Sample registration in India

India's ad hoc sample registration scheme for obtaining current estimates of rural birth and death rates for the whole country is being implemented quite rapidly. Five states have 140 sample units, and eleven states will have from 20 to 100 units in the study depending upon the stage of implementation by March, 1967.Essential elements of the project for each unit are: (1) continuous registration of vital events by a paid part-time local enumerator, (2) a six-month household survey to detect births and deaths which occurred during the previous six months, and (3) matching events from registration and surveys and field recheck of unmatched events to obtain the "best" count of real number of events. Preliminary results in a non-random sample indicate that the crude birth and death rates are around 37.1 and 15.7 per 1,000, respectively, for India's rural population, but these probably will be found to be on the low side.Most of the problems of implementation are operational or administrative rather than statistical: (1) For various reasons, some states are slow in agreeing to assume financial and other responsibilities for the scheme. (2) In many states, even after the scheme has been accepted, there are delays in recruiting the staff, training, and so forth. (3) The most serious problem in the whole project is maintaining control of field operations well enough at each stage to insure that prescribed instructions and methodology are being followed.Experience in India indicates that staged implementation of such projects is highly desirable when trained staff are limited. There still are a number of methodological problems which must be tested as the sample registration evolves. Sample registration is one of the first steps in the Indian program to. develop an adequate vital statistics system. Exploratory studies to measure completeness of civil registration are being done now in an effort to develop means of using civil registration data alone for measurement of vital rates.     

Report on matching procedures of a dual record system in the southern Philippines

There are generally three stages to the development of rules for matching vital events data from two sources covering the same population: (a) establishing a set of “true” matches and nonmatches; (b) determining the best tolerance limits for each single characteristic which might be used in matching; and (c) experimenting to determine the set or sets of characteristics and the weights to be used in classifying a pair of records as matched or nonmatched. Specific examples, based on early matching experiments with data from the dual record system of the Mindanao Center for Population Studies (MCPS), are presented. Successive application of different sets of characteristics (differential valence rule) to the remaining unmatched events produced an acceptable rule for matching in this study.     

提高英语专业学生口语有效输出能力的探讨

以参加英语口语课堂活动的英语专业学生为研究对象,通过访谈、问卷、口语测试和课堂观察等方法,收集口语输出活动过程中的真实材料,并进行学生输出障碍分析。发现"可理解输出"未必是"有效输出"。情感过滤、课堂输出活动方式和学生的语用能力是影响课堂教学环境下学生口语有效输出的主要因素。认为情感支持、元语言环境下的话语互动和课堂语用教学是促进有效的口语输出、提高英语口语能力的重要策略。     

THE IMPACT ON FAMILIES OF REPORTED CHILD ABUSE OR NEGLECT

In order to evaluate the impact upon children and families of reported child abuse and neglect and the subsequent interventions, the casenotes of a random sample of substantiated cases (N=151) dealt with by the South Australian child protection agency were searched. The goal was to identify information concerning service delivery and changes for family members in the ensuing six months. Results relevant to both of these are presented and evaluated. An important corollary finding of this work was the absence of detailed information about outcome in the casenotes. We argue that this absence of feedback to child protection workers and policy-makers is likely to have detrimental effects on both worker morale and the quality of the services provided.     

Railroad Construction and Antebellum Slave Prices*

Slave prices rose rapidly to historic highs in the late‐antebellum South. The boom in railroad construction in the South helps explain this large increase in slave prices. The economic connection between railroads and slave prices reconciles the views of traditional economic historians who thought slavery was economically irrational and the views of the new economic historians who have concluded that slavery was highly profitable. It was the massive public subsidies to railroads that explain it was public policy that provided the stimulant to slave prices, not the “peculiar” culture of the antebellum South or the planter efficient management of slave labor.     

The Effects of the Specialist Schools Education Policy on School and Post‐School Outcomes in England

We investigate the effects of the specialist schools policy, introduced in 1994 in England, on test scores and truancy for pupils during compulsory schooling. We also assess the effects on labour market status and post‐secondary test score performance. We use matching models and data from the Youth Cohort Surveys for pupils who left school in either 2002 or 2004. We find that the policy did raise test scores, as well as increase the probability of employment. The evidence on post‐secondary test scores is mixed insofar as the policy increased the number of A levels studied but reduced average points scores.     

Social explanation and socialization: on Bourdieu and the structure, disposition, practice scheme

The standard narrative of the sociology of education accounts for the perpetuation of relative differentials in class access to education by a structure‐disposition‐practice scheme in which the central explanatory weight is carried by properties of socialized agents. The dominant scheme of this kind is now that inspired by Bourdieu. In this context, it is, therefore, appropriate to interrogate the competence of socialization in sociological explanations of social events and processes. The argument adopts a position of scientific and critical realism, and it is suggested that a realist sociology might find in Bourdieu's approach, notwithstanding specific theoretical and conceptual weaknesses, a framework strong enough to sustain the multilevel explanations of inequality/difference necessary in the sociology of education.     

Defining and Estimating Risk and Protection: An Illustration from the School Success Profile

This article links a risk and protection conceptual framework with definitions of risk and protection from epidemiology. It describes methods for estimating and modeling risk and protection that yield readily interpretable results using contingency tables and logistic regression. Data from a national sample of adolescents illustrate key concepts, providing implications for research and practice.