Privatization—A cure for all ills?

Before a troubled State-owned company can be privatized, the management dimension must be examined. The privatization strategy must be closely linked with the overall business strategy to ensure that the opportunities afforded by the operation provide for long-term profit enhancement. The logic behind the state-owned enterprise is described and the objectives of privatization, the pros and cons, are analysed.     

The O. J. Simpson Trial: Challenges to Science and Society

The O. J. Simpson murder and civil trials riveted the nation and much of the world for more than two years. Of tremendous scientific and public interest was the gulf in attitudes, perceptions, and reactions to the not guilty verdict at the criminal trial. The collection of articles in this issue of The Journal of Social Issues converged on the idea that race is an inadequate explanatory variable in understanding these differences in attitudes, perceptions, and reactions. Instead, race is a marker for a variety of cultural and experiential issues that affect cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes. This concluding article debunks simplistic ideas of race and points to the broader problems of racism and discrimination, criminal injustice, and violence in social relations. The article concludes with suggestions for future research and a call for a broader transformation in societal institutions that affect the quality of social relations.     

Premium will continue to be on performance. Interview by Wesley Curry.

With a new name for its professional organization (the American College of Physician Executives) and a new certifying organization (the American Board of Medical Management), the profession of medical management is in the throes of significant and far-reaching change. At the College's National Conference in Washington, D.C. in May, we talked to two leaders of the profession, Michael B. Guthrie, MD, MBA, FACPE, and Robert H. Hodge, Jr., MD, FACPE about what the future holds for physician executives and what physician executives can do to position themselves for success. Dr. Guthrie, the Immediate Past President of the College is Vice President for Business Development, Penrose/St. Francis Healthcare System, Colorado Springs, Colo. Dr. Hodge, the new President of the College, is a Program Director, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Battle Creek, Mich.     

A meta-analysis of the California school-based risk reduction program

Prominent nonquantitative reviews of research evaluating school-based interventions designed to deter adolescents from the use of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs found the methodology to be flawed and thus little evidence existed that the interventions had the desired impact. Recent meta-analytic reviews indicate that information-focused interventions have more impact upon knowledge but less upon attitudes and behavior whereas alternative interventions have less impact upon knowledge but more upon attitudes and behavior. This result is replicated by the current meta-analysis performed upon eight risk-reduction programs meeting six standard methodological requirements for evaluation research.     

Theory & Methods: Incomplete detection in enumeration surveys: Whither distance sampling?

This paper considers the problem of undercount or incomplete detection in enumeration surveys that are intended to estimate population counts or population abundance. The problem is widespread in ecology but also occurs in other surveys: the census undercount is a well-known example of the problem. After framing the problem in a general context, the paper focuses on line transect sampling and the distance sampling method which has been widely applied in surveys of ecological populations. It describes distance sampling data and presents a graphical derivation of the distance sampling estimator. The graphical analysis leads to a new expression for the distance sampling estimator which gives useful insights into the nature of the estimator. The paper discusses the uniformity assumption on which distance sampling depends and describes the properties of the distance sampling estimator when uniformity does not hold. It then explores the relationship between this and other evaluations of distance sampling and mentions briefly some statistical ideas for treating the general incomplete detection problem. The paper concludes with some reflections on general insights arising from the research.