Research Note: The Future of Third-Sector Teaching and Research in Central and Eastern Europe

This research note addresses issues, concerns, and opportunities for teachers and researchers of the third sector in Central and Eastern Europe, drawing on experiences in Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, and Hungary. The paper briefly outlines the development of the third sector in the aforementioned countries, and describes the current state of third sector teaching and research there. It then frames the challenges for the region's teachers and researchers, and proposes an appropriate role for the West, commenting upon the West's relevance within Central and Eastern Europe.     

Rapid Benefit-Risk Assessments: No Escape from Expert Judgments in Risk Management

The "human health impacts assessment" described by Cox and Popken (this issue) is intended to be a benefit-risk tool that avoids pitfalls of using expert judgments for policy analysis or during strict application of the precautionary principle in risk management. The proposed benefit-risk calculation uses numerous assumptions and suppositions to calculate a ratio of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) lost for the number of human illness days prevented by the use of a food-animal antimicrobial drug, to the number of human illness days caused by the use of the antimicrobial drug. Assumptions about data--e.g., expert judgments on the representativeness of parameter estimates--are commonly used in risk assessment and risk management, including Cox and Popken's method. Cox and Popken apply the technique to specific examples of enrofloxacin and macrolides antimicrobial drugs, sometimes used in broiler chickens for human food. Although enthusiastically portrayed as a straightforward calculation of QALYs lost for two decision alternatives, Cox and Popken were silent on the pivotal expert judgment subsumed in their method: quality weights for illnesses caused by antimicrobial-resistant and antimicrobial-sensitive microbes are tacitly assumed to be equal. Yet, the costs in terms of prolonged illness, additional medications, repeat medical visits, and dread of more serious sequelae are expected to differ substantially for antimicrobial-resistant versus antimicrobial-sensitive illnesses. Despite their enthusiasm to the contrary, the "human health impacts assessment" by Cox and Popken is not immune from expert judgments in risk management.     

A mundane voice

This essay offers strategies of speaking and studying ‘the mundane’ as a means to inaugurate an interventionist politics in cultural studies. Using Meaghan Morris’s example of anecdotal and colloquial address, a mundane voice is shown to situate and contextualize our understanding of major concepts circulating in international theory, and broaden the audience for academic debate. Studies of ‘everyday life’ have been hampered by a too-close affinity with hegemonic structures of knowledge production, requiring further gestures of parochialism to hasten a speaking position aware of its own partiality and limitations. Attention to the singularity or ‘this-ness’ of a cultural site humbles the tasks cultural studies can perform, introducing some curiosity to what we think we know about the cultures from which we speak. Reflecting on the fate of Michel de Certeau’s work in the boom period of cultural studies’ expansion, the paper suggests that cultural studies’ radical potential can be expanded if we are not inflected by preconceptions about what defines politics, especially against the fashions of intellectual commodification. Morris creates affective connections between past, present and future political concerns: a different temporality for political investment than the cycles of electoral models, or the dictates of commodity culture, afford, and one that cultural studies might still learn to adopt.     

Linear regression analysis of survival data with missing censoring indicators

Linear regression analysis has been studied extensively in a random censorship setting, but typically all of the censoring indicators are assumed to be observed. In this paper, we develop synthetic data methods for estimating regression parameters in a linear model when some censoring indicators are missing. We define estimators based on regression calibration, imputation, and inverse probability weighting techniques, and we prove all three estimators are asymptotically normal. The finite-sample performance of each estimator is evaluated via simulation. We illustrate our methods by assessing the effects of sex and age on the time to non-ambulatory progression for patients in a brain cancer clinical trial.     

Psychological factors that influence traumatic injury occurrence and physical performance

This 9 month prospective study, conducted at the US Army Sergeants Major Academy (USASGMA), examined the association of selected psychological variables (e.g., measures of tension/anxiety, sleep disturbance, Type A behavior pattern) with injury occurrence and physical performance in 126 soldiers. ANOVA and logistic regression analyses revealed significant relationships between: 1) Traumatic injury occurrence and mean tension/anxiety scores, 2) Mean self-reported sleep disturbance scores and traumatic injury occurrence, 3) The Type A behavior pattern (abbreviated Jenkins Activity Survey) and number of sit-ups repetitions completed in 2 minutes, one component of the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT), 4) The Type A behavior pattern and total score APFT. No significant associations were found for mean tension/anxiety scores and overuse injuries, or Type A behavior pattern and two mile run time or number of push-up repetitions completed in 2 minutes. These data suggest traumatic injury occurrence is influenced by tension/anxiety and disturbances in sleep habits. Additionally, individuals with higher Jenkins Activity scores (characteristic of the Type A behavior pattern) perform better physically.     

Portrait of the Social Entrepreneur: Statistical Evidence from a US Panel

Social entrepreneurship is an increasingly important concept in the study of voluntary and nonprofit organizations. In spite of the growing recognition of this concept, little is known about what individual characteristics might describe or explain who in society is likely to be (or become) a social entrepreneur. This preliminary study empirically addresses this question using data from a United States online panel. Our results suggest that social entrepreneurs are likely to be female, non-white, younger, and college-educated individuals with some business experience and who live in big cities. Social entrepreneurs also tend to have more social capital, as measured by their activity in clubs and organizations other than work, and they are more likely to be happy, interested in politics, extroverted, giving (to charity), and liberal ideologically. Although exploratory, these findings help describe the social entrepreneur and suggest ways in which this important actor in civil society can be better identified, understood, and perhaps cultivated.     

Testing the Expectancy Disconfirmation Model of Citizen Satisfaction with Local Government

It is important for public administration researchers and practitionersto understand how citizens form satisfaction judgments regardinglocal government services. A prior study by Van Ryzin (2004)found strong support for an expectancy disconfirmation modelof citizen satisfaction, which focuses on the gap between performanceand expectations. This model has been tested for decades instudies of private sector customer satisfaction, yet it is littleknown and applied in the field of public administration. Thepresent study seeks to replicate the Van Ryzin (2004) results,which were based on a telephone survey in New York City, usinga nationwide sample and a much different survey methodology,namely, an online, self-administered survey of a national panel.In addition, this study tests the sensitivity of the resultsto two alternative measures of disconfirmation (or the gap betweenperformance and expectations). Results using subtractive disconfirmationconfirm the basic expectancy disconfirmation model, but resultsusing perceived disconfirmation do not, calling into questionthe policy and management implications of the prior study.     

A survival-adjusted quantal response test for comparing tumour incidence rates

Summary.  The paper presents a case-study of skin fibromas among male rats in the 2-year cancer bioassay of methyleugenol that was conducted by the US National Toxicology Program (NTP). In animal carcinogenicity experiments such as this one, tumour rates are often compared with the Cochran–Armitage (CA) trend test. The operating characteristics of the CA test, however, can be adversely affected by survival differences across groups and by the assumed dose metric. Survival-adjusted generalizations of the CA test have been proposed, but they are still sensitive to the choice of scores that are assigned to the dose groups. We present an alternative test, which outperforms the survival-adjusted CA test which is currently used by the NTP to compare incidence rates. Simulated data from a wide range of realistic situations show that the operating characteristics of the test proposed are superior to those of the NTP's survival-adjusted CA test, especially for rare tumours and wide logarithmic spacings of the dose metric.