Measuring disparities in access to water based on the normative content of the human right

Measuring access to water in the Sustainable Development Goals era involves taking into account the human rights framework. Therefore, its content should be considered to conceptualize the level of service through adequate indicators and to follow-up inequities reduction at global, national and local level. This research develops and tests a methodology to measure intra-community disparities based on human right to water normative criteria through a stratified sampling, splitting households served by community based organizations and those self-provided. This approach implies considering much reduced populations, thus special care needs to be taken with sample sizes and uncertainty of estimators. The proposed methodology is practical to locate and accurately characterize minority sectors within rural communities and allows moving beyond central-tendency estimators. It implies higher costs for field data collection than traditional approaches, but this can be assumed given the relevance of the approach from a human rights perspective, which calls for adequate tools for equity-oriented policy making at local level. The research point out how results might be used to shape decision-making processes.     

Comparing the U.S. Decennial Census Coverage Estimates for Children from Demographic Analysis and Coverage Measurement Surveys

Following every U.S. decennial census since 1960, the U.S. Census Bureau has evaluated the completeness of coverage using two different methods. Demographic analysis (DA) compares the census counts to a set of independent population estimates to infer coverage differences by age, sex, and race. The survey-based approach (also called dual system estimation or DSE) provides coverage estimates based on matching data from a post-enumeration survey to census records. This paper reviews the fundamentals of the two methodological approaches and then initially examines the results of these two methods for the 2010 decennial census in terms of consistency and inconsistency for age groups. The authors find that the two methods produce relatively consistent results for all age groups, except for young children. Consequently, the paper focuses on the results for children. Results of the 1990, 2000, and 2010 decennial censuses are shown for the overall population in this age group and by demographic detail (age, race, and Hispanic origin). Among children, the DA and DSE results are most inconsistent for the population aged 0–4 and most consistent for ages 10–17. Results also show that DA and DSE are more consistent for Black than non-Black populations. The authors discuss possible explanations for the differences in the two methods for young children and conclude that the DSE approach may underestimate the net undercount of young children due to correlation bias.     

Reactions of students to different settings of field experience

The study assessed Israeli students’ emotional–experiential reaction and attitude to different client populations, following a week-long experience in one of five social services settings. The study provides preliminary findings regarding the implications of first year students’ experience on their emphatic skills, a subject that generally has not received adequate scholarly attention. Using a purpose-built, self-administered questionnaire, we found students’ emotional–experiential response to their experience differed by the setting in which they were placed, being lowest in the Bedouin oriented services, intermediate among those placed in juvenile correction services, and highest in mental health, adult and child disability services. Responses were independent of all other explanatory variables, including sex, cognitive ability, previous training experience and perceptual shifts concerning the population served. We discuss possible reasons for these differences.

     

Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington,D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project,June--July 1993

This paper reports the results of a prospective experiment in which a group of approximately 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi assembled in Washington, D.C., from June 7 to July 30, 1993. It was hypothesized that levels of violent crime in the District of Columbia would fall substantially during the Demonstration Project, as a result of the group's effect of increasing coherence and reducing stress in the collective consciousness of the District. A 27-member Project Review Board comprising independent scientists and leading citizens approved the research protocol and monitored the research process. Weekly crime data was derived from database records provided by the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (DCMPD), which are used in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Statistical analysis considered the effect of weather variables, daylight, historical crime trends and annual patterns in the District of Columbia, as well as trends in neighboring cities. Consistent with previous research, levels of homicides, rapes and assaults (HRA crimes) correlated with average weekly temperature. Robberies approximately followed an annually recurring cycle. Time series analysis of 1993 data, controlling for temperature, showed that HRA crimes dropped significantly during the Demonstration Project, corresponding with increases in the size of the group; the maximum decrease was 23.3% (p < 2 × 10–9) [24.6% using a longer baseline, with 1988--1993 data (p < 3 × 10–5)], coincident with the peak number of participants in the group during the final week of the assembly. When the same period in each of the five previous years was examined, no significant decreases in HRA crimes were found. Robberies did not decrease significantly. However, a model that jointly estimated the effect of the Demonstration Project on both HRA crimes and robberies showed a significant reduction in violent crimes overall of 15.6% (p = 0.0008). Further analysis showed that the effect of the coherence-creating group on reducing HRA crimes could not be accounted for by additional police staffing. The time series analysis for HRA crimes gave results that are highly robust to alternative model specifications, and showed that the effect of the group size was cumulative and persisted after the Demonstration Project ended. Also, calculation of the steady state gain based on the time series model predicted that a permanent group of 4,000 coherence-creating experts in the District would have a long-term effect of reducing HRA crimes by 48%.     

Civil Commitment for Drug Dependency

In recent proposals for new legislation in New South Wales for dealing with drug-dependent persons, opinion has been sharply divided over the issues for and against civil commitment for drug abuse per se. This paper examines the situation as seen from a legal point of view.     

SCHEDULING PARALLEL PROCESSORS WITH SETUP COSTS AND RESOURCE LIMITATIONS

An integer linear programming model is presented for the scheduling of n products on m identical machines. The particular problem studied is one that occurs frequently in the fiberglass and textile industries. The model incorporates setup costs, lost production costs, and overtime costs. Due to the structure of the model, integer solutions can be obtained by explicitly restricting only a small number of the integer variables. This allows those responsible for scheduling to solve realistically sized problems in an efficient manner. Computational results are provided for a set of generated test problems.