Britain's Colonial Emergencies and the Invisible Nationalists

Abstract From the perspective of imperial propaganda Britain's colonial emergencies of the forties and fifties have straightforward, even self-evident explanations. In the case of Malaya the state of emergency declared in June 1948 was a response to an international communist plot designed to seize power. In Kenya, an underground conspiracy of tribal extremists necessitated the implementation of emergency powers in October 1952 and the intervention of the British military. In British Guiana, the October 1953 state of emergency was essential to prevent a communist-inspired reign of terror and sabotage.¹
More objective researchers and journalists have questioned the familiar justification for Britain's colonial emergencies.² However, controversy persists, not simply about the interpretation of these events but about the basic facts.³ This is not surprising, because a study of the available files in the Public Records Office shows that the relationship between the colonial emergencies and their purported causes is far from straightforward. While imperial propaganda projected a sense of single-minded clarity, behind the scenes the leading experts of the Colonial Office were uncertain and deeply disturbed by events that they did not entirely comprehend. Nevertheless, despite their lack of a clear understanding of the situation in the affected colonies, the Colonial administration fully supported a military response. Indeed a study of the emergencies in Malaya, Kenya and British Guiana reveals a common pattern in the response of the British government and helps to place each of these conflicts in a wider perspective.     

COMPUTER APPLICATIONS ECONOMICS: ON-LINE AND INTERACTIVE

Utilizing modern computer languages, economic researchers and students can obtain maximum flexibility, portability, intellectual satisfaction, and sound research techniques by employing the computer on-line and interactively without relying on canned programs like SPSS, TSP and other "black boxes". The author exploits this method in research as well as in classes from principles to econometrics.
The power of new languages is illustrated with APL for two economic applications: (1) construction of GNP indexes from price and quantity data, and (2) a multiple regression model. The latter, including coefficient estimates, predicted and actual dependent variables, individual errors, and the sum of squared residuals, takes one short line of code.     

Progress,Public Health,and Power: Foucault and the Homemakers' Clubs of Saskatchewan*

De 1911 à 1979, les Homemakers' Clubs de la Saskatchewan ont mobilisé et suivi une étude et une action à grande échelle dans le domaine de la santé publique. Cet article examine comment ces clubs ont poussé des femmes à lutter pour avancer et les ont encouragées à considérer de telles luttes comme étant fondamentales pour bâtir leur propre identité. Les techniques utilisées comprenaient des encouragements à partager des buts, à faire leurs de tels buts, à structurer leur démarche, à rendre compte de leurs pensées et de leurs actions, à récompenser certaines conduites et à lier ces dernières à des causes convaincantes sur le plan émotif. En s'insérant dans un cadre conceptuel foucaldien, cet article apporte une contribution à la compréhension sociologique de la gouvernance et de la formation du sujet. From 1911 to 1979, the Homemakers' Clubs of Saskatchewan mobilized and monitored extensive study and action in the field of public health. This article explores how these clubs exhorted women to strive for progress, and encouraged women to internalize such striving as fundamental to their own identities. The techniques used included encouraging commitment to shared goals, making such goals personal, structuring action, requiring women to report their thoughts and actions, rewarding certain behaviors, and linking those behaviors with emotionally compelling causes. Rooted in a Foucauldian conceptual framework, this article contributes to the sociological understanding of subject formation and governance.     

AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF ALCOHOL ADDICTION: RESULTS FROM THE MONITORING THE FUTURE PANELS

In a panel of young adults, we find that alcohol consumption is addictive in the sense that increases in past or future consumption cause current consumption to rise. The positive and significant future consumption effect is consistent with the hypothesis of rational addiction. The long-run price elasticity is approximately 60% larger than the short-run price elasticity and twice as large as the elasticity that ignores addiction. Thus, a tax hike policy to curtail consumption or abuse may not have a favorable cost-benefit ratio unless it is based on the long-run price elasticity. (JEL 110)     

Straightening the Seam Effect in Panel Surveys

Panel surveys, such as the Survey of Income and Program Participationand the Consumer Expenditure Survey, interview respondents every3 or 4 months, but ask the respondents for monthly data. A typicalfinding in such surveys is that changes in responses to a questionare relatively small for adjacent months within a referenceperiod but much more abrupt for adjacent months across referenceperiods. Previous studies have attributed this "seam effect"either to underreporting of changes within the periods or tooverreporting of changes across them. In the present studies,we attempt to distinguish these possibilities, using an experimentalmethod that allows us to gauge respondents' accuracy as wellas the number of times they change their answers. The studiesproduced seam effects and accompanying evidence for forgettingof queried information and bias toward constant responses withinthe reference period. In general, seam effects appear to increaseas a function of the demands on memory. We also find that separatingquestions with the same content in the survey instrument decreasesthe seam effect. To account for these data, we propose a modelin which respondents' answers are initially based on attemptedmemory retrieval. Inability to recall leads to (possibly biased)guessing or subsequent repetition of an earlier answer.     

THE IMPACT OF CLASSROOM EXPERIMENTS ON THE LEARNING OF ECONOMICS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

This paper provides limited evidence on the effectiveness of a simple classroom experiment. In different courses in environmental economics or public finance, a brief take-some game was performed. Students who took part in this classroom experiment, as well as those who just watched it, were more successful in answering a multiple-choice test on the "tragedy of the commons" than control groups from the same courses.     

Construct Validity and Error Components of Survey Measures: A Structural Modeling Approach

Measurement errors can have profound effects on statisticalrelationships, and better information on the quality of measuresseems needed. This study uses a new technology—structuralmodeling of data from special supplements to regular surveys—togenerate estimates of construct validity, method effects (amajor source of correlated error), and residual error (mainlyrandom error) for a broad set of measures obtained from fivenational surveys and an organizational survey (total respondents= 7,706). Analysis of these estimates suggested that a typicalsurvey item, when administered by a respected survey organizationto a general population sample, can be expected to yield 50–83percent valid variance, 0–7 percent method effects variance,and 14–48 percent residual variance. Multivariate analysisshowed that over two-thirds of the variation in measurementquality could be explained by 13 survey design characteristics;characteristics of respondents explained a small additionalportion. Results provide: (a) information on design conditionsassociated with better (or worse) measurement quality, (b) empiricallybased suggestions for improving measurement quality in futuresurveys, and (c) a set of coefficients for predicting the qualityof measures not studied here.     

SKILL AS A DIMENSION OF OCCUPATIONAL CLASSIFICATION

L'habilité est présentée comme une dimension qui règle les catégories sommaires d'une classification socioéconomique des professions, qui a été développée pour l'Etude sur la Mobilité des Canadiens. Cette analyse repose sur les valeurs ged et svp qui reflètent, respectivement, les différents niveaux d'éducation générale et d'apprentissage professionnel spécial requis pour les professions qui constituent chacune des catégories de l'emc. La classification des catégories de l'emc est reliée largement aux classifications basées sur les valeurs moyennes ged et svp. L'analyse des variations dans les valeurs ged et svp, entre et parmi les catkgories de I'emc, rCvkle que la plupart des catCgories sont homogenes, en ce qui conceme I'habileté. L'homogénéite, cependant, varie positivement suivant le niveau d'habileté. Le chercheur qui se concentre sur l'habileté comme dimension saillante de la variabilité entre les professions trouvent utile la classification de l'emc.
Skill is shown to be a dimension which orders the broad categories of a socioeconomic classification of occupations developed for the Canadian Mobility Study. The analysis is based on ged and svp values which, respectively, reflect different levels of general education and special vocational training required of the component occupations of each cms category. The cms ordering of the categories is highly correlated with orders based on average ged and svp values. Analysis of variation in ged and svp values between and within cms categories reveals that most categories are homogeneous with respect to skill. Homogeneity, however, varies positively with skill level. Researchers who focus on skill as a salient dimension of variability among occupations will find the cms classification useful.     

To Educate or Not to Educate? Canadian Discourses Concerning Inuit Schooling From the 1930s to the 1950s

Abstract In the middle of this century, Canadian state representatives transformed their conceptualization of the relationship between Inuit, education, and modernity. In the 1930s, Inuit were seen as destined to remain collectively insulated from the modem world, and education was considered either insignificant or dangerous. By 1955, Inuit were seen as destined to become fully modern citizens of Canada, and education was considered a moral and practical necessity. This discursive reversal was a response to the process of state formation in Northern Canada, and not an outcome of the changing functional requirements of global capitalism.     

Incentives for Increasing Return Rates: Magnitude Levels, Response Bias, amd Format

The use of monetary incentives has been shown to significantlyincrease response rate. However, previous investigations haverarely investigated the effects of incentives greater than $1,compared different magnitudes of incentives, or investigatedresponse bias due to incentives. The current study also investigatedthe utility of an Answer Check. Results suggest that monetaryincentives increase response rate, larger incentives do notnecessarily further increase survey response, incentives donot appear to bias responses, and the Answer Check does notfacilitate response rate.