The TOWS matrix—A tool for situational analysis

This article has two main purposes. One is to review general considerations in strategic planning and the second to introduce the TOWS Matrix for matching the environmental threats and opportunities with the company's weaknesses and especially its strengths. These factors per se are not new; what is new is systematically identifying relationships between these factors and basing strategies on them. There is little doubt that strategic planning will gain greater prominence in the future. Any organization—whether military, product-oriented, service-oriented or even governmental—to remain effective, must use a rational approach toward anticipating, responding to and even altering the future environment.     

Adaptation of Tastes to Constraints

This paper examines a model in which people’s preferences adjust to changes in their relative ability to attain various goals. Preference changes are modeled as changes in the configuration of weights (or values) attached to these goals. The model permits to explain common prototype changes of preferences such as the ‘sour grapes’ or the ‘overcompensating’ phenomenon. It is found that whether the first or the second phenomenon occurs depends on whether a goal is easy or difficult to substitute by other goals. If two goals are sufficiently strong substitutes for each other, no weight will be placed on that goal which is harder to attain. The results readily apply to the standard microeconomic set-up involving goods and prices, rather than abstract goals and abilities. In this case, one implication of the model is that only a subset of the overall commodity space is relevant for everyday consumer choice, which reduces the complexity of the choice procedure. The model also permits to explain how new and unfamiliar products are incorporated into the consumer’s preference pattern.     

Optimal paired comparison designs for first-order interactions

In many fields of applications paired comparisons are used in which either full or partial profiles of the alternatives are presented. For this situation we introduce an appropriate model and derive optimal designs in the presence of interactions when all attributes have the same number of levels.     

Best quadratic and positive semidefinite unbiased estimation of the variance matrix of the multivariate normal distribution

A BQPUE (best quadratic and positive semidefinite unbiased estimator) of the matrix V for the distribution vec X^′∽N_np(vec M^′, U?V) is being given. It is unique, although still depending on U and M. When U = I and M = (μ,…,μ), we get a well-known (unique) result not depending on M.     

Analysis of a longitudinal ordinal response clinical trial using dynamic models

Summary.  In many areas of pharmaceutical research, there has been increasing use of categorical data and more specifically ordinal responses. In many cases, complex models are required to account for different types of dependences among the responses. The clinical trial that is considered here involved patients who were required to remain in a particular state to enable the doctors to examine their heart. The aim of this trial was to study the relationship between the dose of the drug administered and the time that was spent by the patient in the state permitting examination. The patient's state was measured every second by a continuous Doppler signal which was categorized by the doctors into one of four ordered categories. Hence, the response consisted of repeated ordinal series. These series were of different lengths because the drug effect wore off faster (or slower) on certain patients depending on the drug dose administered and the infusion rate, and therefore the length of drug administration. A general method for generating new ordinal distributions is presented which is sufficiently flexible to handle unbalanced ordinal repeated measurements. It consists of obtaining a cumulative mixture distribution from a Laplace transform and introducing into it the integrated intensity of a binary logistic, continuation ratio or proportional odds model. Then, a multivariate distribution is constructed by a procedure that is similar to the updating process of the Kalman filter. Several types of history dependences are proposed.     

Synthesizing the interests of consumers, citizens, and administrators in gathering client feedback

In a large metropolitan county's mental health system program evaluators involved consumer representatives, advisory board, and administrators in a client feedback study. The evaluators presented the groups with a “menu” of possible questions, and members of each group selected items where it would be particularly useful to know the opinions of clients. The groups did not agree about the kinds of questions that were desirable. The evaluators created a survey instrument that included high-priority items from each group. The survey was completed by 205 outpatients in three sites. Clients expressed a nearunanimous opinion about some questions, while on other issues there was no client consensus. In human service systems where decision making is shared by people with potentially conflicting interests, the authors recommend polling groups of decision-makers and then uniting their interests in a study of client feedback.