An econometric study to evaluate proposal estimates

It is hypothesized that contract historical cost data can be used to provide a guide for evaluating proposal estimates generated by the organization. This hypothesis was tested for various input factors by examining multiple regressions of specific characteristics of fifty-five contracts. Of the various input factors examined, the multiple regression model explained from a high of over 94 per cent of the variation for engineering labor, to a low of 37 per cent of the variation for electronic development technical labor. The explanatory variables were highly significant with t values ranging from a low of 1·2 to a high of 26·6, with the vast majority greater than 2·0.     

Parametric branch and bound

The paper describes a procedure for mixed integer programming that allows branches to be imposed ‘by degrees’, which can subsequently be revised or weeded out according to their relative influence. It is an adaptive approach in which the branch and bound tree can be manipulated and restructured. The approach also yields measures of the costs of imposing the branches that lead to integer solutions, thus providing a built-in form of sensitivity analysis for evaluating the effect of integer restrictions.     

Community e-gateways: locating networks and learning for social inclusion

The provision of community e-gateways (community-based facilities providing public access to computers and the Internet) has been seen as a way to address the 'digital divide', particularly for people from deprived neighbourhoods. In the UK, policy and practitioner literature has stressed that for these centres to be successful they need to have strong social connections and be able to provide opportunities for interactive learning and content creation. Through a detailed analysis of one community e-gateway, which formed part of a wider study of public access provision, this article analyses the strengths and weaknesses of this advice drawing on broader sociological literature relating to social networks, network mapping and communities of practice. It concludes that greater attention needs to be paid to the significance of weak ties, two-way boundary spanning and the resource requirements of social networks for the policy objectives to be fully achieved.     

Differences in substance use,sexual behavior,and demographic factors by levels of ‘outness’ to friends and family about being a male-for-male escort

Objectives: Male sex work (i.e., escorting) is a stigmatized profession, and men in the sex industry may hide their involvement to avoid negative social consequences. There is limited research comparing men who are out about being an escort to their friends and/or family to those who are out to neither friends nor family. Methods: Data were taken from a 2013 online study of male escorts who were categorized into 3 groups based on outness patterns — friends only (48.9%, n = 193), friends and family (26.6%, n = 105), or neither friends nor family (23.5%, n = 93) — and they were compared on demographic and behavioral variables. Results: We hypothesized that men out to neither friends nor family would perform poorer across indicators of health and well-being due to the lack of social support that can come from friends and family. However, with the exception of reporting lower satisfaction and pay from their last male client, this hypothesis was unsupported. Outness patterns were largely unassociated with social and sexual behaviors with the last male client, and the majority eschewed condomless anal sex with their last male client, suggesting escorts — regardless of how out they are to friends and family — could navigate safer-sex behaviors with their clients. Outness was associated with substance use (<12 months) and substance use with their last male client — men out to friends and family were, for the most part, the most likely to have used substances. Men out to friends and family were significantly more likely than others to have been escorting for more than 5 years and to be escorting full-time. Conclusions: Interventions for escorts that address substance use and sexual risk behaviors and incorporate supportive friend and family social networks may be an important area for future research.     

Cohort Changes in the Socio-demographic Determinants of Gender Egalitarianism

Arguments about the spread of gender egalitarian values through the population highlight several sources of change. First, structural arguments point to increases in the proportion of women with high education, jobs with good pay, commitment to careers outside the family, and direct interests in gender equality. Second, value shift arguments contend that gender norms change with social and economic development among women and men in diverse positions - traditional and non-traditional alike. Third, diffusion arguments suggest that structural change leads to adoption of new ideas and values supportive of gender equality by non-traditional and innovative groups in society, but that the new ideas later diffuse to other groups through cultural processes. Using the General Social Survey from 1977 to 2006 and comparing the determinants of gender egalitarianism across 86 cohorts born from roughly 1900 through 1985, multilevel models support the diffusion arguments.     

民间组织走出去

美国环保协会的故事开始于50多年前一场关于保护鸬鹚，一种可爱的鸟类的运动。上世纪60年代，美国长岛的科学家惊讶地发现当地鸬鹚幼鸟的数量由于不知名的原因，急剧下滑至正常数量的七分之一。与此同时，秃头鹰、游隼等其他猛禽的数量也出现了同样惊人的跌幅。其中一些科学家通过科学研究追踪问题的根源，发现喷洒杀虫剂DDT（又称“滴滴涕”）是造成这一现象的罪魁祸首。在通过科学的指证赢得了在美国全面禁止DDT使用的官司之后，为了进一步保护人类赖以生存的自然环境，这些科学家成立了美国环保协会。     

Would Palliative Care Patients Benefit from Social Workers' Retaining the Traditional 'Casework' Role rather than Working as Care Managers? A Prospective Serial Qualitative Interview Study

Social workers have made a significant contribution to the developmentand delivery of palliative care. Both palliative care and socialwork are rapidly evolving but, given their changing contextsand increasing workloads, can they sustain compatibility? Advancesin treatment of life-threatening illness mean that people livelonger in a period of palliative care. Social work has undergoneradical change in the wake of the 1990 NHS and Community CareAct and subsequent local-authority modernizations, with socialworkers now given the role of care managers, rather than themore traditional ‘casework’ or therapeutic role.This paper aims to explore the current and potential role ofthe social worker in palliative care for people with cancerand other prolonged life-threatening illness. It draws uponevidence from a prospective qualitative, patient-centred researchstudy, which detailed the experiences of forty people with lungcancer and advanced cardiac failure, and their personal andprofessional carers (Murray et al., 2002). A total of two hundredand nineteen qualitative interviews were carried out. We found that social workers were conspicuous by their absencefrom the lives of these forty vulnerable adults, who were livingand dying in the community with many unmet needs which, potentially,could be met by social-work input. The study highlights sixareas of concern in which social-work assessment and interventioncould have impacted on dying patients’ quality of lifeand that of their carers: loss and dependency, family-centredissues, carers’ needs, practical tasks, emotional andspiritual struggles, and finally, support needs of staff. Theseareas are outlined to explore the territory which a social workermight inhabit if resources and policies permitted.     

Peter C. Fishburn (1936–2021)

Theory and Decision -