Discretionary Use of Computers: An Empirically Derived Explanatory Model*

This study identifies variables that explain variations in computer use. Factor analysis of data gathered from 422 business administration faculty reveal eight themes among the independent variables. Seven of these factors significantly discriminate among non, minimal, and high users. These results suggest an empirical model for future studies and provide policy insights for decision makers seeking to stimulate computer usage. Additionally, the study shows that there is much commonality between the previously separate organizational innovation and information systems implementation streams. It also demonstrates that motivation theory may be a valid framework within which to study computer use.     

Influencing hand hygiene at spectrum health

Gain insights into the six sources that both motivate and enable people to change through personal, social, and structural forces, and see how they were used to improve hand-washing patterns at a large health care system.     

Strategies for Implementing a Tobacco-Free Campus Policy

Abstract

This report examines the rationale for creating a tobacco-free campus to utilize in passing antitobacco policies, and recommendations for overcoming barriers. As with any type of advocacy effort, a variety of impediments exist, including lack of administrative and staff support, absence of student involvement, and sparse resources. A variety of potential remedies and advocacy opportunities are explored and delineated.     

Cataloging Education and Cataloging Futures: An Interview with Allyson Carlyle

In February 2011 Margaret Dull interviewed Allyson Carlyle, associate professor and chair of the PhD program at the iSchool, University of Washington (Seattle, Washington). Carlyle shares her views on the current challenges faced by catalogers and cataloging educators. Carlyle also discusses the vital role that cataloging plays in today's library and information science curriculum, as well as the future role of the professional cataloger.     

Mothers’ Sexual Identity and Children’s Health

Sexual minority women face a plethora of structural, socioeconomic, and interpersonal disadvantages and stressors. Research has established negative associations between women’s sexual minority identities and both their own health and their infants’ birth outcomes. Yet a separate body of scholarship has documented similarities in the development and well-being of children living with same-sex couples relative to those living with similarly situated different-sex couples. This study sought to reconcile these literatures by examining the association between maternal sexual identity and child health at ages 5–18 using a US sample from the full population of children of sexual minority women, including those who identify as mostly heterosexual, bisexual, or lesbian, regardless of partner sex or gender. Analyses using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N?=?8978) followed women longitudinally and examined several measures of their children’s health, including general health and specific developmental and physical health conditions. Analyses found that children of mostly heterosexual and bisexual women experienced health disadvantages relative to children of heterosexual women, whereas the few children of lesbian women in our sample evidenced a mixture of advantages and disadvantages. These findings underscore that to understand sexual orientation disparities and the intergenerational transmission of health, it is important to incorporate broad measurement of sexual orientation that can capture variation in family forms and in sexual minority identities.

     

Children's Voices: The Views of Vulnerable Children on Their Service Providers and the Relevance of Services They Receive

This paper describes and analyses the views of vulnerable childrenof eleven years and under on the relevance of services theyreceived. The two research questions posed were, first, whatare effective practices for engaging with vulnerable children;and, second, how can the voices of vulnerable children be usedto influence the development of policy? The first question wasaddressed through a systematic review of existing literatureon effective strategies for interviewing vulnerable childrenand revealed that few studies that focus on interviewing youngchildren are designed to address effectiveness. As yet, notall young children are asked for their views by those makingdecisions about their lives, though their involvement increaseswith age. The second question was addressed through focus groupsand interviews which revealed that children hold many validviews related to their roles and relationships with serviceproviders and decisions being made concerning their lives. Itwas concluded that whilst children’s lived experienceof services they receive could contribute to the creation ofmore democratic communities in which children and their familiesparticipate, it remains to be seen whether the new Green Paper,Every Child Matters (DfES, 2003), increases their sense of autonomyor merely extends the degree to which they are controlled.     

Why PART? The Institutional Politics of Presidential Budget Reform

The George W. Bush administration's Program Assessment RatingTool (PART) follows a sequence of president-initiated budgetreforms. The pattern is puzzling in that past reforms have tendedto drain staff resources, failed to take hold, and yielded littleor no political advantage. Given the track record of past initiatives,why has the Bush administration chosen to invest Office of Managementand Budget (OMB) and agency resources in PART? This articlebriefly traces PART's development and, placing the initiativein the context of contemporary research on the institutionalpresidency, attempts to make sense of the sustained appeal thatrationalizing reforms have held across administrations. An accountof reform as problem solving is developed. Set against the changingarchitecture of budget and administrative politics, reform isprompted by the interplay of evolving management concepts andtwo persistent problem types: Reform holds at least the potentialfor enhanced budget control where any leverage is valued andresponds to the dilemmas of managing policy competence in themodern institutional presidency. The article concludes witha plea on behalf of institutional theories built on realisticmodels of how actors interpret and respond to the conditionsprevailing in administrative politics.     

Strategies for implementing a tobacco-free campus policy

This report examines the rationale for creating a tobacco-free campus to utilize in passing antitobacco policies, and recommendations for overcoming barriers. As with any type of advocacy effort, a variety of impediments exist, including lack of administrative and staff support, absence of student involvement, and sparse resources. A variety of potential remedies and advocacy opportunities are explored and delineated.