Improving community health through evaluations

There has been an increasing emphasis on sustainable communitydevelopment in recent years, which is linked to community healththrough quality of life and intergenerational considerations.Evaluations are one of the basic tools to improving communityhealth with the most effective evaluations being those thatare meaningful to the community itself, and which provide tangiblefeedback and incentives for improved performance. Drawing onwell-known methods, this paper illustrates four important componentsof community evaluations. Although each method incorporatessome or all of these components, their achievements to datehave been limited. The reasons for this, as well as how evaluationscan play a more effective role in improving community health,are discussed.     

A note On outlier sensitivity of Sliced Inverse Regression

Sliced Inverse Regression (SIR) is a promising technique for the purpose of dimension reduction. Several properties of this method have been examined already, but little attention has been paid to robustness aspects. In this article, we focus on the sensitivity of SIR to outliers and show in what sense and how severely SIR can be influenced by outliers in the data.     

USE OF A LOG-LINEAR MODEL TO COMPUTE THE EMPIRICAL SURVIVAL CURVE FROM INTERVAL-CENSORED DATA, WITH APPLICATION TO DATA ON TESTS FOR HIV POSITIVITY

We describe how a log-linear model can be used to compute the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimate of the survival curve from interval-censored data. This permits such computation to be performed with the aid of readily available statistical software such as GLIM or SAS. The method is illustrated with reference to data from a cohort of Danish homosexual men, each of whom was tested for HIV positivity on one or more of six possible follow-up times.     

Talks Between Teachers

Qualitative Sociology -     

Graduate education

Graduate training in sociology is an uneasy compromise between teaching new sociologists what would be good for them to know and doing what a graduate department’s various constituencies demand. Instead of worrying about teaching a core of materials, the graduate faculty instead should teach students what they know, and try to help students learn what they want to know, as they come to define that during the course of their studies. Instead of requiring courses, faculty should develop a continuing dialogue with students and incorporate them, formally and informally, in their work. His most recent book isDoing Things Together (1986).     

Soziale ungleichheit von lesekompetenzen

Zusammenfassung In Anlehnung an das strukturell-individualistische Handlungsmodell von Boudon werden für Deutschland kausale Effekte von individuellen Lernvoraussetzungen, Ressourcen des Elternhauses, sozial selektiven Bildungsüberg?ngen sowie Lehr-und Lernbedingungen in Schulen auf die Entwicklung von Lesekompetenzen und ihre Streuung zwischen Sozialschichten untersucht. Hierbei wird zum einen der Frage nachgegangen, ob neben den Herkunftseffekten die Selektion von Grundschulkindern in die weiterführenden Schulen in der Sekundarstufe I zur allgemeinen Verschlechterung der mittleren Lesekompetenzen beitragen. Zum anderen wird gefragt, ob der sozial selektive Bildungsübergang von der Primar-in die Sekundarstufe eine bedeutsame Ursache für einen Anstieg in der ungleichen Verteilung von Leseleistungen zwischen den Sozialschichten ist. Weil es nicht m?glich ist, solche Ursache-Wirkungszusammenh?nge mit komparativ-statischen Querschnittsdaten wie PIRLS oder PISA empirisch zu isolieren, konstruieren wir anhand von Daten der beiden Studien PISA-E 2000 und PIRLS 2001 über das Verfahren des „pairwise matching” Quasi-L?ngsschnittdaten mit drei Beobachtungszeitpunkten (Leseleistung bei Einschulung, Leseleistung im Alter von 9 bis 10 Jahren und Leseleistung im Alter von 15 Jahren). Die empirischen Befunde belegen zus?tzlich zu den Herkunftseinflüssen die Rolle sozial selektiver Bildungsüberg?nge und damit die Sortier-und Selektionsleistungen des deutschen Bildungssystems. Es wird gezeigt, dass, neben individuellen Lernvoraussetzungen und Ressourcen des Elternhauses, die soziale Selektivit?t der Bildungsüberg?nge und damit auch sozial differentielle Lernbedingungen signifikant zur Erkl?rung der Entwicklung individueller Leseleistung und sozialen Disparit?t von Lesekompetenzen beitragen. Für wertvolle Hinweise danken wir den Herausgebern und besonders den anonymen Gutachtern.     

Ursula Trüper. The Invisible Woman: Zara Schmelen,African Mission Assistant at the Cape and in Namaland

Between 1935 and 1963, Zainunnessa ‘Cissie’ Gool was probably the most politically powerful woman of colour in Cape Town, yet her history has remained largely undocumented and unknown even in her own city. This article traces a skeleton of the biography of Gool and offers a few reflections on the process of making two theatre pieces, Cissie (2008) and This Woman is Not for Burning (2011). Both works were oriented around Gool’s life and the world of her constituency, District Six. Like the two plays it focuses on, this article is concerned with the efficacy and limitations of restorative archiving and historiography through performance and the potential seductions of hagiography. I suggest that both plays were acts of feminist biography, governed, in part, by the (often silent, sometimes unacknowledged) narrative of auto/biography. The article is also an attempt to forge a critical and creative cohesion between the multiple forms of inquiry (imaginative, anecdotal and theoretical) that underpinned both works.     

Suitability of physical activity questionnaires for older adults in fall-prevention trials: a systematic review

The purpose of the study was to identify physical activity questionnaires for older adults that might be suitable outcome measures in clinical trials of fall-injury-prevention intervention and to undertake a systematic quality assessment of their measurement properties. PubMed, CINAHL, and PsycINFO were systematically searched to identify measurements and articles reporting the methodological quality of relevant measures. Quality extraction relating to content, population, reliability, validity, responsiveness, acceptability, practicality, and feasibility was undertaken. Twelve outcome measures met the inclusion criteria. There is limited evidence about the measures' properties. None of the measures is entirely satisfactory for use in a large-scale trial at present. There is a need to develop suitable measures. The Stanford 7-day Physical Activity Recall Questionnaire and the Community Health Activities Model Program for Seniors questionnaire might be appropriate for further development. The results have implications for the designs of large-scale trials investigating many different geriatric syndromes.