The certainty of judgments in health evaluations

Most evaluators seem to presume that all evaluative studies should result in conclusive evidence. Often, however, less than conclusive evidence may not only suffice, but be the only real alternative under conditions of limited evaluation resources. Three levels of evidence common to evaluation studies are discussed: suggestive evidence, preponderant evidence, and conclusive evidence. Ten factors are also presented which can be used to determine the level of certainty appropriate for a given evaluation study. Consideration of these factors enables the evaluator to specify when less than conclusive evidence is acceptable.     

Reaching children at risk: a model for training child welfare specialists

An innovative model for the training of social welfare students in the special skills essential in child welfare work is predicated upon a classification system of children at risk and a continuum of services.     

Location of community-based treatment centers

Neighborhood opposition to community-based treatment centers (CBTCs) has prompted fears that these centers will become concentrated in inner city, "transitional neighborhoods." These neighborhoods are thought to lack the willingness and/or resources to oppose CBTCs. This paper examines the distribution of CBTCs in a northern metropolitan county. The findings suggests that the fears of "ghettoization" may be real only for certain types of centers. Most centers were located in higher-status city and suburban neighborhoods. However, these centers were physically or visually isolated from the surrounding housing, making them less likely to attract attention and therefore less likely to arouse neighborhood opposition.     

Some factors related to contraceptive behavior among Wind River Shoshone and Arapahoe females

During the summer of 1972 in-depth interviews were conducted with 96 Shoshone and Arapahoe Indian women living on the Wind River Reservation in Central Wyoming. All were aged 15-49 and were users of the reservation health service. It was found the women fell into 4 groups: current contraceptive users, 42.7%; pregnant or seeking to become pregnant, 10.4%; infertile due to menopause or sterilization, 18.8%; and fertile never-users, 28.1%. The contraceptive users tended to be older, married, and have as many children as they want. The fertile never-users tended to be in their teens and generally unmarried. When asked why they did not use contraception their answer was 'because I am not married.' It is suggested that general education on contraception be provided the younger women so that when they achieve desired family size they will be informed as to family planning methods. It was found that religious belief against contraception was important to the young never-users, but not to the women who had completed their families. In fact, 73% of the users said their religion, which most identified as Roman Catholicism, had no influence on their contraceptive use while 27% said they were aware of church disapproval but used contraception anyway.     

An analysis of simple counting methods for ordering incomplete ordinal data

Measurement in the social sciences often involves an attempt to completely order a set of entities on the basis of an underlying attribute. However, limitations of the measurement process often prevent complete empirical determination of the desired ordering. Nevertheless, the ordinal data obtained from the measurement process can be used in attempting to recover or construct more of the underlying order than is provided by the data. Previous research (Fishburn and Gehrlein, 1974a) has shown that a simple one-stage construction method, referred to as the cardinal rule, is fairly effective in correctly identifying ordered pairs in the underlying linear order that are not identified by the measurement process. The present paper re-examines the cardinal rule from the perspective of construction methods based on simple counting measures derived from the data, and argues that it is the best one-stage method in this class when a natural monotonicity assumption holds for the measurement process. The paper then examines two-stage construction rules that are based on the cardinal rule and the simple counting measures. It is shown that one of the two-stage rules gives better overall results than does the cardinal rule by itself.     

Strategic planning in European multinationals

Recent environmental changes have brought about modifications in the strategic planning practices of multinational businesses. These modifications in the strategic planning practices were studied through the medium of in-depth interviews with planners in a number of concerns. Of the several changes observed, predominant are the shortening of time horizons and the increase in flexibility. Equally noteworthy is the surprising lack of change in the social concern of a number of the organizations. This article summarizes a study of the effects of environmental changes on multinational-business planning.     

Involving constituents in agency priority setting: a case study

Many government agencies have "constituents" who believe the agencies should hear and consider their needs and desires in establishing program priorities. This article describes how one involves interested constituents (consumers, industry, medical professionals, and state organizations) in the agency's annual priority-setting process. This participation has produced a number of beneficial results-some expected and some unexpected.