Smoking during pregnancy,stigma and secrets: Visual methods exploration in the UK

BackgroundMoral judgements are commonly directed towards mothers through reference to health behaviour in pregnancy, and working-class mothers are particularly subject to this moral gaze.AimTo gain an in-depth understanding of the health issues affecting 10 low income pregnant women from deprived areas of south Wales, UK.MethodsParticipants completed visual activities (timelines, collaging or thought bubbles and dyad sandboxing) prior to each interview. Participants’ visual representations were used in place of a topic guide, to direct the interview. Guided by feminist principles, 28 interviews were completed with 10 women. Data were analysed thematically.FindingsSmoking was discussed at length during interviews, and this paper focuses on this issue alone. Five of the participants had smoked during pregnancy. Negative reactions were directed towards pregnant women who smoked in public, resulting in maternal smoking being undertaken in private. Participants also reported awkward relationships with midwives and other health professionals, including receipt of public health advice in a judgemental tone.DiscussionSmoking during pregnancy is a particularly demonised and stigmatised activity. This stigma is not always related to the level of risk to the foetus, and instead can be seen as a moral judgement about women. We urgently need to move from individualised neo-liberal discourses about the failure of individual smokers, to a more socio-ecological view which avoids victim blaming.ConclusionStigma from friends, family, strangers and health professionals may lead to hidden smoking. This is a barrier to women obtaining evidence based stop smoking support.     

Evaluation of bank branch growth potential using data envelopment analysis

Banks occasionally employ frontier efficiency analyses to objectively identify best practices within their organizations. Amongst such methods, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was found to be one of the leading approaches. DEA has been successfully applied in many bank branch performance evaluations using traditional intermediation, profitability and production approaches. However, there has been little focus on assessing the growth potential of individual branches.This research presents five models that examine three perspectives of branch growth. Each model was applied to the branch network of one of Canada׳s top five banks to gauge the growth potential of individual branches and to provide tailored improvement recommendations. Using various analysis methodologies, the results of each model were examined and their functionality assessed.     

黄国雄教授商品流通理论研究回顾

黄国雄教授是中国现代商品流通理论的奠基人.文章通过文献梳理和实际观察,对黄国雄教授的商品流通理论研究进行了回顾.黄国雄教授的商品流通理论主要包括三个方面:在内容方面,聚焦于商品流通理论的研究;在方法方面,多使用经验主义范式;在主要贡献方面,奠定了现代商学理论的根基,具体包括提出了“商业创造价值论”“流通产业基础论”和“商道即人道论”等三大理论,以及建立了现代商学的学科体系.     

基于修正UTAUT模型的农信社手机银行使用行为研究——以福建省农户调查数据为例

基于UTAUT模型,引入感知风险、替代软件等2个变量进行修正,构建农信社手机银行使用行为影响因素研究模型,并运用结构方程模型、Bootstrap中介检验、多群组分析等方法对福建省农户调查数据进行实证分析。研究发现:(1)感知易用性显著正向影响农信社手机银行使用意愿;感知风险和替代软件显著负向影响农信社手机银行使用意愿;社会影响对农信社手机银行使用意愿影响不显著。(2)便利条件和使用意愿显著正向影响农信社手机银行使用行为;农信社手机银行使用行为影响因素由大到小依次为便利条件、替代软件、感知风险、感知易用性。(3)教育在感知易用性对农信社手机银行使用意愿影响中具有调节作用。据此提出,应进一步增强操作的便利性以优化业务办理效率,增强信息的安全性以降低软件使用风险,增强软件的特色性以降低软件可替代性,增强软件的易用性以优化便捷使用体验,从而优化农村金融服务供给,助推农村经济发展。     

Promoting sustainable development through civil society: A case study of the EU’s NSA/LA thematic programme in Kyrgyzstan

The article focuses on the contribution of the European Union (EU) in promoting sustainable development through the involvement of civil society in partner countries. More specifically, it analyses the main features and outcomes of the projects implemented by civil society organizations (CSOs) in Kyrgyzstan under the EU thematic programme Non‐State Actors and Local Authorities in Development (NSA/LA). Despite its importance—this is the only EU programme providing direct support to non‐state actors and local authorities engaged in poverty reduction—to date, there has been very little research on the functioning of this instrument on the ground. This article seeks to fill this gap in the literature by examining the EU’s contribution to sustainable development through a case study on Kyrgyzstan. The study is based on primary data: 10 semi‐structured interviews conducted with the EU‐funded organizations implementing the NSA/LA programme. The NSA/LA projects were analysed by considering two major fields of engagement of non‐state actors in the development process: as service providers and as advocates (Banks & Hulme, 2012). Overall, the organizations awarded EU support were not only focused on fulfilling short‐term needs but also sought to introduce new ways of dealing with poverty and inequality, positioning themselves between the “Big‐D” and the “little‐d” approaches to development (Bebbington, Hickey, & Mitlin, 2008). Nonetheless, the EU‐funded projects were too limited and fragmented to be able to sustain long‐term structural change. Therefore, the EU should place new emphasis on creating synergies between new and old structures at the grassroots level and establishing mechanisms and bodies that could merge and co‐ordinate their efforts. In addition, the calls for proposals could highlight the need to share the lessons learnt by “obliging” the beneficiaries to act as multipliers and to pass on their positive experience to neighbouring communities. Finally, the EU could stimulate the funded organizations to experiment with innovative mechanisms of involvement in the policy‐making process, by making this aspect a mandatory requirement of the projects implemented with its support.     

Self-exciting threshold models for time series of counts with a finite range

In this article, an integer-valued self-exciting threshold model with a finite range based on the binomial INARCH(1) model is proposed. Important stochastic properties are derived, and approaches for parameter estimation are discussed. A real-data example about the regional spread of public drunkenness in Pittsburgh demonstrates the applicability of the new model in comparison to existing models. Feasible modifications of the model are presented, which are designed to handle special features such as zero-inflation.     

Multiple imputation for missing edge data: A predictive evaluation method with application to Add Health

Recent developments have made model-based imputation of network data feasible in principle, but the extant literature provides few practical examples of its use. In this paper, we consider 14 schools from the widely used In-School Survey of Add Health (Harris et al., 2009), applying an ERGM-based estimation and simulation approach to impute the network missing data for each school. Add Health's complex study design leads to multiple types of missingness, and we introduce practical techniques for handing each. We also develop a cross-validation based method – Held-Out Predictive Evaluation (HOPE) – for assessing this approach. Our results suggest that ERGM-based imputation of edge variables is a viable approach to the analysis of complex studies such as Add Health, provided that care is used in understanding and accounting for the study design.     

Campylobacter QMRA: A Bayesian Estimation of Prevalence and Concentration in Retail Foods Under Clustering and Heavy Censoring

A Bayesian statistical temporal‐prevalence‐concentration model (TPCM) was built to assess the prevalence and concentration of pathogenic campylobacter species in batches of fresh chicken and turkey meat at retail. The data set was collected from Finnish grocery stores in all the seasons of the year. Observations at low concentration levels are often censored due to the limit of determination of the microbiological methods. This model utilized the potential of Bayesian methods to borrow strength from related samples in order to perform under heavy censoring. In this extreme case the majority of the observed batch‐specific concentrations was below the limit of determination. The hierarchical structure was included in the model in order to take into account the within‐batch and between‐batch variability, which may have a significant impact on the sample outcome depending on the sampling plan. Temporal changes in the prevalence of campylobacter were modeled using a Markovian time series. The proposed model is adaptable for other pathogens if the same type of data set is available. The computation of the model was performed using OpenBUGS software.     

Load-Oriented Order Release (LOOR) revisited: bringing it back to the state of the art

In the workload control literature, the Load-Oriented Order Release (LOOR) approach has been neglected since its robustness was questioned at the end of the 1990s. This paper revisits LOOR and evaluates whether its performance can be improved in two ways. First, an intermediate pull release mechanism is added to avoid starvation between periodic release events. This mechanism was recently shown to be effective at improving the performance of a state-of-the-art release method known as LUMS COR. Second, an integer linear programming model is used to manage the trade-off between the timing and load balancing functions of order release. The two refinements are assessed using simulations of different shop configurations, which allow us to evaluate robustness. Results demonstrate that the refinements contribute to improving the performance of LOOR such that it can even outperform LUMS COR. Perhaps counter-intuitively, putting more emphasis on load balancing than on the urgency of individual orders is shown to lead to a lower percentage of tardy orders. Overall, the improvements mean that concerns about LOOR’s robustness are no longer valid – it now appears suitable for a wide range of shops found in practice.     

浅议世界女子高校发展之路——从WEW教师论坛谈起

在崭新的世纪,世界女子高校将有何发展?世界妇女教育组织(WEW)的成立与2011年教师论坛的召开让我们认识到世界女子高校在发展中存在的问题,在坚定了发展女子高校信念的同时,对中国的女子高校亦有所启示。