Everybody In? The experience of disabled students in further education

The authors report on a study of student attitudes towards disabled students in three colleges of further education. They found that many non-disabled students were not aware of the various issues facing disabled students at the colleges. Social contact between disabled and non-disabled students was not extensive, although those who had attended school with disabled pupils were more likely to have friendships with disabled students at college. Whilst non-disabled students were strongly supportive of inclusive education in principle, many saw inclusion in the mainstream as conditional on the particular impairment of an individual. Disabled and non-disabled students supported the view that early social and educational contact results in greater mutual understanding, and is of benefit to all students.     

The Samaritan Concept of Befriending

Summary This paper considers the view that the Samaritan concept ofbefriending constitutes a debasement of our traditional notionof friendship. An analysis of the main features of friendshipis attempted and this analysis is then used as a framework forassessing the nature of befriending     

Research Note: The Social Behaviour of Injecting Drug Users

Correspondence to Professor J. G. Barber, School of Social Work, Newnham Drive, Newnham, P.O. Box 1214, Launceston, Tesmania 7250, Australia. Summary As part of a larger interview schedule conducted with 1245 injectingdrug users in Sydney, Australia, respondents were asked aboutthe degree to which their drug use is conducted within a groupcontext. They were also asked about the size of their user groupsand the extent of needle-sharing that occurs in the groups.Results revealed that injecting drug use was a social behaviourapproximately half of the time for the overall sample, but thatthere were statistically significant differences according tothe age, gender, and drug experience of the user. The studyalso found an alarming amount of needle-sharing among the sampleoverall. Females, younger users, and those less experiencedin injecting drug use were more inclined to inject in groups,while needle-sharing was more common among older and more experiencedusers.     

THE WELFARE IMPACT OF TRADE LIBERALIZATION

This paper analyzes the distributional welfare impact of trade liberalization reforms on heterogeneous households. We develop a static applied general equilibrium model, and using a Social Accounting Matrix and Household Expenditure Survey, we calibrate it to match Slovenian data. We simulate the case of Slovenia joining the EU and quantify its welfare impact on households that differ in terms of age, income, and education. Additionally, we compare this benchmark case with two alternative scenarios: (1) a free trade agreement between Slovenia and the EU and (2) a custom union arrangement where tariff revenues are rebated proportionally to the households. We find that while trade liberalization leads to falling consumer prices, increased production in the export sectors, and aggregate welfare gains, the differentiated welfare impacts across heterogeneous households vary in their degrees. (JEL D58, F14, F15)     

AMBIGUOUS SOLICITATION: AMBIGUOUS PRESCRIPTION

We conduct a two‐phase laboratory experiment, separated by several weeks. In the first phase, we conduct urn games intended to measure ambiguity aversion on a representative population of undergraduate students. In the second phase, we invite the students back with four different solicitation treatments, varying in the ambiguity of information regarding the task and the payout of the laboratory experiment. We find that those who return do not differ from the overall pool with respect to their ambiguity aversion. However, no solicitation treatment generates a representative sample. The ambiguous task treatment drives away the ambiguity averse disproportionally and the detailed task treatment draws in the ambiguity averse disproportionally. Finally, the standard laboratory recruitment e‐mail disproportionately draws in those who are not ambiguity averse. (JEL A12, C81, C90)     

Pop music and peer groups: a study of Canadian high school students' responses to pop music*

Des recherches récentes aux Etats-Unis et en Grande-Bretagne indiquent que l'auditoire adolescent de la musique ‘pop’ est moins homogène qúon ne le croit en général. D'après elles, des f acteurs tels que la classe sociale de provenance, le groupe ethnique et les expériences scolaires ont tous influencé la façpn dont réagissent les adolescents à la musique pop. Se servant de données canadiennes, ce texte représente un examen approfondi de la relation entre la musique pop et son auditoire composé surtout d'adolescents. On a trouvé que des facteurs comme l'âge, le sexe, la classe sociale et l'intérêt aux études, mais aussi et surtout, les délits commis et avoués, affectent le choix des adolescents dans la musique pop. On examine ensuite les conclusions d'après la formation de groupes de pairs á l'école secondaire. Recent Americian and British research indicates that the adolescent audience for pop music is less homogeneous than is frequently thought. Factors such as social class background, ethnicity, and school experiences have all been found to affect the ways in which adolescents respond to pop music. Using Canadian data, this paper represents a further examination of the relationship between pop music and its largely adolescent audience. The findings indicate that factors such as age, sex, social class, and commitment to school and, particularly, self-reported delinquency, affected adolescent tastes in pop music. The findings are then discussed in terms of peer group formation in secondary schools.     

On shape detection in noisy images with particular reference to ultrasonography

We discuss the detection of a connected shape in a noisy image. Two types of image are considered: in the first a degraded outline of the shape is visible, while in the second the data are a corrupted version of the shape itself. In the first type the shape is defined by a thin outline of pixels with records that are different from those at pixels inside and outside the shape, while in the second type the shape is defined by its edge and pixels inside and outside the shape have different records. Our motivation is the identification of cross-sectional head shapes in ultrasound images of human fetuses. We describe and discuss a new approach to detecting shapes in images of the first type that uses a specially designed filter function that iteratively identifies the outline pixels of the head. We then suggest a way based on the cascade algorithm introduced by Jubb and Jennison (1991) of improving and considerably increasing the speed of a method proposed by Storvik (1994) for detecting edges in images of the second type.