Street lamps,alleys, ratio analysis,and nonprofit organizations

This article offers an accounting‐based framework for evaluating the efficiency of nonprofit organizations using four factors. Separately, these factors reflect (1) the proportion of revenues actually used in the current year, (2) the proportion of the expenditures allocated to programs, (3) the units of output produced from that spending, and (4) the value of the units produced, expressed in terms of an index value. Combined, these four factors measure the value of units produced per dollar of revenue received, an accounting measure of overall efficiency. Using this framework provides insight into both the appropriateness and the limitations of employing solely financial measures to judge nonprofit organizations and also identifies conceptual areas absent from currently available evaluation tools.     

Using Related Samples in Assessing Conformance to Safety Goals: A Nuclear Reactor Safety Application

Quantifying safety goals is a key to the regulation of activities which are beneficial on the whole but entail some risks in being performed. Determining compliance with safety goals involves dealing with uncertainties. A recent article by Bier^(I) describes some of the difficulties encountered using measures with uncertainty to determine compliance with safety goals for nuclear reactors. This paper uses a hierarchical Bayes approach to address two practical modeling problems in determining safety goal compliance under uncertainty: (1) allowing some modeling assumptions to be relaxed, and (2) allowing data from previous related samples to be included in the analysis. The two issues effect each other to the extent that relaxing some assumptions allows the use of a broader range of data. The usefulness of these changes and their impact on assessing safety compliance for nuclear reactors is shown.     

NONPROFIT INCORPORATION AMONG MOVEMENTS OF THE POOR:

Social movement scholars have begun to note the widespread use of nonprofit incorporation by social movement organizations (SMOs) in the United States. They argue that nonprofit incorporation is a voluntary act that ultimately leads to moderation in goals and tactics. I examine this argument with ethnographic data on fifteen homeless SMOs that operated in eight U.S. cities. I identify six pathways to adoption or nonadoption of nonprofit form and find that moderation, when it occurs, is not a function of nonprofit incorporation per se but of the particular pathway by which an SMO came to adopt nonprofit form. I discuss the implications of these findings for SMOs in general and for understanding the broader debates about organizational autonomy and external control of SMOs.     

MODERN MAGIC

The suggestion that students at present day universities participate in magic at exam time may seem unusual. This study views "magic" as behavior directed toward achieving an outcome, involving many everyday and commonplace acts, but seeming to rely for success on some mystical element. Hundreds of personal accounts from students describing their exam-related behaviors provide the basis for a classification system of their "magical practices." The classification yields findings regarding the use of magic for luck and the avoidance of bad luck. Student magic is found to be idiosyncratic, inconsistent, and never malevolent as it often is in preliterate societies. Such differences between preliterate magic, other modern forms, and student magic are related to the complexity and heterogeneity of the larger society, the cultural norms, and the degree of collective action involved.     

Civil Society Opposition to Nonferrous Metals Mining in Montana

This paper discusses the opposition of civil society to nonferrous metals mining in Montana. The mineral resources and mining history of Montana are discussed, as is the vibrant civil society of that state. Montana’s civil society has opposed mining due to its environmental effects, particularly upon areas of high conservation value. This opposition has involved litigation and the implementation of a ban on the use of cyanide by the mining industry. The paper concludes with a discussion of whether this opposition to mining has damaged the economy of the state and Montana’s future as an example of the “New West,” wherein amenities based growth act as the principal agent of economic activity.     

Parent and Sibling Influences on the Quality of Children's Conflict Behaviours across the Preschool Period

Parent and sibling influences on children's development of conflict management strategies were examined. Data consist of naturally occurring, in‐home sibling disputes of 37 families at two time points. The siblings were approximately two and four years old at Time 1, and four and six years old at Time 2. Parents' and children's use of conflict strategies that reflect proactive autonomy assertions such as opposition and verbal and physical power were the focus of the current study. Results suggest that parents and siblings play an important role in shaping children's conflict behaviours over time. For instance, parents' reliance on unelaborated opposition to the child, and older siblings' increased use of physical power predicted decreases in younger siblings' ability to assert themselves during conflict. In addition, increased proportions of opposition from a younger sibling was associated with the older siblings using less verbal aggression and using more mature conflict strategies such as justifying their own behaviour to their younger sibling. As sibling conflict is a salient child rearing concern for parents, practical implications are discussed.     

Critical understandings of child development: the development of a module for a post-qualifying certificate course in child protection studies

This paper explores the dilemmas involved in selecting appropriate theoretical and research material to help social workers in practice. Concentrating on the needs of those working in child care and protection, the paper uses the example of the area of child development knowledge to illustrate a process of presenting theory for practice. Specifically, the focus is on the redevelopment of a child development module for a post-qualifying certificate course in child care and protection that aims to encourage students to make critical use of current research and theory. The paper explains the reasoning behind the choice of attachment theory as the underpinning theoretical framework. It also addresses possible pitfalls in an uncritical use of such theory. The paper finally sets out how the module addresses the need social workers have for a framework to guide intervention in individual cases. The dimensions described are those of individual vulnerability or resilience and factors in the environment that are adverse or protective.     

Mind-Reading and Metacognition: Narcissism, not Actual Competence, Predicts Self-Estimated Ability

In this paper, we examine the relationship between people's actual interpersonal sensitivity (such as their ability to identify deception and to infer intentions and emotions) and their perceptions of their own sensitivity. Like prior scholars, we find the connection is weak or non-existent and that most people overestimate their social judgment and mind-reading skills. Unlike previous work, however, we show new evidence about who misunderstands their sensitivity and why. We find that those who perform the worst in social judgment and mind-reading radically overestimate their relative competence. We also find origins of these self-estimates in general narcissistic tendencies toward self-aggrandizement. We discuss evidence from two studies, one involving the Interpersonal Perception Task (the IPT-15) and another focusing on inferences about partners after a face-to-face negotiation exercise. In both cases, actual performance did not predict self-estimated performance but narcissism did.