Community: Toward an integration of research,theory, evaluation,and public policy considerations

This article presents a paradigm for the analysis of communities and investments designed to improve them. Its fundamental objective is to provide the researcher, the theoretician, the evaluator, and the public policymaker with a common analytic framework. Direct and indirect effects of investment programs (e.g., in education, economic development, and health) can be documented longitudinally, and the community analyzed as an independent, dependent or mediating variable. The roots of this approach in social science and policy theory are explored. Five concepts (Status, Change, Interaction, Duality of Interaction and Change, and Viability) are incorporated. Community is operationally defined to include fifteen sectors whose interactions and changes can be studied systematically over time. This approach can help to clarify how a community, its people, culture, and institutions, and the outside world both influence and are influenced by investment programs.     

The ideological context of child welfare

This paper examines consequences for child development and well-being of the prevailing institutional order and ideology of the United States and concludes that child development in our country is severely obstructed because of socially structured violence which permeates our way of life. The paper ends with comments on prospects for social transformation which seems necessary to assure the development and well-being of every child.     

ROBUST ESTIMATION UNDER TYPE II CENSORING

The properties of robust M-estimators with type II censored failure time data are considered. The optimal members within two classes of ψ-functions are characterized. The first optimality result is the censored data analogue of the optimality result described in Hampel et al. (1986); the estimators corresponding to the optimal members within this class are referred to as the optimal robust estimators. The second result pertains to a restricted class of ψ-functions which is the analogue of the class of ψ-functions considered in James (1986) for randomly censored data; the estimators corresponding to the optimal members within this restricted class are referred to as the optimal James-type estimators. We examine the usefulness of the two classes of ψ-functions and find that the breakdown point and efficiency of the optimal James-type estimators compare favourably with those of the corresponding optimal robust estimators. From the computational point of view, the optimal James-type ψ-functions are readily obtainable from the optimal ψ-functions in the uncensored case. The ψ-functions for the optimal robust estimators require a separate algorithm which is provided. A data set illustrates the optimal robust estimators for the parameters of the extreme value distribution.     

Cultures in Contact: Deaf and Hearing People

Despite their relative invisibility, deaf people have a well established position in our special education and social services. They are a group to be cared for. Yet they have not always been like that nor do we believe they should be seen only in this light. This paper examines how social pressures have acted on deafness in work, in education, in the professionalisation of services, have impinged on deaf people themselves, and have created a misunderstood and under-estimated minority. We consider the current situation of deaf people in terms of their lack of power, the new emergence of their language and culture and the use of signing in education. All of these aspects highlight the need to reconsider our treatment of deaf people and the paper encourages some self-examination of professional roles.