual safety is often treated as a single behavior, such as condom use, it can also be conceptualized as resulting from multiple factors. Doing so can help us achieve more nuanced understandings of sexual risk and safety within partner-related contexts. We used latent class analysis with data collected online from 18- to 25-year-old heterosexually active U.S. men (n = 432) to empirically derive a typology of the patterns of sexual safety strategies they employed. Indicators were sexual risk-reduction strategies used in the past year with the most recent female sex partner: condom use, discussing sexual histories, STI testing, agreeing to be monogamous, and discussing birth control. We identified four subgroups: Risk Takers (12%), Condom Reliers (25%), Multistrategists (28%), and Relationship Reliers (35%). Partner-related context factors—number of past-year sex partners, relationship commitment, and sexual concurrency—predicted subgroup membership. Findings support tailoring STI prevention to men's sexual risk-safety subgroups. Interventions should certainly continue to encourage condom use but should also include information on how partner-related context factors and alternate sexual safety strategies can help men reduce risk for themselves and their partners.     

Governance and evaluation: The case of EU regional policy horizontal priorities

This paper argues that the framing of many programme evaluations tends to eschew any rigorous exploration of the governance aspects of programme design and implementation. This is illustrated by an examination of the method-based approach endorsed by the European Commission for the evaluation of its regional policy programmes. In line with previous work, this found that such evaluations, particularly those using management-based approaches, underplay the role of social and political agency in programme framing and implementation, and therefore in explaining outcomes. Acknowledging such factors is especially important in evaluating cross-cutting themes such as equal opportunities, environmental sustainability and social inclusion. Known as horizontal priorities in European Union policies, such issues at their heart reflect unease with the traditional functional organisation of the modern state, which while providing organisational efficiency gains for planning, is not able to cater for complex and multiple social realities in a postmodern world. Using evidence from South Yorkshire, United Kingdom, and in particular the Mid Term Evaluation of the 2000–2006 European Union Structural Funds Programme, the paper argues that a robust evaluation of such horizontal priorities has to incorporate the full range of governance factors. This is because their framing, implementation and possible achievements are contingent on, and shaped by, the mobilisation of social and political actors.     

Computerized industrial forecasting for planning in central government

This article is based on a talk presented to the I.B.M. Conference on Management Science and Strategic Planning, which was held in September 1970. It relates therefore to work on medium term industrial forecasting that was undertaken in the former Ministry of Technology. Following the announcement of the Reorganization of Central Government (Cmnd 4506) the team developing this work was transferred to the Treasury so that input-output work could be more closely integrated with macro economic model development work undertaken there. More recent developments were described in a paper presented to the 1971 Norwich Conference on Input-Output and Throughput by A. A. McLean of H.M. Treasury.     

Oversampling Through Households or Other Clusters: Comparisons of Methods for Weighting the Oversampled Elements

If a subgroup of a population is of particular interest in a survey, researchers may wish to increase the yield of this special subgroup by oversampling. One procedure for oversampling through households, or other clusters, is to divide the households into two segments: the main sample and the oversample (for which only members of the special group are eligible). Members of the oversampled special group come from both segments. This paper describes three methods for weighting the members of the special group. The household method treats the segments as strata and weights according to the proportion of households in each segment. The yield method uses weights according to the yield of special-group members in the two segments. The combined probability method provides a Horvitz-Thompson estimator using the sum of the probabilities that a person will be selected through either segment. Simulations show that the yield method produces estimates with variance lower than those of the household method. The combined probability method appears to be even more efficient. The difference in precision between the methods is small for estimates from the total sample but the household method can be markedly worse than the other two methods for estimates from the oversampled special group (over 40% greater variance in one scenario). Results from a community sample illustrate the comparisons. Because the household method can be much less efficient it should not be used.     

On two approximations to the F-distribution: Application to testing for intraclass correlation in family studies

Two approximations to the F-distribution are evaluated in the context of testing for intraclass correlation in the analysis of family data. The evaluation is based on a computation of empirical significance levels and a comparison between p-values associated with these approximations and the corresponding exact p-values. It is found that the approximate methods may give very unsatisfactory results, and exact methods are therefore recommended for general use.