Implemented as intended? Recording family worker activities in a Families First program

In evaluating family preservation services, it is important not only to study the service outcomes and the family characteristics, but also what actually happens during the treatment. This requires a program model. This article describes how a program model works, prescribes how workers should carry it out, and describes how researchers should measure the program's characteristics. The authors use data from Families First in The Netherlands to test the model. Results show that the method of the program meets the specified characteristics. The results are important for treatment, policy, education, and evaluation research.     

Können Organisationen nicht lernen? Facetten organisationaler Lernkulturen

Recently, the concept of ‘learning culture’ has entered the discussion on learning organizations and organizational learning, especially in the German speaking countries. Most of the academics, but also practitioners seem to use the term ‘learning culture’ in a particular sense as nurturing a self-directed, on-the-job learning of all employees. An implicit, often neglected assumption of this conception is that organizations can be divided into those who have a learning culture and those who do not. Although this idea of a dichotomy is also found in the discussion on learning organizations, it can be called into question. Past research has shown that (organizational) learning is a multifaceted phenomenon. Different organizations engage in very diverse kinds of learning due to the fact that they are facing varying environmental conditions. This brings us to doubt the idea of a ?one-best-way“ learning culture. Following the basic question, who learns what, how, when and why, the article presents a set of distinguishing attributes to distinguish between different types of learning cultures. Finally, yet unanswered questions and paths for future research are discussed.     

Voice and Identity in a Bicultural/Bilingual Environment

Researchers have noted that with the onset of adolescence, girls' voices become muted and school achievement drops. Girls learn that the expression of strong feelings leads to distance from others, and that full use of their bodies and minds cause others discomfort. Self-esteem suffers and girls become at risk for destructive behaviors. Most studies have been done with middle class Caucasian girls. Those few studies done with young girls of color speak of girls on the margin who seem to resist losing their voices and their self-esteem. This article describes a study involving 5th–8th grade girls participating in an Advisory group program at a grammar school in a predominantly Mexican community of a large city. Group sessions were taped and analyzed for common themes including voice and self-esteem. Focus was directed to the influence of the bicultural/bilingual environment in analysis of group content. Implications for practice are included.     

Covariate Order Tests for Covariate Effect

A new approach for constructing tests for association between a random right censored life time variable and a covariate is proposed. The basic idea is to first arrange the observations in increasing order of the covariate and then base the test on a certain point process defined by the observation times. Tests constructed by this approach are robust against outliers in the covariate values or misspecification of the covariate scale since they only use the ordering of the covariate. Of particular interest is a test based on the Anderson-Darling statistic. This test has good power properties both against monotonic and nonmonotonic dependencies between the covariate and the life time variable.     

TRUST,SOCIAL CAPITAL,AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Many argue that elements of a society's norms, culture, or social capital are central to understanding its development. However, these notions have been difficult to capture in economic models. Here we explore a possible role for “trustworthiness” as corresponding to social capital. Individuals are trustworthy when they perform in accordance with promises, even if this does not maximise their payoffs. The usual focus on incentive structures in motivating behaviour plays no role here. Instead, we emphasise more deep‐seated modes of behaviour and consider trustworthy agents being socialised to act as they do. To model this socialisation, we borrow from a process of preference evolution pioneered by Bisin and Verdier (2001). The model developed endogenously accounts for social capital and explores its role in the process of economic development. It captures in a simple, formal way the interaction between social capital and the economy's productive processes. The results obtained caution against rapid reform and provide an explanation for why late‐developing countries may not easily be able to transplant the modes of production that have proved useful in the West. (JEL: O1, O3, O4, Z1)     

Investigating the impact of violations of the “left and top means first” heuristic on response behavior and data quality

ABSTRACT

Web surveys are an established data collection mode that use written language to provide information. The written language is accompanied by visual elements, such as presentation formats and shapes. However, research has shown that visual elements influence response behavior because respondents sometimes use interpretive heuristics to make sense of the visual elements. One such heuristic is the ‘left and top means first’ (LTMF) heuristic, which suggests that respondents tend to believe that a response scale consistently runs from left to right or from top to bottom. We conducted a web survey experiment to investigate how violations of the LTMF heuristic affect response behavior and data quality. For this purpose, a random half of respondents received response options that followed a consistent order and the other half received response options that followed an inconsistent order. The results reveal significantly different response distributions between the two groups. We also found that inconsistently ordered response options significantly increase response times and decrease data quality in terms of criterion validity. We, therefore, recommend using options that follow the design strategies of the LTMF heuristic.     

When Precaution Creates Misunderstandings: The Unintended Effects of Precautionary Information on Perceived Risks,the EMF Case

In the past decade, growing public concern about novel technologies with uncertain potential long‐term impacts on the environment and human health has moved risk policies toward a more precautionary approach. Focusing on mobile telephony, the effects of precautionary information on risk perception were analyzed. A pooled multinational experimental study based on a 5 × 2 × 2 factorial design was conducted in nine countries. The first factor refers to whether or not information on different types of precautionary measures was present, the second factor to the framing of the precautionary information, and the third factor to the order in which cell phones and base stations were rated by the study participants. The data analysis on the country level indicates different effects. The main hypothesis that informing about precautionary measures results in increased risk perceptions found only partial support in the data. The effects are weaker, both in terms of the effect size and the frequency of significant effects, across the various precautionary information formats used in the experiment. Nevertheless, our findings do not support the assumption that informing people about implemented precautionary measures will decrease public concerns.     

Resolving conflict over salespeople’s brand adoption in franchised channels of distribution

Many franchise-based retail outlets offer both the franchisor-owned brand and brands of competitors or independent suppliers. As salespeople may influence customers’ brand choices considerably, an important concern for franchisors is how to raise salespeople’s selling preferences for the franchisor-owned brand. However, the channel administration literature suggests that salespeople may not automatically favor the franchisor’s brand over other brand lines. While a large body of research examines franchise–channel relationships, previous investigations have conspicuously overlooked this channel conflict. In proposing a conceptual model grounded in the behavioral sciences, this study analyzes how franchisors can induce salespeople to advocate their brand by fostering the intention to promote the franchisor-owned brand (IFOB) in customer interaction. The results of an empirical field study show that individual brand promotion depends on factors such as salespeople’s identification with the franchisor and their tenure with the organization, as well as on the franchisor’s prestige and administration of the franchise. Moreover, we find that franchisees’ IFOB transfers to salespeople, but only if franchisees display a charismatic leadership style. We discuss these findings in light of extant theory and empirical evidence and derive several managerially relevant implications for the administration of franchised retail channels.