WEIGHTED SUMS OF NEGATIVELY ASSOCIATED RANDOM VARIABLES

In this paper, we establish strong laws for weighted sums of negatively associated (NA) random variables which have a higher‐order moment condition. Some results of Bai Z.D. & Cheng P.E. (2000) [Marcinkiewicz strong laws for linear statistics. Statist. and Probab. Lett. 43, 105–112,] and Sung S.K. (2001) [Strong laws for weighted sums of i.i.d. random variables, Statist. and Probab. Lett. 52, 413–419] are sharpened and extended from the independent identically distributed case to the NA setting. Also, one of the results of Li D.L. et al. (1995) [Complete convergence and almost sure convergence of weighted sums of random variables. J. Theoret. Probab. 8, 49–76,] is complemented and extended.     

马克思、恩格斯和列宁的正义观(下)

凯·尼尔森是分析学派马克思主义的成员之一,也是西方"左翼"平等主义的主要代表。这篇文章是他的专著《马克思主义与道德观:道德,意识形态和历史唯物主义》中第四章的节选。这篇文章紧扣马克思主义原著,以《哥达纲领批判》为基点,从马克思主义发展史的角度,梳理和阐释了马克思、恩格斯、列宁的正义观,不失为当代国外马克思主义领域一篇较为本真的阐发马克思主义正义观的力作。这篇文章有助于国内学者深化理解马克思主义经典作家的政治哲学思想,也有助于我们了解和学习西方马克思主义理论家的文本解读方法和思路,对于我们构建中国特色社会主义正义理论具有理论借鉴意义。     

Transforming a municipal school sports programme through a critical communicative methodology: The role of the of advisory committee

This research applies a communicative methodology (CM) to the transformation and improvement of the Municipal Comprehensive School Sports Programme in Segovia, Spain (MCSSP), using egalitarian dialogue, based on validity rather than power claims to achieve intersubjectivity and arrive at consensus between all of the Programme’s stakeholders through the intervention of an advisory committee (AC). The AC is a body comprising representatives of all stakeholder groups involved in the programme. During the 2013–2014 academic year the programme’s AC met four times, operating as a communicative focus group (CFG). The meetings focused on: (1) excluding dimensions (barriers preventing transformation) and transforming dimensions (ways of overcoming barriers), (2) the programme’s strengths, (3) the programme’s weaknesses and specific actions to remedy them, and (4) the resulting conclusions which were then incorporated into the subsequent programme contract signed between the University and the Segovia Local Authority for 2014–2018. The key conclusions were: (1) the recommendations of the AC widen the range of perspectives and help the research team to make key decisions and (2) the use of CM to fully evaluate the programme and to reach a consensus on how to improve it proved very valuable.     

A formative evaluation of the recovery public works programme in Blantyre City,Malawi

Public works programmes (PWPs) are popular social protection instruments in the context of chronic poverty but very little has been published in the way of implementation and outcomes of these programmes. This paper presents a formative process and outcome evaluation of the recovery PWP in Blantyre City, Malawi. The evaluation used longitudinal household survey data of PWP beneficiaries, programme records and interview responses from programme staff and community leaders. Largely, the process evaluation findings showed an agreement between actual and planned activities. The outcome evaluation found indications that the PWP community assets offered some potential benefits to the communities, and that PWP wages allowed the beneficiaries to purchase some food. This however, did not translate into more meals per day, nor did the earnings prevent the decline in household assets as expected. Given a plausible PWP theory and high implementation fidelity, the PWP wage rate or number of days was either just enough to smooth participant income, or insufficient altogether, to enable achievement of more distal outcomes.     

Evaluation of the impact of intervention programmes on education organisations: Application to a Quality Management System

This paper analyses the importance of evaluating the various components of the programmes or actions carried out by education organisations. It highlights the need to assess the impact of the intervention on the organisation and consider how changes are consolidated over time in interaction with the context. We propose an impact evaluation model and as an example have chosen the implementation of Quality Management Systems in schools. The paper analyses the results obtained in 40 schools in three regions (Spanish Autonomous Communities) with varying levels of implementation. The results show overall impact on these education centres as the teachers and management teams of the centres perceive it. This impact is more evident in some of the dimensions considered in the study than in others. The results also confirm the differences between regional contexts.     

政府间与非政府间国际组织在全球环境治理中的有效性评估

全球环境治理是当今国际社会的重要议题,其治理主体呈现多元化趋势,治理模式也由原有的国家中心治理模式向有限治理模式、网络治理模式发展,呈现多方向的新变化。除国家政府之外,就国际组织而言可分成政府间国际组织(IGO)与非政府间国际组织(INGO)两种。文章将探究在全球环境治理问题上是否政府间国际组织可以替代非政府组织的作用,并以绿色和平与联合国环境规划署两大组织为例,从国际社会对全球环境治理体制的功能需求方面进行案例对比分析与治理有效性的评估。     

Some practical issues in the evaluation of heterogeneous labour market programmes by matching methods

Summary.  Recently several studies have analysed active labour market policies by using a recently proposed matching estimator for multiple programmes. Since there is only very limited practical experience with this estimator, this paper checks its sensitivity with respect to issues that are of practical importance in this kind of evaluation study. The estimator turns out to be fairly robust to several features that concern its implementation. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that the matching approach per se is no panacea for solving all the problems of evaluation studies, but that its success depends critically on the information that is available in the data. Finally, a comparison with a bootstrap distribution provides some justification for using a simplified approximation of the distribution of the estimator that ignores its sequential nature.     

The African Evaluation Guidelines: 2002. A checklist to assist in planning evaluations, negotiating clear contracts, reviewing progress and ensuring adequate completion of an evaluation

A review of the US ‘program evaluation standards’ (PES), undertaken in a series of workshops and meetings of networks of evaluators in Africa, resulted in modifications to those standards. The result was presented to a plenary session of the Inaugural Conference of the African Evaluation Association in September 1999, attended by over 300 evaluators from 35 countries. The AfrEA Conference decided that a systematic effort should be made to produce a list of African evaluation guidelines, similar to the PES, and that this checklist should be reviewed by national evaluation associations and networks in Africa and field tested in several countries. Ten national and regional networks and associations suggested modifications to the text and endorsed the final version of the guidelines.