Early indicators of child abuse and neglect: a multi‐professional Delphi study

Through the application of the Delphi technique, this study draws on the expertise of British child protection academics and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines in seeking to develop a consensus opinion on possible early indicators of child abuse and neglect. The search for early indicators is described in the context of a secondary preventative approach to the problem of child maltreatment. A very tentative conclusion arising from the study is that the early indicators of child abuse and neglect that achieved consensus of agreement may help in diagnosing child abuse and neglect at an earlier stage, although they are not necessarily diagnostic. Alternative explanations, differential diagnoses and information‐gathering are paramount, as is a willingness and ability to act on concerns. Although great caution is urged, it is suggested that the findings from the study are credible and of interest to those who are working towards more timely recognition and referral of abused and neglected children. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

可持续发展条件下国际竞争力比较

随着经济全球化的发展,国与国之间的关系日益密切,在企业、产业、区域、国家等各个层面上,竞争力却日趋激烈。竞争力的话题在宏观、中观和微观领域内被广泛提及并讨论。本文从国际竞争力的定义、国际竞争力背后的理论模型以及国际竞争力的评估三个角度出发,对当前国际竞争力进行分析,发现以下现象:(1)并没有统一、清晰的国际竞争力概念;(2)国际竞争力的评估往往是为了迎合政治上的需求;(3)不同的国际竞争力理论模型从不同的角度对国际竞争力进行解释说明;(4)国际竞争力的评估是一个动态的发展过程。     

煤炭企业节能减排综合评价指标体系研究简

煤炭行业是我国节能减排重点监测行业之一。为科学监测煤炭企业节能减排工作效果,引导煤炭企业更加深入扎实推进节能减排工作,应从定性和定量两个方面构建煤炭企业节能减排综合评价指标体系,并在定量评价指标体系中引入工序耗能评价指标,明确综合评价指标指数计算的方法并确定各级指标的权数。按照煤炭企业节能减排综合评价指标体系构建的原则,定量评价指标划分为三个层次,可筛选出38个具体指标;定性评价指标则划分为四大类,可筛选出21个具体指标。     

现金流量预警指标视角下的BP神经网络模型实证检验研究——来自2007—2012年沪深两市ST公司的数据分析

文章针对现金流量指标的国内外研究动态,从财务危机预警角度构建现金流量预警指标体系;并选取2007年-2012年沪、深两市A股79家ST公司及79家非ST公司作为训练样本,用样本公司被ST前1年、2年、3年的数据对指标进行筛选,将BP神经网络模型预警结果与样本的实际结果进行比较。研究结果表明：BP神经网络模型t-1年、t-2年、t-3年的预测精度依次下降,但t-3年财务预警模型对训练样本的预测精度仍能达到79．22％,对检验样本的预测精度也能达到78％。     

Developing a National Index of Subjective Wellbeing: The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index

The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index has beendesigned as a new barometer of Australians'satisfaction with their lives, and life inAustralia. It is based on, and develops, thetheoretical model of subjective wellbeinghomeostasis. The Index comprises two sub-scalesof Personal and National Wellbeing. Data werecollected through a nationally representativesample of 2,000 people in April/May 2001.Factor analysis confirmed the integrity of thetwo sub-scales and, confirming empiricalexpectation, the average level of lifesatisfaction was 75.5 percent of the scalemaximum score. Group comparisons revealed thatall age groups maintained their Personal Indexscore within the normal range. In addition,people in country areas were more satisfiedwith their personal lives than city-dwellers,but less satisfied about the nationalsituation, and people who had recentlyexperienced a strong positive event evidenced arise in wellbeing, whereas those who hadexperienced a strong negative event evidencedwellbeing in the low-normal range. It is arguedthat these data generally support homeostatictheory. However, an unusual result was thatfemales were more satisfied with their ownlives than males. A tentative argument isadvanced that this may represent aconstitutional difference. It is concluded thatthe Australian Unity Wellbeing Index haspotential as a valid, reliable and sensitiveinstrument to monitor national wellbeing.     

Longitudinal indicators of the social context of families: beyond the snapshot

Longitudinal indicators are measures of an individual or family behavior, interaction, attitude, or value that are assessed consistently or comparably across multiple points in time and cumulated over time. Examples include the percentage of time a family lived in poverty or the proportion of childhood a person lived in a single-parent family. Longitudinal indicators reflect exposure not at a “snapshot” moment but over the lifecourse and may also be more reliable assessments of the family environment or experience. We highlight potential longitudinal indicators and discuss methodological issues.     

Using Child and Family Indicators to Influence Communities and Policy in Los Angeles County

This article presents a case study on the use of social indicators to guide community action and influence policy decisions around children and families in Los Angeles County California. Since the early 1990s, the Children's Planning Council has incorporated strategic use of data in all of its planning and community organizing. The Council has developed a unique set of strategies for using social indicators, in combination with large-scale organizing, to convene stakeholders, change perceptions and influence decison-making. The article describes the Council, the theoretical framework that guides its approach to data, key issues that have guided its information strategies, and the challenges that still lie ahead.     

Selecting Indicators for Assessing Community Sustainable Resilience

Communities are complex systems subject to a variety of hazards that can result in significant disruption to critical functions. Community resilience assessment is rapidly gaining popularity as a means to help communities better prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruption. Sustainable resilience, a recently developed concept, requires communities to assess system‐wide capability to maintain desired performance levels while simultaneously evaluating impacts to resilience due to changes in hazards and vulnerability over extended periods of time. To enable assessment of community sustainable resilience, we review current literature, consolidate available indicators and metrics, and develop a classification scheme and organizational structure to aid in identification, selection, and application of indicators within a dynamic assessment framework. A nonduplicative set of community sustainable resilience indicators and metrics is provided that can be tailored to a community's needs, thereby enhancing the ability to operationalize the assessment process.     

Building up adjusted indicators of students’ evaluation of university courses using generalized item response models

This article advances a proposal for building up adjusted composite indicators of the quality of university courses from students’ assessments. The flexible framework of Generalized Item Response Models is adopted here for controlling the sources of heterogeneity in the data structure that make evaluations across courses not directly comparable. Specifically, it allows us to: jointly model students’ ratings to the set of items which define the quality of university courses; explicitly consider the dimensionality of the items composing the evaluation form; evaluate and remove the effect of potential confounding factors which may affect students’ evaluation; model the intra-cluster variability at course level. The approach simultaneously deals with: (i) multilevel data structure; (ii) multidimensional latent trait; (iii) personal explanatory latent regression models. The paper pays attention to the potential of such a flexible approach in the analysis of students evaluation of university courses in order to explore both how the quality of the different aspects (teaching, management, etc.) is perceived by students and how to make meaningful comparisons across them on the basis of adjusted indicators.     

Component Criticality in Failure Cascade Processes of Network Systems

In this work, specific indicators are used to characterize the criticality of components in a network system with respect to their contribution to failure cascade processes. A realistic‐size network is considered as reference case study. Three different models of cascading failures are analyzed, differing both on the failure load distribution logic and on the cascade triggering event. The criticality indicators are compared to classical measures of topological centrality to identify the one most characteristic of the cascade processes considered.