A survey of mental health district structure and effectiveness

A national survey using a mailed questionnaire was undertaken to clarify issues of mental health district governance. CMHC, state hospital and district management and governance staff from 49 identified districts classified their districts on 20 types of decision authority and 14 measures of district effectiveness. Each respondent type thought their districts: (1) dealt with state money issues, seeking regional money, and coordinating/changing programs and services, and (2) effectively enhanced planning capabilities. Service providers did not find planning capabilities to be systematically related to specific decision authorities. CMHC management perceived less district control than district officials and, with state hospital management, perceived less effectiveness. District and CMHC officials see a direct relationship between district control and effectiveness. In a subsample of 11 districts each described by multiple respondent types, no item of authority or effectiveness was rated universally positive by all groups. District management subjectivity and legislative implications are discussed.     

Great River Review

Abstract

It will soon be rare for research-based institutions not to have a digital repository. The main reason for a repository is to maximize the visibility of the institution’s research outputs (provide Open Access), yet few contain a representative proportion of the research produced by their institutions. Repositories form one part of the institution’s Web platform. An explicit, mandatory policy on the use of the repository for collecting outputs is needed in every institution so that the full research record is collected. Once full, a repository is a tool that enables senior management in research institutions to collate and assess research, to market their institution, to facilitate new forms of scholarship, and to enable the tools that will produce new knowledge.     

Deducing simple majorities from approval voting ballot data

An approval voting election allows each voter to vote for as many candidates as he wishes. The winner of such an election is the candidate with the most approval votes. Ballot data aggregated for individual voters tell how many voters voted for each subset of candidates. Given reasonable assumptions about what voters' ballots reveal about their preferences, this report shows what must be true of the ballot data in order to conclude that the electorate has a majority preference for one candidate over another. A simple corollary tells what must be true of the ballot data to conclude that the winner is preferred by a majority of voters to every other candidate. Both hypothetical and reconstructed ballot data from a mayoral election in Boston are used to illustrate the results. It is also shown that the likelihood of being able to draw conclusions about majority candidates tends to increase as voters tend to vote for fewer candidates.     

Don't Be Frightened: It's Just a Backlog of Government Documents Serials Records

ABSTRACT

This article summarizes the presentation by Elisabeth Garner at the 26th annual North Carolina Serials Conference in 2017. Garner described the workflow she developed to reconcile previously cataloged government document serial records with newly updated U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) catalog records from MARCIVE, Inc., through the Cataloging Record Distribution Program (CRDP).     

论亨利·鲁斯对中国抗日战争的报道及其影响

亨利·鲁斯在美国社会浓厚的"孤立主义"氛围中,率先以"时代"公司诸媒体为阵地,连篇累牍地报道中国抗日战争情况。在鲁斯的指导下,"时代"公司诸媒体在报道中国抗战时带有明显的倾向性与目的性。其一是突出报道日军暴行,以唤起美国公众对中国的同情心;其二是着重呼吁美国政府援助中国;其三是竭力树立蒋介石的公众形象。通过如上报道,鲁斯意在说明美国有责任也有义务伸出援助之手,帮助正处在困境中的中国度过难关。鲁斯的所作所为,加深了美国公众对中国和中国抗日战争的认识,为美国决策部门改变"孤立主义"与"重欧轻亚"传统创造了有利的舆论氛围,在一定程度上为美国参加太平洋战争和支援中国抗日奠定了舆论基础。鲁斯如此努力宣传中国,与其生长于中国的身世背景密切相关,但更深层的动因源于其狂热的理想化美国观念和"美国世纪"的思想。     

Kernel estimation in transect sampiing withoyt the shoulder condition

We consider the estiinution of wildlife population density based on line transect data. Nonparametric kernel method is employed, without the usual assumption that the detection curve has a shoulder at distance zero, with the help of a special class of kernels called boundary kernels. Asymptotic distribution results are included. It is pointed out that the boundery kernel of Zhang and Karunamuni (1998) (see also Müller and Wang (1994)) performs better (for asmyptotic mean square error consideration) than that of the boundary kernel of M¨ller (1991). But both of these kernels are clearly superior to the half-nonnal and one-sided Epanechnikov kernel when the shoulder condition fails to hold. In practice, however, for small to moderate sample sizes, caution should be exercised in using bounrlary kernels in that the density estimate might become negative. A Monte Carlo study is also presented, comparing the performance of four kernels applied to detection data, with and without the shoulder condition, Two bundary kernels for deriatives are also included for the point transect case.     

Alternative specifications of the demand for money and their implications for forecasting and policy analysis with large macroeconomic models

The demand for money is an important function in large macroeconomic models because of its central role in monetary policy. The interest rate responsiveness of money demand determines the interest rate changes consistent with the initial change in monetary policy and the subsequent changes on aggregate demand and the price level. This paper uses the DRI macroeconometric model to investigate these issues, finding that the model's predictive power and its estimates of the relative potency of monetary and fiscal policy are dependent upon the specification of the money demand function.     

The use of evaluation models for decision making: Application to the community anti-crime program

Evaluations are typically designed to provide useful information, including measures of program effectiveness. Although this information is intended to be useful, the general literature on evaluations suggests that instances in which evaluations are explicitly used for decision making are rare. This article discusses the use of decision-theoretic evaluation models, and their applicability in practice as well as in principle. A case study is presented from the evaluation of LEAA's Community Anti-Crime Program, in which a decision analysis based on a decision-theoretic evaluation model influenced a programmatic decision which arose during the conduct of the evaluation.