Employer‐sponsored programmes for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS: Recent experience from sub‐Saharan Africa

This article examines a sample of employer programmes in sub‐Saharan Africa that supplement government efforts to prevent and treat human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Some of these programmes provide workers with in‐house education, voluntary HIV testing and antiretroviral treatment. Others rely on new forms of employment‐based group health insurance that include an HIV treatment package. In addition, some enterprises use the workplace as a platform for launching efforts into neighbouring communities to reach spouses, children, sex workers, secondary school students and others. Early evidence suggests that employer programmes maintain the health of large fractions of workers living with HIV who are served by them. They further enable enterprises to avoid productivity losses and turnover costs associated with HIV. At the same time, they take pressure off government agencies that face demands for treatment far exceeding their capacity. The article identifies features of successful employer programmes including “elite appeal”, which mobilizes community leaders and role models to deconstruct stigma, change perceptions and call for behavioural change; and “collateral linkage”, which extends the reach of HIV workplace programmes by linking them to related community concerns: e.g. alcohol abuse, malaria and domestic violence. Looking forward, the potential for expanding employer programmes as well as the restrictions associated with the limited scale of formal‐sector employment within sub‐Saharan African economies is assessed. Actions by which governments, employer associations, trade unions and international organizations can encourage further development of such programmes and extend their reach are suggested.     

Small sample properties of asymptotically equivalent tests for autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity

Models that allow for autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) in the error process have recently found widespread application. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate, through Monte Carlo analysis, the small sample properties of an exact Lagrange multiplier test for the presence of ARCH, and to compare the power of this test with that of an asymptotically equivalent TR² version. The comparison involves first-and higher-order variants of these processes. The results indicate substantial power differentials in favor of the exact LM test, by up to 15% for sample sizes smaller than 100.     

The Person Behind The Word: Mead's Theory Of Universals And A Shift Of Focus In Symbolic Interactionism

Careful consideration of Mead's theory of universals proves to be a corrective to a number of tendencies evident in the work of at least some influential contemporary symbolic interactionists. Mead avoids any realistic hypostatization of separate universals (“meanings,” “forms,” or “essences” while at the same time eschewing nominalistic and conventionalistic views of language. His principle of the objective reality of perspectives (1932:161-175) allows him to grant objective reality to universal characteristics of concrete objects, but entails neither hypostatization nor idealization of the universal. In addition to contravening nominalism and conventionalism, Mead's theory of universals provides a perspective from which the reality of the self, and the importance of intentional action for the development of a firmly felt sense of self and autonomy, can both be affirmed. Far from being an illusion or mer.e symbolic construct, the self is seen to be an objectively real universal within the perspective of social action.     

Planning Replacement of Natural Gas Distribution Systems Under Constraints on Acceptable Risk from Explosions

Natural gas distribution systems in the United States were developed primarily in the first half of this century, utilizing materials such as cast iron and then steel. Over time, cast iron and steel pipe sections became weak from corrosion and are subject to failure which in turn can lead to explosions and possible injury and loss of life. Gas utilities maintain system integrity through repair-replacement programs where pipe sections are prioritized for replacement in any given year through cost-benefit analysis; however, the total annual amount to be budgeted for replacement is left to engineering judgment. This approach has left some utilities vulnerable to criticism that their current replacement rate on cast iron pipe is not great enough and that public safety is being compromised. This paper addresses the problem situation by formulating a linear programming replacement decision model which augments cost-benefit analysis with explicit constraints on acceptable risk to human life from fire/explosion. The model is illustrated for a hypothetical utility.     

A latent Markov model for detecting patterns of criminal activity

Summary.  The paper investigates the problem of determining patterns of criminal behaviour from official criminal histories, concentrating on the variety and type of offending convictions. The analysis is carried out on the basis of a multivariate latent Markov model which allows for discrete covariates affecting the initial and the transition probabilities of the latent process. We also show some simplifications which reduce the number of parameters substantially; we include a Rasch-like parameterization of the conditional distribution of the response variables given the latent process and a constraint of partial homogeneity of the latent Markov chain. For the maximum likelihood estimation of the model we outline an EM algorithm based on recursions known in the hidden Markov literature, which make the estimation feasible also when the number of time occasions is large. Through this model, we analyse the conviction histories of a cohort of offenders who were born in England and Wales in 1953. The final model identifies five latent classes and specifies common transition probabilities for males and females between 5-year age periods, but with different initial probabilities.     

The use of the psychosocial maturity inventory in evaluations of youth conservation corps programs

Although work experience has been widely recommended as beneficial to adolescent development, there is little empirical support for this recommendation. The Youth Conservation Corps (YCC), combining as it does some of the best features of both paid work and unpaid community service, offers an opportunity to explore the developmental impact of work experience. However, the need to pay as much attention to the problems of measurement as to the programs themselves dictates simultaneous evaluation of both programs and measures.