Using a model to structure psychosocial nursing [corrected]

1. Specifying a model to guide research projects helps clarify the study, permits several investigators to work in a coordinated fashion on large projects, and facilitates comparisons across studies. 2. This model is composed of seven domains and indicates some of the hypothesized relationships between domains. Adapting the model to individual studies may result in a different number of domains and in the specification of other hypothesized relationships. 3. When possible, researchers should make use of minimum data sets to enhance the comprehensiveness and generalizability of their research.     

Car Occupant Life Expectancy: Car Mass and Seat Belt Effects

Average human life expectancies for the U.S. resident population are calculated using tabulated population and survival rate data. These life expectancies are recalculated assuming elimination of various types of motor vehicle fatalities using Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS) data. The differences between the original and recalculated values provide estimates of life expectancy reductions due to the motor vehicle fatalities. These estimates are combined with prior work relating the likelihood of an occupant fatality to car mass, so that reductions in life expectancy are determined as a function of car mass. The estimates of life expectancy reductions are also used to determine the effect of seat belt use on life expectancy. The estimates, which are based on data for 1978, assume that survival rates remain unchanged. Estimates of the changes in life expectancy associated with switching from a large (1800 kg) car to a small (900 kg) car, and switching from not using to using a seat belt are presented as functions of the age at which an individual makes the switch.     

A case of mistaken identity? Debating the dilemmas of street-level bureaucracy with Musil et al.

Lipsky's Street-level Bureaucracy (Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1980 Lipsky, M. 1980. Street-level Bureaucracy: The Dilemmas of Individuals in Public Service, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.  [Google Scholar]) has exerted a strong influence on the study of public service organisations. There has been a growing interest in using this perspective to understand the organisational context of social work and Musil et al.'s article in the EJSW (2004, ‘Do social workers avoid the dilemmas of work with clients?’, European Journal of Social Work, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 305–319) reflects this interest. Musil et al. argue that it is possible to identify two forms of practitioner response to the constraints of street-level bureaucracies: adapting working practices in ways that disadvantage service users or challenging working conditions in order to achieve more professionally acceptable practice. Their contribution to the debate is helpful, particularly with regard to their identification of responses by practitioners that seek to advance the interests of service users. However, we view their approach as constrained by lack of consideration of the construction of social work roles within particular street-level bureaucracies. We suggest that Lipsky's work should be approached as a tentative analytic framework, rather than as a fixed model and we argue that a productive approach to research on social workers as street-level bureaucrats is conjunctural analysis. Such analysis examines the contexts, circumstances and statuses of practitioners and how these factors shape the specific forms of street-level practice that operate in particular organisational settings. We illustrate this in our discussion of the factors that are likely to have had a bearing on the two practice settings used as case studies by Musil et al.     

‘When and where does being Welsh matter to me?’ The influence of cross-border mobilities on constructions of sub-national belonging in the lives of Welsh Muslims*

This article will discuss how Welsh Muslims construct what a sense of place means to them through their cross-border mobility between England and Wales, and how this contributes to the ongoing re-construction of a plural understanding of nationhood in an era of diversity. To understand when and where being Welsh matters to Welsh Muslims, it will explore how mobility rather than being the antithesis of belonging, can be used as an essential tool in highlighting how perceptions of the nation, sub-state nation, home and place are influenced and understood.     

Simple Efficient Contracts in Complex Environments

This paper studies a general model of holdup in a setting encompassing the models of Segal (1999) and Che and Hausch (1999) among others. It is shown that if renegotiation is modeled as an infinite‐horizon noncooperative bargaining game, then, with a simple initial contract, an efficient equilibrium will generally exist. The contract is robust in the sense that it does not depend on fine details of the model. The contract gives authority to one party to set the terms of trade and gives the other party a nonexpiring option to trade at these terms. The difference from standard results arises because the initial contract ensures that the renegotiation game has multiple equilibria; the multiplicity of continuation equilibria can be used to enforce efficient investment.     

Cross-system data linkage for treatment outcome evaluation: lessons learned from the California Treatment Outcome Project

Using administrative data to evaluate health care outcomes has become increasingly common, but the reliability and validity of outcome measures based on cross-system data linkage have been little scrutinized. Applying a deterministic data matching methodology, we linked 6545 Californians admitted to 43 substance abuse treatment programs between 2000 and 2001 to administrative data acquired from three state agency databases. We compared self-reported treatment outcome measures to equivalent measures derived from official records on motor vehicle driving incidents, criminal history, and mental health services utilization. Administrative data provided analogous results in some measures (e.g., percent of people using mental health services, percent ever arrested) and more accurate results in others (e.g., frequency of service utilization, and frequency of arrests). Similar to findings based on the interview data, the administrative data also revealed improvements in several domains 1-year post-treatment compared to 1-year pre-treatment. Experiences with data linkage procedures and strategies for enhancing record linkage accuracy are discussed. Findings illustrate the value of using administrative records for substance abuse treatment outcome evaluation, while highlighting areas for improvement for future cross-system data linkage efforts.