Service user and carer feedback: simply pass/fail or a genuine learning tool?

Social Work Students in Britain are required to submit feedback from Service Users and Carers as part of their Practice Learning portfolios. The purpose of this is twofold—to demonstrate evidence of the student’s ability and to provide information for the student to reflect on and learn from. Members of the Service User and Carer Advisory group attached to a Social Work degree course believe this represents an opportunity for users and carers to influence future social work practice. In reality however, does this feedback actually make a difference? Group members reviewed user and carer feedback contained within student portfolios submitted during one academic year. They found that whilst there were some excellent examples of constructive criticism, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive towards students. The findings raised questions about how gathering Service User and Carer feedback is viewed and undertaken. Is the feedback seen more as a pass/fail issue or as an opportunity to learn from? Could there be better ways to gain constructive feedback for students? What conditions enable students to learn from the feedback that is gathered? This paper starts to explore these questions and suggests ideas for further research and training.     

Sharing good fortune: Effects of scarcity on small donation requests

Based on studies linking positive outcomes to subsequent helping, it was hypothesized that when individuals receive their choice of items when supply is constrained they will show heightened prosocial behavior. Participants either received a choice of candy when it was plentiful, a choice of candy under scarce conditions, or no option to choose between candies under scarce conditions. All were subsequently invited to keep previously acquired school supplies or to donate them back. As hypothesized, when participants received their choice of candy their donation rate was higher in the scarce, versus the non-scarce, condition. Those not receiving choice due to scarcity behaved similarly to those who received choice under the condition of plenty. Discussion focuses on applications to encourage helpfulness.     

Intellectual Property,Scientific Independence,and the Efficacy and Environmental Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops

Neoliberalism is the political ideology behind efforts to commercialize university science. The development of genetically engineered (GE) crops has facilitated the commercialization process because GE crops generally have more restrictive intellectual property protections than conventional crops. Those restrictions have led some to question whether long‐term university research and innovations are being compromised to protect short‐term intellectual property interests. This concern is evident in two letters submitted by public‐sector entomologists in February 2009 to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The letters asserted that scientists are prohibited from conducting fully independent research on the efficacy and environmental impact of GE crops. In response to the letter, the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) negotiated an agreement between university scientists and seed companies to protect industry property rights while enabling university scientists to conduct research with more independence. Through a survey of public‐ and private‐sector entomologists who are members of two regional entomologist research groups, we document scientists' perspectives on the adequacy of the ASTA agreement and whether those scientists have experienced limitations on their research projects involving efficacy and environmental impacts. Our findings show that limitations exist and that certain forms of public knowledge about crops are likely being compromised. These findings have implications for the legitimacy of current risk management institutions, as well as for future technological breakthroughs and innovations.     

Author disincentives and open access

All parties in the scholarly-information marketplace agree that any Open Access (OA) system will have to account for the costs of disseminating scholarly information and of editing, publishing and distributing it. There has been less discussion of the fact that for an OA forum to succeed, it will have to be accepted and supported by authors. Author charges, a relative lack of prestige, and the required abdication of copyright are three characteristics of many currently emerging OA models that may pose significant barriers to author acceptance. These will have to be addressed if OA providers wish to be competitive with non-OA providers.     

Uniform validity of saddlepoint expansion on compact sets

This paper shows that Daniels's (1954) saddlepoint expansion for the density of a sample mean is, for all practical purposes, always uniformly valid on compact subsets in the interior of the domain of the mean. This uniform validity is the key for establishing the relation between the saddlepoint expansion for the density function and Lugannani and Rice's expansion for the tail probability, and for establishing the validity of a high-order asymptotic expansion for the density of a standardized mean.     

Historic preservation: A statutory vehicle for disparate agendas

During the past 100 years historic preservation has gravitated between portrayals as protector of the nation's cultural heritage, to an impediment of necessary development. Shifting coalitions, most often bent upon pursuing agendas having little to do with the essence of historic preservation, banded together securing statutory provisions largely incremental or symbolic in substance. Of significance was the decades long absence of an issue monopoly, an absence that is not fully explored in the existing policy literature. This study provides insights into the shifts in coalition stability and statutory outputs absent an issue monopoly.     

Influence of a Family‐Focused Substance Use Preventive Intervention on Growth in Adolescent Depressive Symptoms

Preparing for the Drug Free Years (PDFY) is a preventive intervention that targets parenting behaviors, family interaction patterns, and adolescent substance use, factors that have been shown to predict depression among teenagers. Effects of PDFY on trajectories of self‐reported adolescent depressive symptoms from 6th through 12th grade were examined. Latent growth curve modeling was used to analyze data from 429 rural adolescents from schools assigned randomly to an intervention or a control condition. PDFY reduced the rate of increase in depressive symptoms during adolescence. Mediation of the intervention effect on depressive symptoms through reduced polysubstance use was tested; the indirect effect was only marginally significant. Findings have implications for understanding the relationship between adolescent depressive symptoms and substance use, and for preventing these outcomes.     

Four‐Month‐Olds' Discrimination of Optic Flow Patterns Depicting Different Directions of Observer Motion

One of the most powerful sources of information about spatial relationships available to mobile organisms is the pattern of visual motion called optic flow. Despite its importance for spatial perception and for guiding locomotion, very little is known about how the ability to perceive one's direction of motion, or heading, from optic flow develops early in life. In this article, we report the results of 3 experiments that tested the abilities of 4‐month‐old infants to discriminate optic flow patterns simulating different directions of self‐motion. The combined results from 2 different experimental paradigms suggest that 4‐month‐olds discriminate optic flow patterns that simulate only large (> 32°) changes in the direction of the observer's motion through space. This suggests that prior to the onset of locomotion, there are limitations on infants' abilities to process patterns of optic flow related to self‐motion.