Looking After Children: assessing outcomes in child care. The experience of implementation

A Department of Health initiative has supported the implementation of Looking After Children in over 90 per cent of local authorities in England. The process has required major organisational change and new values and attitudes towards children looked after away from home. Difficulties arise where management and monitoring systems are not available to support these wider changes and to assess the quality of practice. Nevertheless clear benefits to using the system can be identified. Pilot projects in Sweden, Canada and Australia provide an opportunity to compare experiences internationally; strong parallels are evident in some of the current issues facing child welfare.     

Researching a Contemporary Archive

This paper documents the experiences of a researcher offered unlimited, privileged access to the archive of a recent, contemporary, charismatic social reformer based in Naples, who was also at the head of an international fundraising network. It documents, first, the unintended consequences of embarking on a research project on the basis of an informal friendly understanding between researcher and researched. It then comments on particular, practical features of this research undertaking, before focusing upon the major ethical dilemmas it presented. The author concludes by offering advice to future archival researchers in the light of her memorable experience in this case.     

Source Attribution of Food-Borne Zoonoses in New Zealand: A Modified Hald Model

A Bayesian approach was developed by Hald et al .^{( 1 )} to estimate the contribution of different food sources to the burden of human salmonellosis in Denmark. This article describes the development of several modifications that can be used to adapt the model to different countries and pathogens. Our modified Hald model has several advantages over the original approach, which include the introduction of uncertainty in the estimates of source prevalence and an improved strategy for identifiability. We have applied our modified model to the two major food-borne zoonoses in New Zealand, namely, campylobacteriosis and salmonellosis. Major challenges were the data quality for salmonellosis and the inclusion of environmental sources of campylobacteriosis. We conclude that by modifying the Hald model we have improved its identifiability, made it more applicable to countries with less intensive surveillance, and feasible for other pathogens, in particular with respect to the inclusion of nonfood sources. The wider application and better understanding of this approach is of particular importance due to the value of the model for decision making and risk management.     

How Green is My Valley? Tracking Rural and Urban Environmentalism in the Southern Appalachian Ecoregion1

Abstract Research on the social bases of environmentalism in the United States has generally found that urban residents are more concerned about the environment than rural residents. Recent research suggests this may no longer be the case, particularly in specific settings or under certain conditions. This paper examines the issue by reviewing recent survey research on rural and urban environmentalism. Tests for significant differences between urban and rural inhabitants of the Southern Appalachian Ecoregion on cognitive and behavioral dimensions of environmentalism are also conducted using data obtained from 1,239 telephone interviews. Findings are consistent with previous research showing that younger people, those with higher levels of education, and political liberals generally express higher levels of environmentalism. However, no significant rural-urban differences were found on several indicators of environmentalism. A range of conditions that are rapidly changing the character and composition of the region may help to explain why the findings do not conform to the general pattern of rural-urban differences. Overall, it appears that environmentalism has broadened its appeal in rural areas, especially in communities located near national and state parks, wildlife refuges, and other outdoor recreation sites.     

The derivation of a brief Student Nurse Stress Index

The lack of an adequate measure of perceived sources of stress for student nurses led to the construction of the Student Nurse Stress Index (SNSI). Responses from 235 first-year student nurses to 35 items from the Beck and Srivastava Stress Inventory (Beck, and Srivastava, 1991), and 15 new items, were subjected to exploratory factor analysis using principal components analysis and oblimin rotation. A reliable 22-variable solution with a simple oblique structure including Academic load, Clinical sources, Interface worries, and Personal problems factors was obtained in this initial sample, and confirmed at an exploratory level in a further independent validation sample of 188 first-year students. Confirmatory factor analysis established the four-factor model in the first sample, but required that three variables load onto more than one factor. This more complex four-factor model was confirmed using independent data from the validation sample, and the total invariance of factor loadings and factor covariances of this more complex four-factor model was established in both data sets simultaneously using multi-sample techniques. The SNSI shows cross-sample factor congruence, good internal reliabilities, and concurrent and discriminant validity across a range of reporting conditions.     

Characterizing the Risk of Infection from Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Commercial Passenger Aircraft Using Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment

Quantitative microbial risk assessment was used to predict the likelihood and spatial organization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis ( Mtb ) transmission in a commercial aircraft. Passenger exposure was predicted via a multizone Markov model in four scenarios: seated or moving infectious passengers and with or without filtration of recirculated cabin air. The traditional exponential ( k  = 1) and a new exponential ( k  = 0.0218) dose-response function were used to compute infection risk. Emission variability was included by Monte Carlo simulation. Infection risks were higher nearer and aft of the source; steady state airborne concentration levels were not attained. Expected incidence was low to moderate, with the central 95% ranging from 10⁻⁶ to 10⁻¹ per 169 passengers in the four scenarios. Emission rates used were low compared to measurements from active TB patients in wards, thus a "superspreader" emitting 44 quanta/h could produce 6.2 cases or more under these scenarios. Use of respiratory protection by the infectious source and/or susceptible passengers reduced infection incidence up to one order of magnitude.     

The Press As Metropolitan Monitor

An analysis of the coverage by two St. Louis newspapers of localcrime occurrences between 1969 and 1972 finds that (1) how muchvarious types of crime increase or decrease from year to yearis unrelated to how much more or less attention is given themby the press; and (2) the type of crime and its location withinthe city affect the amount of coverage it receives.     

Cochran's rule for simple random sampling

Cochran's rule for the minimum sample size to ensure adequate coverage of nominal 95% confidence intervals is derived by using the Edgeworth expansion for the distribution function of the standardized sample mean. The rule is extended for confidence intervals based on the Studentized sample mean. The performance of the rule and Edgeworth approximations for smaller sample sizes are examined by simulation.