The sustainability of Egan’s Skilled Helper Model in students’ social work practice

This paper investigates the nature of students’ learning of the Egan Skilled Helper model in enabling them to develop collaborative communication skills which place service-users at the centre of decision making. The paper is a follow-up to an earlier paper which found that the Egan model was helpful to students as a communication and problem management tool and that they had transferred their learning into practice. The current study involves seven students from the first study and examines whether their knowledge and skills from learning the model in year one have been sustained two years later during their third year practice placement. A key finding is that participants were continuing to use most stages of the model (with the exception of challenging skills) with service-users in a variety of settings. Further findings are that the model is still useful in situations where goals are set by social workers rather than by service-users; and that it is the utilisation of role-play when learning the model which most embeds skills. The implications of these findings for skills training are discussed together with suggestions for further focus.     

Foreign aid and domestic taxation: multiple sources,one conclusion

There are influential studies that argue that foreign aid displaces domestic tax revenue when it is given in the form of grants. These claims are based on data that are deeply problematic: several different sources are amalgamated into one dataset, with no apparent checks on compatibility. In this article, a variety of econometric strategies are used to overcome these issues of data quality. The resulting weight of evidence points to a modest but positive effect on the part of foreign aid generally on domestic tax revenue. Fears over a negative effect for aid grants appear unwarranted, and are accounted for by the inappropriate use of data or endogeneity issues.     

我国城市休闲化发展质量的评价研究

城市休闲化是当代城市发展中的一个新课题。本文结合我国城市休闲化发展的实际状况,通过构建由公共基础、消费能力、产业能力和特色资源等4方面指标组成的城市休闲化质量测评体系,对我国27个省会城市、4个直辖市和5个计划单列市的发展质量进行比较全面和客观的质量测度与数据分析。研究表明,我国城市休闲化质量在整体上处于较低的发展程度。     

关于“中国道路”争论中的两个问题

近年来,随着中国经济的持续快速发展,关于中国模式、中国道路的问题引起了人们的广泛注意,也存在着巨大的分歧和争论。其实,讨论中国道路,需要有一种世界历史的大视野,需要从中华民族走向现代化的历史大尺度来审视。基于这种大视野和大尺度,有利于对我们所取得的成绩,所走过的曲折道路、所处的历史阶段、所面临的诸多难题及其成因,进行冷静的反思和理性的考察,形成清醒的认识和科学的定位,从而能够合理地科学地谋划中国的未来发展。     

Modeling the impact of supra-structural network nodes: The case of anonymous syringe sharing and HIV among people who inject drugs

Networks are well understood as crucial to the diffusion of HIV among injection drug users (IDUs), but quasi-anonymous risk nodes - such as shooting galleries - resist measurement and incorporation into empirical analyses of disease diffusion. Drawing on network data from 767 IDUs in Bushwick, Brooklyn, we illustrate the use of calibrated agent-based models (CABMs) to account for network structure, injection practices, and quasi-anonymous transmission in shooting galleries. Results confirm the importance of network structure and actor heterogeneity to the magnitude and speed of HIV transmission. Models further demonstrate that quasi-anonymous injections in shooting galleries increase the speed of HIV diffusion across the whole network and have the greatest impact on HIV seroconversion levels for IDUs at the network periphery. Shooting galleries are shown to be transmission hubs that operate independently of traceable structural ties, linking otherwise unconnected network components. CABMs potentially increase understandings of HIV diffusion dynamics by infusing computer simulations with empirical data.     

The source of Black-White inequality in early language acquisition: Evidence from Early Head Start

I compare language learning trajectories for Black and White children over the first 3 years of life using data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation study (EHSRE) in order to determine the timing and source of divergence in early language skill. Results indicate that that while controlling for racial differences in family background and a measure of the home language environment cannot entirely account for disparities in language acquisition, interactions between age, race and maternal education, and between race and a time-varying measure of the home language environment play a significant role. I show that returns to parental education and the home language environment, in terms of language learning, are higher for White children than their Black peers. Specification checks confirm that these results are robust to alternate definitions of child language and the home language environment, and that no interactions between race, age and any of the other covariates are significant. I discuss possible explanations for these race specific education gradients, including measurement error and test bias. In addition, I address relevant empirical issues in estimating language growth with respect to linguistic inputs and the home language environment.     

我国财政赤字和货币供应量联动性的实证模型分析

近期以来国际金融危机的加深,进一步揭示了一国财政赤字与宏观经济之间的深刻关联。进入新世纪以来,我国运用财政赤字的手段和方法不断改进,对于我们应对国际金融市场的动荡、促进内需和经济增长起到了很大作用。但同时,财政赤字与货币发行量之间不可调和的正向关系,也给我国经济体系带来了一定的隐患。因此,通过理论梳理与实证分析来理清赤字规模和货币供应量之间的关系,有助于我们今后宏观经济管理手段和金融市场监管能力的提升。     

对“公司＋农户”组织模式的反思

本文对当前我国“公司＋农户”组织模式困境作了较为深入的剖析。一是对公司和农户签订的契约环境进行分析,找出“公司＋农户”组织困境产生的根源。二是对履约过程中的障碍进行分析,找出“公司＋农户”组织运行的困境。结合我国实际提出了“公司＋农户”组织模式改进的建议：通过提高农户的组织化程度,构建有效的治理结构,摆脱集体行动逻辑的困境;扩大农户生产规模,提高自我履约能力;双方建立起真正的利益共享机制;政府体制进行改进和互补性制度的安排。     

MAP segmentation in Bayesian hidden Markov models: a case study

We consider the problem of estimating the maximum posterior probability (MAP) state sequence for a finite state and finite emission alphabet hidden Markov model (HMM) in the Bayesian setup, where both emission and transition matrices have Dirichlet priors. We study a training set consisting of thousands of protein alignment pairs. The training data is used to set the prior hyperparameters for Bayesian MAP segmentation. Since the Viterbi algorithm is not applicable any more, there is no simple procedure to find the MAP path, and several iterative algorithms are considered and compared. The main goal of the paper is to test the Bayesian setup against the frequentist one, where the parameters of HMM are estimated using the training data.