Negotiating. Biases physicians bring to the table

What are some of the obstacles that physicians face as they seek to become more effective at the bargaining table? The author's thesis, based on experience in both the classroom and the front lines of medical practice, is that physicians face a set of systematic "biases" derived from physician training and professional culture that make negotiation especially difficult for them. They outline the biases they have observed, explore some possible explanations, and suggest solutions for physicians who wish to negotiate more effectively.     

Effects of a web-based pre-enrollment alcohol brief motivational intervention on college student retention and alcohol-related violations

Objective: To determine whether completing a pre-enrollment Web-based alcohol brief motivational intervention (BMI) increased student retention and reduced student alcohol-related violations. Participants: Fall 2011 (3,364) and Fall 2012 (3,111) entering cohorts of all first-year students at a midwestern state university. Method: Students completing the brief intervention (BI) were compared to students not completing the BI. Retention was tracked for four years for the 2011 cohort and three years for the 2012 cohort. Campus and community alcohol violations were tracked for two academic years following enrollment. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis and Cox regression were used to test retention survival. Logistic regression was used to test campus and community violations. Results: Students in both cohorts who completed the BI had significantly higher retention and significantly fewer alcohol-related violations than noncompleters. Conclusions: Population-level Web-based BIs help prevent student dropout and decrease alcohol-related violations, with impacts extending multiple years. Web-based BI is an efficacious population-level prevention tool.     

A General Statistical Framework for Multistage Designs

Abstract. The efficiency of observational studies may be increased by applying multistage sampling designs. It is, however, not always transparent how to construct such a design to obtain increased efficiency. We here present a general statistical framework for describing and constructing multistage designs. We also provide tools for efficiency and cost‐efficiency comparisons, to facilitate the choice of sampling scheme. The comparisons are based on Fisher information matrices and the results are presented in graphs, where either efficiency or cost‐adjusted efficiency is plotted against a normalized measure of cost. The former curve resides in the unit square and is analogous to the receiver operating characteristic curve used for testing.     

The planning of a department store

A town or village attracts people from its hinterland to purchase goods by virtue of the amount and variety of goods on offer. Similarly, a department store attracts customers away from cempetitors by means of displays, staff expertise, stock holdings and numerous other parameters. The store is generally free to manipulate these parameters subject to certain restrictions; the manipulation will have a direct affect on the ultimate profitability of the store. This paper describes some current research that is being carried out in conjunction with a department store group. The ultimate aim is to link the corporate planning of the group and each store to detailed socioeconomic data describing the population. Some aspects of the problem have been investigated in depth, some are currently being discussed and some have not been considered at all as yet. The latest position will be reported and hopefully some feedback will be engendered.     

WITHIN U.S. TRADE AND THE LONG SHADOW OF THE AMERICAN SECESSION

Using data from U.S. commodity flow survey, we show that the historical Union–Confederacy border lowers contemporaneous trade between U.S. states by about 13%. The finding is robust over econometric models, survey waves, or aggregation levels. Including contemporaneous controls, such as network or institutional variables, lowers the estimate only slightly. Historical variables, such as slavery, do not explain the effect. Adding U.S. states unaffected by the Civil War, we argue that the friction is not merely reflecting unmeasured North–South differences. Finally, the border effect is larger for differentiated than for homogeneous goods, stressing the potential role for cultural factors and trust. (JEL F15, N72, N92, Z10)     

Activity-based blended learning

As part of the trend towards blended learning, the Open University of Shell International Exploration and Production is shifting from predefined content-based learning to activity-based learning grounded in learners' actual workplace problems. This article acts as a case study by describing key design principles adopted by the organization and also describes how the shift addressed courses that served multinational participants. Data are provided on the learning activities in thirty-seven courses redesigned in 2002 (covering nearly 300 separate learning activities). The article concludes with some comments on work that still needs to be done as well as key implications for practitioners in other organizations.