Enhancing the midwife-woman relationship through shared decision making and clinical guidelines

The active and passive voice allocated to women within maternity service guidelines helps construct the nature of decision making. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that by allocating women an active voice within practice guidelines serves the interest of all parties within the health care relationship. Clinical guidelines were reviewed, and electronic databases and text were searched. The findings of this paper support that applying the principles of a shared decision making framework, within clinical practice guidelines, can assist the development of a partnership relationship between midwives and women.     

Solutions to Faculty Work Overload: A Study of Job Sharing

This study investigated the opinions of a national sample of counselor education chairs and college of education deans regarding the advantages and disadvantages of faculty job sharing. Results showed favorable responses toward faculty job sharing from approximately half the sample, despite limited experience with job sharing. The study found few differences in perspectives between deans and counselor education chairs.     

Nietzsche's holism: A paradigm for integration

With Europe at a crossroads, facing both nationalism and globalism, Nietzsche has some interesting things to say about our world today. Nietzsche's holism is multifaceted and complex, thus, he has attracted many critics. Recent scholarship has interpreted his holism as an offence to modern liberal society. Some have claimed that Nietzsche's “perspectivism” and the “overcoming of morality,” two essential categories of his holism, are essentially expressions of democratic ideals of tolerance. Still others have argued that Nietzsche's ‘will to power’ is to be understood as an expression of freedom where human bondage and prejudice are cast aside in the name of some brand of neo-Kantian liberalism. And finally, there are those voices who continue to paint Nietzsche's holism as nothing more than savage realism and harsh criticism. In this essay, I examine many of these claims (focusing principally on ‘the will to power’) with the expectation of trying to discern the value of his holism for advancing a paradigm for integration.     

The next decade in evaluation research

The field of evaluation research has developed rapidly in the past few years. Its growth is marked by:(1) establishment of an'entrepreneurial industry of considerable proportions; (2) emergence of a new profession as evidenced by the founding of professional associations, publication of books and journals, and the development of specialized training programs; (3) recognition of the importance of evaluation in the federal bureaucracy by the establishment of key executive positions in the various offices of the Secretaries; (4) quality control efforts by a variety of stakeholders and watchdog groups; and (5) efforts to address methodological problems and to maximize the dissemination and utilization of studies. In the future, continued federal funding in health, education, and welfare will be dependent on demonstrated program impact, and “sunset legislation.” Moreover, there will be fewer important “policy” evaluations and more administrative and managerial efforts. Evaluation questions, increasingly, will be specified either by Congress or the administering agency, including the setting of design and methodological requirements for studies. Opportunities for investigator-inspired studies and basic methodological development will decrease.     

Explaining the Surge in Citizenship Applications in the 1990s: Lawful Permanent Residents in Texas

Objective . We explore the increase in citizenship applications in the mid–1990s in order to test popular explanations for them, such as the consequences of IRCA legalization, fear of loss of public benefits, and effects of citizenship outreach programs. Methods . We rely on a nonrandom sample of 526 lawful permanent residents in four Texas cities. About half had applied for citizenship and all were taking affirmative steps via participation in citizenship or English–language classes. Results . Having received amnesty under IRCA predicts rapid application for citizenship upon eligibility but is not associated with greater mastery of the naturalization process or better English skills. Fear of losing eligibility for public benefits and campaigns promoting naturalization motivated about one–quarter of citizenship applicants. Much larger proportions cite their desire to participate fully in American life, to sponsor the immigration of relatives, and to ensure opportunities for their children. The main obstacle they identify is limited English proficiency. Conclusions . Although factors peculiar to the political environment of the 1990s affected many permanent residents, most cited traditional incentives having to do with investment in opportunities for themselves and their families. Our data suggest that the most effective way to facilitate naturalization is to devote more resources to English–language training.     

Indirect methods for valuing changes in environmental risks with nonexpected utility preferences

Theoretical models for estimating individuals' values for sure improvements in environmental quality are well developed. These models can be classified as being based on averting behavior, hedonic prices, or weak complementarity. Some of these models have also been applied to the task of valuing changes in risk based on expected utility theory. This article provides a systematic development of these models for changes in either the probability or the magnitude of an uncertain event and shows that the derived expressions for individual marginal willingness to pay can be generalized to nonexpected utility preferences as long as the index of preferences is continuous, convex, and twice differentiable.     

Racially Charged Legislation and Latino Health Disparities: The Case of Arizona's S.B. 1070

Researchers have established that minority groups tend to suffer worse health outcomes compared to their white counterparts, though the specific mechanisms at play are still under investigation. The passing of Arizona's 2010 “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” commonly referred to as “S.B. 1070,” provides a unique opportunity to examine the effects of an increasingly racially charged milieu on Latino health. Using the Arizona sample of the 2009–2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we find that the changing social setting around S.B. 1070 is related to poorer Latino self-reported health, but only for those whose primary language is Spanish. Furthermore, serving as control groups, we find no such relationship in other U.S.-Mexico border states that had no analogous legislation (Texas, New Mexico, and California). We expand on stress process theory and group position theory to explain this increase in Arizona's negative health reporting, despite traditional social and economic protective factors.     

Revitalising energy capital project development and execution strategies: lessons from the energy sector

This study sought to examine project delivery challenges currently being faced by energy clients and to determine how they could achieve value creation through better alignment of project delivery processes. There are important lessons to be learned from the energy sector on how to deal with the unique operational and project challenges. Four exploratory focus groups were held with twenty senior project management practitioners, to better understand the greatest needs and project management processes in the energy sector. A formal deductive approach was used to examine and evaluate existing and future energy project delivery processes. From the qualitative data, participants recognised the need to introduce science-based project techniques such as system dynamics and project predictive analytics in project management processes. Participants further noted that comprehensive innovative project delivery processes and analytical approaches are required to cope with the increasing scale and complexity of energy capital projects.