Dutch public relations practitioners and journalists: Antagonists no more

The increasing interdependence of public relations and journalism and the demands they make on each other raise the question how they perceive and evaluate each other. How do they view their roles, methods, relationship, and quality of media reporting on organizations? How do government and business public relations differ in this respect? Our survey of a representative sample of Dutch journalists and public relations practitioners in both government and business (n = 791) showed that while there were differences of opinion between the two professions, these were neither predominantly negative nor fundamental. Our results, therefore, do not confirm the difficult relationship between the press and public relations that was identified in research carried out in the United States between 1970 and 1990. Given the Dutch tradition that the government practitioner be a neutral servant of the public interest rather than a spokesperson for the organization, the general absence of differences between government and business public relations was striking. Our findings indicate that government public relations professionals have adopted the same norms and standards as their colleagues in business organizations.     

Do Migrant Remittances Cause Dutch Disease in Nigeria?

Statistics show that remittances inflow to Nigeria grew from US$3,000,000 in 1978 to over US$22 billion in 2017. Theoretically, such a large inflow of foreign currency into an economy may lead to Dutch diseases. This study, therefore, investigated whether the massive inflow of remittances into the economy causes Dutch disease. Given that the model had both I(0) and I(1) variables, ARDL/Bound testing methodology was used with annual data from 1981 to 2016. The ARDL result showed that migrant remittances have a significant positive effect on the real effective exchange rate in Nigeria in the long run. Specifically, a one per cent increase in the inflows of remittances increases the real effective exchange rate of Naira by 0.44 per cent in the long run. This appreciation of the Nigerian Naira relative to other competing nations encourages import and discourages export, leading to the Dutch disease effect.     

Creating Community: Offering a Liberation Pedagogical Model to Facilitate Diversity Conversations in MFT Graduate Classrooms

Creating a safe place for open classroom engagement on topics of multiculturalism and diversity requires intentionality and honesty. Unless all, professor and students alike, feel safe talking about related issues, the attempt will result in a politically correct exercise in futility. This article focuses on how intentional pedagogical efforts can create a classroom environment conducive to therapeutic self-reflection and result in personal and professional transformation. Offerings include personal reflections, theoretical and pedagogical ideologies and practices, a classroom paradigm as exemplar, critical redefinitions, a survey of other pedagogical endeavors, a template for multicultural instruction, and recommendations.     

Party politics: the political impact of the first ladies’ social role

All first ladies have entertained socially while in the White House. Indeed, the role is so much a part of the office that hosting is expected of the presidential spouses. This article considers the political impact of social hosting, a function that has often had significant consequences on the presidency and has allowed first ladies to influence political affairs.     

Report of the ASA Technical Panel on the Census Undercount

A new model is proposed for the joint distribution of paired survival times generated from clinical trials and certain reliability settings. The new model can be considered an extension to the bivariate exponential models studied in the literature. Here, a more flexible bivariate Weibull model will be derived, and two exact parametric tests for testing the equality of marginal survival distributions are developed.     

Ethical Issues in Disaster Research: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina

Conducting research in the wake of a catastrophic event imposes the dual responsibilities on researchers of protecting the rights of the survivors as research subjects, while also ensuring research quality and the dissemination and application of findings. This article, based partially on the authors’ experiences of conducting research in school districts following Hurricane Katrina, examines the ethical issues that arise when working with survivors, reticent organizations, and institutional review boards. Challenges experienced by researchers concerning access, informed consent, confidentiality, subject compensation, and enlisting the assistance of stressed institutions are described. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0036566000. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.