An individual measure of relative survival

Summary.  Relative survival techniques are used to compare survival experience in a study cohort with that expected if background population rates apply. The techniques are especially useful when cause-specific death information is not accurate or not available as they provide a measure of excess mortality in a group of patients with a certain disease. Whereas these methods are based on group comparisons, we present here a transformation approach which instead gives for each individual an outcome measure relative to the appropriate background population. The new outcome measure is easily interpreted and can be analysed by using standard survival analysis techniques. It provides additional information on relative survival and gives new options in regression analysis. For example, one can estimate the proportion of patients who survived longer than a given percentile of the respective general population or compare survival experience of individuals while accounting for the population differences. The regression models for the new outcome measure are different from existing models, thus providing new possibilities in analysing relative survival data. One distinctive feature of our approach is that we adjust for expected survival before modelling. The paper is motivated by a study into the survival of patients after acute myocardial infarction.     

THE AURA OF "HIGH TECH" IN A WORLD OF MESSY PRACTICE

This study employs interlocking analytical devices from the perspectives of several disciplines to explore members' meanings through definitions of "high technology" given by workers in design engineering. The comparative analysis employs concepts from art history, sociology of culture, anthropology and science studies to explore the appeal of "high technology" in comparison with the aura of original artworks and the status accrued by symbolic tools. Additionally, the role standardization has played in the development of engineering as a profession is explored in historical context as are the recurring themes of speed and "the new." The findings reveal that how engineers use new technologies in the world of messy practice and their conceptual framework regarding so-called "high technology" do not map well onto one another. The study illustrates the perspective of science and technology studies that views all technology as socially shaped and society shaping, its construction accomplished through messy patched-up practices rather than clean, linear paths or perfect techniques.     

Reflective Supervision for Child Protection Practice – Reaching Beneath the Surface

This paper describes a model of reflective supervision for child protection practice that is informed by psychoanalytic theory. Eileen Munro promotes the idea of depth in practice, referring to the skills and knowledge required to undertake the work. Her reports highlight the importance of supervision to provide a thinking space for practitioners where reflection can take place. This paper will explore the importance of supervision in more depth and describe how psychoanalytic ideas can help us understand the complexities of our work with families, anchoring us to a solid theoretical base and helping to make sense of the maelstrom of feelings that are stirred in us as well as in our colleagues and clients.     

The Distribution of Returns to Education for People with Disabilities

This article takes a first look at the distribution of returns to education for people with disabilities, a particularly disadvantaged group whose labor market performances have not been well studied or documented. Using a nonparametric approach, we uncover significant heterogeneity in the returns to education for these workers, which is drastically masked by conventional parametric methods. Based on these estimates, we construct the Sharpe ratio of human capital investment (taking into account its substantial risk), and our results corroborate the claimed importance of human capital in improving these workers’ wages. Our stochastic dominance tests show that the returns to education for workers with disabilities, as a group, may have been affected more adversely in the most recent recession, relative to their non-disabled counterparts.     

The cost of children. Parts II and III

In this paper the author estimates the compensating variation of income which will be necessary to keep the standard of living of a family constant when a child is born to the family. Various methods of estimation are tried, and an attempt is made to calculate the cost of a child in 1948, after allowances have been made for services provided by the government.     

Validation of the Australian Midwifery Standards Assessment Tool (AMSAT): A tool to assess midwifery competence

Background

There is no current validated clinical assessment tool to measure the attainment of midwifery student competence in the midwifery practice setting. The lack of a valid assessment tool has led to a proliferation of tools and inconsistency in assessment of, and feedback on student learning.

The Modern Mystique: Institutional Mediation of Hegemonic Motherhood

This study examines the means by which privileged mothers comply to the dominant expectations of intensive mothering. As women struggle with the complicated, and often contradictory, experience of meeting the demands of the dominant ideology, we examine the mediating role of an institution, in this case the most popular maternal support organization in the United States—Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS). Organizations such as MOPS create an ideal cultural site for reinforcing ideologies that promulgate unattainable standards of perfection. Data were collected from observations of two MOPS groups, in‐depth interviews, and ethnographic content analysis of organizational materials. This dominant organization supports mothers by discouraging them from questioning the expectations of intensive mothering or considering alternative methods of parenting, which reinforces intensive mothering as the gold standard of parenting.