Ethnic concerns and Latino party identification

The accelerated growth of the Latino population in the United States has made Latinos a coveted addition to each major political party's base. In this paper we examine the influence of ethnic concerns on the party identification of Latinos in the U.S. In contrast to previous studies, we account for Latinos’ perceptions of the political parties’ concern for their ethnic interests, allowing such interests to be self-defined. In a multinomial logit analysis of pooled data from three surveys of Latinos taken in 1999, 2004, and 2006, we find such perceptions do affect Latino partisanship, along with variables such as nativity and country of origin or ancestry. We also find a tendency toward independence among Latinos. Finally, we find movement toward the Democratic Party in 2004, once ethnic concerns are taken into account. One implication of the findings is that the party that can best persuade Latinos of their concern for their interests is the party most likely to gain their loyalties; indeed, the parties must earn those loyalties.     

Promoting research on research integrity in Canada

Research on research integrity is an important element in building a strong national research integrity framework. There is a lack of empirical evidence and conceptual research on research integrity in Canada. To further strengthen and develop our system of research integrity, we believe that greater support is needed to promote research on research integrity. Research on research integrity is imperative in order to gain a richer understanding of the diversity of responsible conduct of research norms, practices, education and policies from a Canadian perspective. The knowledge gained would help in the development of an evidenced-based and responsive Canadian system of research integrity.     

Public Policy and Inequalities of Choice and Autonomy

Choice by service users has been promoted in social policy across many developed welfare states, often on the grounds that it will incentivize providers to enhance quality and efficiency. But this instrumental motivation for the promotion of choice overlooks the possibility that choice, understood in the deeper sense of autonomy, has intrinsic value, as suggested by egalitarian and capability‐based theories of social justice. This article argues that the narrow motivation of choice policies leads to a focus on services rather than outcomes for individuals and fails to address deep‐seated inequalities in the opportunities people have for real autonomy. We test this concept using newly collected data for the UK. Our empirical findings indicate that disabled people are more likely to experience constrained autonomy in all respects, while being from a low socio‐economic group and/or lacking educational qualifications is a risk factor across several components. We conclude that improving the ‘choice’ agenda for policy requires: (1) adopting a more sophisticated concept of ‘choice’ such as the conceptualization of ‘choice as autonomy’ outlined here; (2) developing a better understanding of existing inequalities in autonomy, such as we begin to explore in our empirical results; and (3) tackling these inequalities through, for example, the removal of obstacles to active decision‐making by providing effective support and advocacy, especially for disabled people, and addressing the major structural barriers – poverty, ill health and geographical inequality – which place significant restrictions on the autonomy of those who are already disadvantaged.     

Multiple recapture methods when sampling without replacement in the last occasion

A technique is presented for estimating the size of a closed population from multiple recapture data when sampling is performed without replacement on the last trapping occasion. The estimator of the population size along with the variance estimator is derived from a log-linear model.     

Fixed-parameter tractability of anonymizing data by suppressing entries

A popular model for protecting privacy when person-specific data is released is k -anonymity. A dataset is k-anonymous if each record is identical to at least (k−1) other records in the dataset. The basic k-anonymization problem, which minimizes the number of dataset entries that must be suppressed to achieve k-anonymity, is NP-hard and hence not solvable both quickly and optimally in general. We apply parameterized complexity analysis to explore algorithmic options for restricted versions of this problem that occur in practice. We present the first fixed-parameter algorithms for this problem and identify key techniques that can be applied to this and other k-anonymization problems.     

Scope of practice issues in forensic nursing

1. There is significant role variation, across the Western world, in relation to how forensic nurses practice. 2. The authors conducted a pilot survey of forensic nurses in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom to examine forensic nursing practice, role definition, and role boundaries. 3. Issues arising from the data include the visibility of forensic nurses, the client group, forensic-specific education, and role development.     

Citizenship, Social Inclusion and Confidentiality

Correspondence to Tony Evans, Oxford Brookes University, Social Work Department, Heritage Gate, Sandy Lane, West Oxford OX4 6LB. E-mail: tevans{at}brookes.ac.uk Summary Confidentiality has tended to be disconnected from wider debatesabout citizenship and social inclusion. It has been hived offinto self-referential legal and professional discourses concerningthe principles that should inform social workers' conduct. Thelacuna concerning the significance of confidentiality in widerdebates is made more remarkable by the shift towards consumercitizenship, a shift that has ostensibly emphasized serviceusers' rights, including their capacity for active participationin service provision. The rights discourse, as a component ofactive consumer citizenship, is considered in relation to theperspectives of ‘interests’ and ‘will’.The arguments that support moving in the direction of a critical‘will’ perspective, through deliberative processesthat involve service users in developing and framing informationrights, are highlighted and linked to data from a small-scaleempirical study. This perspective is regarded as consistentwith a politically dynamic formulation of social citizenship.Such a formulation involves seeing citizenship as a practicethat requires on-going debates about claims to rights, movesin the direction of seeking to rectify imbalances in power andrecognizes the capacity of service users to act in their owninterests as citizens.