Planning for productivity

In the 1980s the subject of productivity will receive increasing attention as the old macro economic policies are replaced by micro economic policies. Everyone in various ways will discover the changes which will be involved in learning the real economic facts of life. The need to improve productivity and business performance is urgent and yet it is an area which is being neglected by management.     

Effects of Questionnaire Length on Response Quality

A response tendency resulting from the length of a group-administeredquestionnaire instrument is described. Respondents answeringitems that are included in large sets toward the later partsof a long questionnaire are more likely to give identical answersto most or all of the items, compared with those respondingto items in smaller sets or in shorter questionnaires. Whilemeans and intercorrelations among items within the same setare affected by this "straight-line" response pattern, intercorrelationsbetween items from different sets are much less affected byit. These investigations are based on comparisons between along questionnaire, administered to 1,050 high school seniorsin nine high schools across the nation in 1978, and five shorterquestionnaires administered to large national samples of highschool seniors.     

Regression of area mortality rates on explanatory variables: what weighting is appropriate?

"One can often gain insight into the aetiology of a disease by relating mortality rates in different areas to explanatory variables. Multiple regression techniques are usually employed, but unweighted least squares may be inappropriate if the areas vary in population size. Also, a fully weighted regression, with weights inversely proportional to binomial sampling variances, is usually too extreme. This paper proposes an intermediate solution via maximum likelihood which takes account of three sources of variation in death rates: sampling error, explanatory variables and unexplained differences between areas. The method is also adapted for logit (death rates), standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) and log (SMRs). Two [United Kingdom] examples are presented."     

Family limitation among the Old Order Amish

Summary This paper shows that the Indiana Amish, a high-fertility Anabaptist population, regulate their marital fertility according to their family finances. We linked demographic data from the Indiana Amish Directory with personal property tax records at 5, 15 and 25 years after marriage and found fertility differences by occupation and wealth. Correlations between family size and wealth at the beginning, middle and end of childbearing years were positive. Wealthier women exhibited higher marital fertility, had longer first birth intervals, were older at the birth of their last child, and had larger families than poorer women. Over the past 30 years, marital fertility has remained constant among older women; but birth rates among younger women have been rising rapidly.     

Involving constituents in agency priority setting: a case study

Many government agencies have "constituents" who believe the agencies should hear and consider their needs and desires in establishing program priorities. This article describes how one involves interested constituents (consumers, industry, medical professionals, and state organizations) in the agency's annual priority-setting process. This participation has produced a number of beneficial results-some expected and some unexpected.     

International and internal migration decision making: a value-expectancy based analytical framework of intentions to move from a rural Philippine province

"The study compares determinants of internal and international migration intentions, drawing upon interview data from a sample of adults in Ilocos Norte, a largely rural province in the Philippines. A regression model is applied to test the relative determinants of intentions to migrate to Manila and to Hawaii. The study is based on a value-expectancy model of migration decision making. The results document the importance of subjective expectations related to the attainment of different values and goals in Manila and Hawaii."     

An extension of ebloc to valued graphs

In this paper we show how the algorithm EBLOC can be extended to deal with valued data directly. The technique is then applied to Sampson's (1969) monastery data and comparisons are made with the original EBLOC algorithm.