The Agree Consultant:more agreeable software?

This paper first describes a program AGREE calculating many variants of coefficients for interobserver agreement. A pilot program MOCK was written, aimed at helping unitiated users of AGREE to select the most appropriate coeflcient, given the data type and the research goal. It is a mock-up version of the data entrance and analysis sections of AGREE, to which are added some menus and a knowledge-based CONSULTANT system questioning the user. Results of a small experiment with four variants of the CONSULTANT are presented. This leads to a discussion of desirable features for this kind of help programs and preprocessors for specialized statistical software.     

Managers as knowledge generators: The nature of practitioner‐scholar research in the nonprofit sector

As nonprofit management education develops, it has the opportunity to consider new premises concerning managers' roles. In the design and practice of traditional management education, managers are assumed to be the ultimate users of knowledge. Less attention is given to educating managers to be knowledge generators who combine intimate understanding of issues, problems, and settings with established theory and methods. Based on a discussion of three research projects undertaken in nonprofit settings by participants in a doctoral program for advanced practitioners at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, we describe seven dimensions of practitioner‐scholar inquiry. The pattern of practitioner‐scholar research that emerges from these research projects is contrasted with two other modes of knowledge production. Implications for practitioner‐scholar inquiry and for the education of practitioner‐scholars in the nonprofit sector are discussed.     

A preliminary test of the validity of the LCSW examination

Social workers seeking licensure in most states must pass one of the four different written examinations developed by the American Association of State Social Work Boards (AASSWB). These examinations are claimed to be valid measures of professional social work knowledge and competence to practice. To test this claim, we administered the multiple-choice 50-item Advanced practice examination contained within the official AASSWB Advanced study guide to 42 first year MSW students. Weblanked out the actual question content, and asked the students to select the correct answers from among the four choices given. Chance would suggest that the average score should be about 25% correct (one out of four). In actualitythe students' scores averaged 37% correct, a statistically significant difference. These results challenge the content and discriminant validity of the AASSWB examination and call for further studies on the examinations' value.     

Exposure Assessment: Then, Now, and Quantum Leaps in the Future

Health risk assessments have become so widely accepted in the United States that their conclusions are a major factor in many environmental decisions. Although the risk assessment paradigm is 10 years old, the basic risk assessment process has been used by certain regulatory agencies for nearly 40 years. Each of the four components of the paradigm has undergone significant refinements, particularly during the last 5 years. A recent step in the development of the exposure assessment component can be found in the 1992 EPA Guidelines for Exposure Assessment. Rather than assuming worst-case or hypothetical maximum exposures, these guidelines are designed to lead to an accurate characterization, making use of a number of scientific advances. Many exposure parameters have become better defined, and more sensitive techniques now exist for measuring concentrations of contaminants in the environnment. Statistical procedures for characterizing variability, using Monte Carlo or similar approaches, eliminate the need to select point estimates for all individual exposure parameters. These probabilistic models can more accurately characterize the full range of exposures that may potentially be encountered by a given population at a particular site, reducing the need to select highly conservative values to account for this form of uncertainty in the exposure estimate. Lastly, our awareness of the uncertainties in the exposure assessment as well as our knowledge as to how best to characterize them will almost certainly provide evaluations that will be more credible and, therein, more useful to risk managers. If these refinements are incorporated into future exposure assessments, it is likely that our resources will be devoted to problems that, when resolved, will yield the largest improvement in public health.     

EFFICIENT USER CHARGES IN A RENT-SEEKING MODEL

This paper examines efficient user charges on governmentally provided facilities in the presence of rent seeking. We find that the efficient user charge depends upon the relative slopes of the demand curve for the use of the facility and the corresponding marginal cost curve, as well as the level of rent seeking over the revenue raised. Except for a special case, the efficient user charge is found to differ from the charge indicated by the intersection of demand and marginal cost curves. Examples show that actual user charges on government facilities are often set at inefficient levels.     

Time in the Therapeutic Domain

This paper sets out to examine theoretically the role that “time” plays in therapy. It proceeds by investigating the appearance of “time” in the therapeutic literature: specifically, research regarding the efficacy of brief therapy and attendance of clients in therapy, psychoanalytic concepts of “time”, family therapy's recent emphasis on the future and conceptualisations available about “time” and its role in problem formation and resolution. A summary of these findings precedes a discussion emphasising the problems of crisis, irreversibility and chronicity. The conclusion re-emphasises the need for a multi-modal approach to any future theorising on “time” in the therapeutic domain.     

A critique of the normative and descriptive foundations of subjective probability—with reference to agriculture

Subjective probability is currently accepted as an adequate analytical framework for research into choice under uncertainty. This study tries to challenge this on a number of grounds. We suggest that Savage's inferred probabilities do not take account of differences in uncertainty which may rationally determine behaviour. Secondly, utility functions used in economic theory may vary depending on the information content. Thirdly, it may provide an inefficient method of analysing observed economic behaviour. Fourthly, changes in utility functions may constitute part of what we think of as uncertainty, and fifthly, we mention problems with elicited subjective probabilities. Finally, some avenues for further research are suggested.