Institutional Ethnography and Experience as Data

Experience, as concept, is contested among feminists as to its epistemological status, thus its usefulness in knowledge claims. Institutional ethnography (Smith 1987) is a feminist methodology that nonetheless relies fundamentally on people's experience. Not as Truth, nor the object of inquiry, but as thepoint d'appui for sociological inquiry. This article offers a demonstration of institutional enthnography using observational and interview data that show experience as methodologically central to a trustworthy analysis. A moment in the work lives of nursing assistants in a long-term care setting is captured by a participant observer. The analysis produces two lines of argument. One is methodological; it is argued that nursing assistants' experiences are an entry into the social relations of the setting that, when mapped and disclosed, make those experiences understandable in terms of the ruling arrangements permeating both the organization and their own experiences. The other argument is substantive; the inquiry uncovers how a quality improvement' strategy in a long term care hospital in Canada is reorganizing caregivers' values and practices toward a market orientation in which care appears to be compromised. Use of experience as data in this approach holds the analysis accountable to everyday/everynight actualities in a lived world.     

Bootstrapping Malmquist Indices for Danish Seiners in the North Sea and Skagerrak

In connection with assessing how an ongoing development in fisheries management may change fishing activity, evaluation of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) change over a period, including efficiency, scale and technology changes, is an important tool. The Malmquist index, based on distance functions evaluated with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), is often employed to estimate TFP changes. DEA is generally gaining attention for evaluating efficiency and capacity in fisheries. One main criticism of DEA is that it does not have any statistical foundation, i.e. that it is not possible to make inference about DEA scores or related parameters. The bootstrap method for estimating confidence intervals of deterministic parameters can however be applied to estimate confidence intervals for DEA scores. This method is applied in the present paper for assessing TFP changes between 1987 and 1999 for the fleet of Danish seiners operating in the North Sea and the Skagerrak.     

A Tiered Framework for Risk‐Relevant Characterization and Ranking of Chemical Exposures: Applications to the National Children's Study (NCS)

A challenge for large‐scale environmental health investigations such as the National Children's Study (NCS), is characterizing exposures to multiple, co‐occurring chemical agents with varying spatiotemporal concentrations and consequences modulated by biochemical, physiological, behavioral, socioeconomic, and environmental factors. Such investigations can benefit from systematic retrieval, analysis, and integration of diverse extant information on both contaminant patterns and exposure‐relevant factors. This requires development, evaluation, and deployment of informatics methods that support flexible access and analysis of multiattribute data across multiple spatiotemporal scales. A new “Tiered Exposure Ranking” (TiER) framework, developed to support various aspects of risk‐relevant exposure characterization, is described here, with examples demonstrating its application to the NCS. TiER utilizes advances in informatics computational methods, extant database content and availability, and integrative environmental/exposure/biological modeling to support both “discovery‐driven” and “hypothesis‐driven” analyses. “Tier 1” applications focus on “exposomic” pattern recognition for extracting information from multidimensional data sets, whereas second and higher tier applications utilize mechanistic models to develop risk‐relevant exposure metrics for populations and individuals. In this article, “tier 1” applications of TiER explore identification of potentially causative associations among risk factors, for prioritizing further studies, by considering publicly available demographic/socioeconomic, behavioral, and environmental data in relation to two health endpoints (preterm birth and low birth weight). A “tier 2” application develops estimates of pollutant mixture inhalation exposure indices for NCS counties, formulated to support risk characterization for these endpoints. Applications of TiER demonstrate the feasibility of developing risk‐relevant exposure characterizations for pollutants using extant environmental and demographic/socioeconomic data.     

影响我国都市圈经济总量的因素分析——基于12大都市圈的面板数据

借助当前我国发展较成熟的12个都市圈的相关数据，通过建立多元回归模型，考察分析都市圈经济发展背后的影响因素，研究表明：都市圈中心城市辐射力、都市圈联系力和设施水平等因素对经济发展较快的都市圈经济总量有显著影响；经济发展较慢的都市圈的经济总量则主要受到都市圈消费能力和教育水平的影响，还受到一些都市圈软实力因素的影响。     

Bringing Japanese Continuous Improvement Approaches to U.S. Manufacturing: The Roles of Process Orientation and Communications*

Continuous improvement (CI) has played a key role in Japan's quality management. U.S. companies have begun to adopt CI in recent years. This paper studies the implementation of CI in seven U.S. manufacturing companies. We view values as the core concept of culture that impacts CI effectiveness. Using both qualitative and quantitative data with a sample of seven companies, we observe empirically a relationship between process-oriented values and CI effectiveness. We also find that communications involving workers is strongly associated with CI effectiveness. Finally, we find an association between process orientation and communication frequency, and argue that communications act as an intervening variable between process orientation and effectiveness.     

关于渭河流域实施排污权交易制度的立法建议

从相关立法看,对渭河流域水污染的治理主要采取了传统的行政方式。为提高渭河水污染治理效率,促进陕西经济社会的可持续发展,有必要借鉴美国和我国上海、江苏等地比较成熟的做法,采用市场的方法即排污权交易来治理渭河流域水污染,这有利于促进企业技术革新,降低整个社会的治理成本,比单纯的行政方法更为迅速和有效。因此,应进行地方立法,规定可交易污染物的范围、排污权的初始分配方式、交易的程序等,以规范排污权交易市场;同时,确定渭河的环境容量总量以确定可供分配的指标,构建信息平台以降低交易费用及保障公民的知情权。     

要素错配对中国粮食全要素生产率的影响

基于超越对数生产函数的随机前沿模型对2000-2017年中国水稻、小麦和玉米等三类粮食作物TFP进行测算,并在构建要素错配指数的基础上,对单位规模土地上投入的劳动、机械、化肥和种子等4种要素错配对粮食作物实际TFP增长率的影响进行时空差异分析。研究结果显示,2000-2017年粮食作物的实际TFP增长率平均为2.24%,有效TFP增长率约为0.73%;狭义技术进步对TFP增长的拉动作用在减弱,要素配置效率的优化对TFP的提升作用在增强;劳动投入过度比较突出,是引发粮食生产要素配置不优的主要原因;从空间区域来看,东部地区要素错配程度相对较低,西部地区相对较高;中部地区粮食作物的实际TFP增长率对要素错配的敏感度要强于东部和西部地区。     

基于调研数据的总和生育率发展趋势及影响因素分析——来自湖北鄂州、黄石、仙桃的调查数据

文章基于5490份有效问卷的调查数据对湖北省总和生育率（TFR）进行分析。结论表明,自1985年以来年龄别生育率下降主要原因是计生政策严格控制生育数量,而非生育行为的推迟。TFR呈现先快速下降后缓慢上升的趋势,其变化与高生育水平育龄妇女占比无关。与政策生育率变化有关。通过对湖北省总出生人数进行估算和分析,结论表明1985—2008年总和生育率对总出生人数的影响程度要大于高生育水平育龄妇女占比的影响;外推预测表明2009～2014年出生人数趋势稳定,2015年以后呈下降趋势。利用Logit模型对实际生育水平的影响因素进行分析,发现有显著影响的因素为：受访者文化程度、户口性质、出生年代、工作状态、丈夫工作状态、放宽的计生政策和奖励少生的计生政策。     

河南经济增长的统计分析

以河南省1978年以来历年的生产总值为研究对象,从中原崛起的背景出发,简要说明了河南经济发展的现状及特点,分析了河南省生产总值的构成情况,通过与东部沿海发达省份进行比较,发现问题,针对分析出来的结果和存在的问题,找出原因并提出了推动河南经济增长的一些对策及建议。     

Bayesian inference for the parameters of Weibull distribution under progressive Type-I interval censored data with beta-binomial removals

This article considers the problem of estimating the parameters of Weibull distribution under progressive Type-I interval censoring scheme with beta-binomial removals. Classical as well as the Bayesian procedures for the estimation of unknown model parameters have been developed. The Bayes estimators are obtained under SELF and GELF using MCMC technique. The performance of the estimators, has been discussed in terms of their MSEs. Further, expression for the expected number of total failures has been obtained. A real dataset of the survival times for patients with plasma cell myeloma is used to illustrate the suitability of the proposed methodology.