A measure of community members’ perceptions of the impacts of research partnerships in health and social services

Currently, there are no psychometrically sound outcome measures by which to assess the impacts of research partnerships. This article describes the development of a 33-item, survey questionnaire measuring community members’ perceptions of the impact of research partnerships addressing health or social issues. The Community Impacts of Research Oriented Partnerships (CIROP) was developed using information from the literatures on health promotion, community development, research utilization, and community-based participatory research, and from focus groups involving 29 key informants. Data from 174 community members were used to determine the factor structure, internal consistency, and test–retest reliability of the four CIROP scales, and to provide evidence of construct validity. The CIROP informs research partnerships about the extent of their impact in the areas of Personal Knowledge Development, Personal Research Skill Development, Organizational/Group Access To and Use of Information, and Community and Organizational Development, allowing them to demonstrate accountability to funding bodies. As well, the CIROP can be used as a research tool to assess the effectiveness of knowledge sharing approaches, determine the most influential activities of research partnerships, and determine structural characteristics of partnerships associated with various types of impact. The CIROP provides a better understanding of community members’ perspectives and expectations of research partnerships, with important implications for knowledge transfer and uptake.     

A model of substance abuse risk: adapting to the Sri Lankan context

This study translated and validated the Substance Use Risk Profile Scale (SURPS) among 13 to 18 year old Sri Lankan adolescents attending school. A standard systematic translation procedure was followed to translate the original SURPS into Sinhala language. A Delphi process was conducted to determine judgmental validity of Sinhala SURPS. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the translated version against the original theoretical model of the SURPS. Test-retest and internal consistency were used to ensure reliability. A few terms in one of the items posed some difficulty in translating into Sinhala. Adequate judgmental validity was determined except for one item, which was modified to suit the Sri Lankan setting. The four subscales introversion/ hopelessness, impulsivity, sensation seeking and anxiety sensitivity showed satisfactory test-retest reliability estimates of .74, .68, .76, and .88, respectively. The Sinhala SURPS is applicable in Sri Lankan context. Several implications based on the results are discussed.     

For better,for worse? Public support for the capitalist model of the economy

A capitalist market economy is based on several institutional elements, such as private ownership and competition. Does public support for this economic model rise if the economy prospers, and fall during a downturn? Or is public support largely independent of the ups and downs of economic cycles? We hypothesize that positive economic performance increases support and that persons profiting personally are more supportive of the economic system's constitutive institutional elements. Using multilevel regression we study the determinants of individual-level support for the economic system. We also test for differences in the perception of economic performance due to political attitudes and personal properties. The findings partly support the hypotheses, indicating that macro-economic factors matter for individual-level attitudes towards the economy. Attitudes towards different institutional elements of the economic system also differ in the degree to which they are political or economic, and influenced by economic performance. Individual features – education and personal economic stakes – affect attitudes towards the economy, but a substantial share of the individual-level variation in economic attitudes remains unexplained.     

DESIGNED TO FAIL: THE MEDICARE AUCTION FOR DURABLE MEDICAL EQUIPMENT

We examine the theoretical properties of the auction for Medicare Durable Medical Equipment. Two unique features of the Medicare auction are (1) winners are paid the median winning bid and (2) bids are nonbinding. We show that median pricing results in allocation inefficiencies as some high‐cost firms potentially displace low‐cost firms as winners. Further, the auction may leave demand unfulfilled as some winners refuse to supply because the price is set below their cost. We also introduce a model of nonbinding bids that establishes the rationality of a lowball bid strategy employed by many bidders in the actual Medicare auctions and recently replicated in Caltech experiments. We contrast the median‐price auction with the standard clearing‐price auction where each firm bids true costs as a dominant strategy, resulting in competitive equilibrium prices and full efficiency. (JEL D44, I11, H57)     

Intention to emigrate in transition countries: the case of Albania

We analyse the profile of potential emigrants from Albania using data from the Central and Eastern Europe Eurobarometer in 1992. Respondents were asked to rate on a four-point scale the likelihood that they would go to live in Western Europe. Our results show that intention to emigrate is correlated positively with males, education and certain occupations, and negatively with age. There is little relation between emigration and income. Those who support the introduction of a free market in Albania are also more likely to emigrate than those who do not. Received: 24 August 1998/Accepted: 17 April 2000     

Medical Students' Attitudes and Opinions About Human Sexual Behaviour

In their professional capacities doctors are often confronted with clients who present with psycho-sexual problems. At the present time Australian medical students are provided with very little instruction in the areas of human sexual behaviour. This paper examines the attitudes and amount of information possessed by a cohort of second year medical students compared with groups of first and fifth year students; these attitudes and levels of information are then related to students' sex, religious affiliation, strength of religious conviction, where this is seen to be relevant. It is shown that some areas of ignorance exist. The paper concludes by outlining some aspects relevant to courses in human sexual behaviour.     

Mark-specific hazard ratio model with missing multivariate marks

An objective of randomized placebo-controlled preventive HIV vaccine efficacy (VE) trials is to assess the relationship between vaccine effects to prevent HIV acquisition and continuous genetic distances of the exposing HIVs to multiple HIV strains represented in the vaccine. The set of genetic distances, only observed in failures, is collectively termed the ‘mark.’ The objective has motivated a recent study of a multivariate mark-specific hazard ratio model in the competing risks failure time analysis framework. Marks of interest, however, are commonly subject to substantial missingness, largely due to rapid post-acquisition viral evolution. In this article, we investigate the mark-specific hazard ratio model with missing multivariate marks and develop two inferential procedures based on (i) inverse probability weighting (IPW) of the complete cases, and (ii) augmentation of the IPW estimating functions by leveraging auxiliary data predictive of the mark. Asymptotic properties and finite-sample performance of the inferential procedures are presented. This research also provides general inferential methods for semiparametric density ratio/biased sampling models with missing data. We apply the developed procedures to data from the HVTN 502 ‘Step’ HIV VE trial.