DNA COLLECTION IN A RANDOMIZED SOCIAL SCIENCE STUDY OF COLLEGE PEER EFFECTS

We describe the DNA collection processes of an initial pilot and full study, which is designed to investigate joint peer and genetic effects on health behaviors and attitudes in a college campus setting. In the main study, 2664 (79.5%) students completed a Web survey and 2080 (78.7% of the survey completers after adjusting for the ineligible) provided a saliva DNA sample. The response rate for completing both the survey and the DNA portion of the study is 62.5%. Our DNA yields are of high quality. Overall, our experiences and results demonstrate that genetic data can be successfully collected as a part of traditional social science survey research projects. To aid others in doing so, we provide extensive details of our data collection experiences and offer recommendations to future researchers seeking to do or evaluate similar work.     

Incorporating human sexuality content into a positive youth development framework: Implications for community prevention

As approaches to positive youth development (PYD) gain momentum, the issue of sexuality – a critical component of human development – is being subsumed by ideological debates. In the current political climate, sexuality education is often relegated to biological and/or values-based approaches, neglecting essential relational and collective aspects of sexuality. Through the explication of sexuality as an important component of youth's social ecology, this paper provides a conceptual link between the goals of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States' (SIECUS) Guidelines for comprehensive sexuality education and those of PYD. We argue that sexuality, as a normative part of human development, culture, identity, and relationships, be approached from an asset-based perspective, rather than a deficit-based perspective. We propose a framework that illustrates how aspects of sexuality are embedded within PYD contexts, and demonstrates how a sexuality education program rooted in SIECUS guidelines can further PYD goals across community contexts.     

Ackoff's Fables revisited: stories to inform operational research practice

This paper considers Ackoff's Fables, a set of short stories published by Ackoff in 1978 as guides to creative problem solving. The paper argues that storytelling of this kind contributes usefully to management and MS/OR education, before addressing how such Fables might be interpreted. It is demonstrated, using one of Ackoff's Fables, The Smart Jackass, for illustrative purposes, that interpretation of even apparently straightforward stories such as these is not unambiguous. The Fables can be interpreted in a multitude of different and sometimes contradictory ways, and the truths they might contain are not self-evident. Yet, as the basis for discussion, they still have much to offer as educational tools. The paper concludes with a discussion of literal truth in stories, and presents a classification of story types according to their relationship to literal truth.     

Domestic Credit and Diversification of Manufactured Exports from Developing Countries

This article uses panel data to analyse the effect of domestic credit on the diversification of manufactured exports from developing countries. Given the evidence that export variety of manufactured goods affects productivity positively, the results imply that policy reforms that improve access to domestic credit for firms can raise productivity and hence economic growth in many poor countries. In addition, the results also show that building infrastructure and implementing reforms in governance that improve the quality of government regulations are important for encouraging diversification of manufactured export products in developing countries.     

CULTURAL STUDIES IN THE CORPORATE UNIVERSITY

This essay is about the fate of Cultural Studies in the new context of the market-based reform of Higher Education and the resurgence of liberal capitalism. As the global corporate demand for educational services increases, universities are becoming more like businesses. The trend toward a corporate style university can be seen in the way that its educational mission is being subordinated to the criteria of the flexible labour market. Neo-Liberal forms of governance introduce economic calculation into what were previously social and bureaucratic domains. The emergence of Cultural Studies in the 1960s was a challenge from the New Left to both the humanities and to the historic national mission of the university. The rise of the corporate university and its Benthamite utilitarianism in the 1980s confronted Cultural Studies with its own hiatus. The essay argues that we need to revisit Cultural Studies’ early rejection of humanism and work out a new kind of'humanism without guarantees, if we are to adequately confront this conjuncture and find the moral and intellectual resources to restore Cultural Studies as a critical and engaged practice.     

Partial Round-Robin Comparisons with Perfect Rankings

In teaching the development of uniformly most powerful unbiased (UMPU) tests, one rarely discusses the performance of alternative biased tests. It is shown, through the comparison of two independent Bernoulli proportions, that a biased test (the Z test) can be more powerful than the UMPU test (Fisher's exact test—randomized) in a large region of the alternative parameter space. A more general example is also given.     

Veblen in Reverse: Evidence from the Multinational Time-Use Archive

This paper explores the historical change in the work-leisure balance using time-diary evidence. Much of the recent discussion of this balance in the developed world has focused on paid work alone. What follows takes a different approach, considering the balance of all work time (paid plus unpaid) against leisure time and observes a tendency over recent decades for leisure to decline relative to work in this broad sense. Much is changing, in employment, family and consumption terms over this period. One possibility is that the relative increase in work time reflects the reversal of the status/leisure gradient: the financially privileged classes, which once had more leisure than others, now have less. But the paper closes with the speculation that this increase in work time for both men and women may be indirectly connected with the phenomenon of the women’s “dual burden”, via an unconsidered but nevertheless important principle of fairness in the distribution of work within households.