Setting the stage for innovative action

Consider the steps you need to take to introduce innovative thinking into your organization. It's a combination of free-flowing process, managerial support and individual creativity.     

Motivation to join and benefits from participation in parent mutual aid organizations

Findings from the Parent Mutual Aid Organizations (PMAOs) in the Child Welfare Demonstration Project are presented with particular emphasis on parents' motivation to join PMAOs and the benefits from their involvement. Members' perceptions from qualitative investigations are compared with a controlled outcome study. PMAO members show less loneliness, more enthusiasm about their lives, and improved self-esteem and confidence. PMAOs result in substantially less reliance on child protection professionals, fewer child placements, and cost savings for the host agency.     

Football hooligans: theory and evidence

This paper describes empirical research amongst hooligans. Such research has not always been valued. The significant factor in hooligan behaviour may be asserted to be the generation of violence in the lower working class and its dissemination amongst football fans. It is commonly asserted that hooligans operate in well-organized groups. It is argued here that such assertions need to be based on better evidence. A detailed account is given of the behaviour of a notorious group of fans and its key individuals. This shows that the ‘hard core’ fans were distinguished from others only by greater dedication to football and their club; they had a potentiality for violence but only of the low level kind that many others shared; they were more often involved simply because they went to more matches; they lacked organization. Nevertheless outsiders were, not unreasonably, sure they were a violent, organized group. This casts doubt on similar beliefs held about other groups unless beliefs are well substantiated. Detailed ethnography is valuable because it helps to sort out the nature of the ‘hooligan’ problem that requires to be theorized.     

Dirty Birds,Filthy Immigrants,and the English Sparrow War: Metaphorical Linkage in Constructing Social Problems

The role of metaphor in the construction of social problems has often been neglected. Yet we believe that the use of metaphorical linkage can help explain how social problems become defined. To explore the role of metaphorical linkage, we examine a controversy that shook the American ornithological world of the late 19th century: The Great English Sparrow War. English sparrows were originally imported to the major American cities of the East, in the early 1850s, to control the infestation of trees by dropworms. These birds adapted successfully, and by the mid-1870s they began to be perceived as a menace to the American ecosystem. As a consequence, a vigorous debate began as to their usefulness or harmfulness, which often exceeded the bounds of scientific discourse. We argue that this controversy over the English sparrow was linked to the controversy over “the new immigration.” A post-bellum America faced the task of rebuilding its moral boundaries after the disruption of the Civil War and in the face of millions of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and the Orient. The opponents of the English sparrow drew their imagery from the nativism (anti-foreignism) of the day. They defined the bird as: (1) a foreigner, (2) that competes unfairly with native birds, (3) that has an immoral character, and (4) that needs to be eliminated from the American community of birds. Examining the metaphorical linkages among public concerns of the same period, we suggest, is a fruitful way of examining social problems.     

Toward a Theory of Community Conflict: Factors Influencing the Initiation and Scope of Conflict*

A theory of the structure and process of community conflict is developed around concepts used in earlier works in the field. Then propositions relating to the central elements of community conflict are presented by concentrating on the primary variable: scope. Propositions constructed with other relevant structural variables are introduced. To begin with, procedures used in developing the propositions are discussed; and, then, suggestions for measuring them are given. Finally, implications of the theory in analyses of change are discussed.     

Comparison of Contact Site Cancer Potency Across Dose Routes: Case Study with Epichlorohydrin*

Risk assessment for airborne carcinogens is often limited by a lack of inhalation bioassay data. While extrapolation from oral-based cancer potency factors may be possible for some agents, this is not considered feasible for contact site carcinogens. The change in contact sites (oral: g.i. tract; inhalation: respiratory tract) when switching dose routes leads to possible differences in tissue sensitivity as well as chemical delivery. This research evaluates the feasibility to extrapolate across dose routes for a contact site carcinogen through a case study with epichlorohydrin (EPI). EPI cancer potency at contact sites is compared across three bioassays involving different dose routes (gavage, drinking water, inhalation) through the use of dosimetry models to adjust for EPI delivery to contact sites. Results indicate a large disparity (two orders of magnitude) in potency across the three routes of administration when expressed as the externally applied dose. However, when expressed as peak delivered dose, inhalation and oral potency estimates are similar and overall, the three potency estimates are within a factor of seven. The results suggest that contact site response to EPI is more dependent upon the rate than the route of delivery, with peak concentration the best way to extrapolate across dose routes. These results cannot be projected to other carcinogens without further study.     

Some Properties and Generalizations of Non-negative Bayesian Time Series Models

We study the most basic Bayesian forecasting model for exponential family time series, the power steady model (PSM) of Smith, in terms of observable properties of one-step forecast distributions and sample paths. The PSM implies a constraint between location and spread of the forecast distribution. Including a scale parameter in the models does not always give an exact solution free of this problem, but it does suggest how to define related models free of the constraint. We define such a class of models which contains the PSM. We concentrate on the case where observations are non-negative. Probability theory and simulation show that under very mild conditions almost all sample paths of these models converge to some constant, making them unsuitable for modelling in many situations. The results apply more generally to non-negative models defined in terms of exponentially weighted moving averages. We use these and related results to motivate, define and apply very simple models based on directly specifying the forecast distributions.     

Voters and Values in the 2004 Election

A poorly devised exit poll question undermined meaningful analysisof voters’ concerns in the 2004 presidential election.Twenty-two percent of voters picked "moral values" from a listof "issues" describing what mattered most in their vote, morethan selected any other item. Various commentators have misinterpretedthis single data point to conclude that moral values are anascendant political issue and to credit conservative Christiangroups with turning George W. Bush’s popular vote defeatin 2000 into his three million–vote margin of victoryin 2004. We suggest, rather, that while morals and values arecritical in informing political judgments, they represent personalcharacteristics and ill-defined policy preferences far morethan any discrete political issue. First by conflating moralsand values and then by further conflating characteristics andissues, the exit poll’s "issues" list distorted our understandingof the 2004 election. In this article, we examine the flawsin the 2004 National Election Pool exit poll’s "most importantissue" question and explore the presumed rising electoral importanceof moral values and the conservative Christians who overwhelminglyselected this item. Using national exit poll data from 1980through 2004 and other national surveys, we find that the moralvalues item on the issues list cannot properly be viewed asa discrete issue or set of closely related issues; that itsimportance to voters has not grown over time; and that whencontrolled for other variables, it ranks low on the issues listin predicting 2004 vote choices. The aggregated exit poll dataalso show that the voting behavior of conservative Christiansis relatively stable over time, and these voters were not primarilyresponsible for Bush’s improvement in 2004 over 2000.