Broad Reasons Research Articles

Why costs vary in children's care services

This article identifies the broad reasons why costs in children's care services might vary, illustrating them with examples from research literature relating to England. An intentionally broad use of ‘costs’ is employed. The literature has been neither systematically nor comprehensively reviewed but does include most of the recent work in the social care field. Articles have been selected to illustrate particular cost associations. This article finds that there is as yet insufficient research into the costs, cost variations or cost‐effectiveness of children's services. However, the findings provide guidance for decision‐makers as they try to understand how resources are currently deployed and why this might be.

‘A Vast Ill Nature’: Roger L'Estrange, Reputation, and the Credibility of Political Discourse in the Late Seventeenth Century

IIn 1684 a Catholic silversmith, Miles Prance, published the following triplet:A Little Wit, joyn'd with a Vast Ill Nature,And qualify'd for Lyes, as well as Satyr;May easily Commence an Observator.These lines were targeted at Roger L'Estrange, the Surveyor and a Licenser of the Press during the reigns of Charles II and James II. Throughout the late 1670s and early 1680s, the period of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis, L'Estrange was engaged in an ongoing battle in print with Prance - one of the principal King's Witnesses in the plot - occasionally criticising him in his many pamphlets, and consistently attacking him in his half-sheet serial publication the Observator. L'Estrange began the Observator in April 1681, producing between two and four editions every week until the final edition in March 1687. In 1684 he gathered 470 editions together in a single volume and Prance took this opportunity to reply to L'Estrange's attacks in his 20-page pamphlet A Postscript to the Observator's First Volumn. Or the Answer of Miles Prance to Several of those Papers, Wherein he finds himself most Traduced and Slandered. This is where the above triplet appears, and Prance went on to complain that L'Estrange had been responsible for 'the blasting of [his] Reputation, spoiling of [his] Trade, and the Ruin of [his] Family'. He was fighting back against what he claimed was 'the malice' of the Observator's 'falsities ... and idle Tales', the product, he argued, of L'Estrange's 'cankered spleen'.1This essay will examine L'Estrange's alleged 'Vast Ill Nature' and how he was himself 'traduced' by Miles Prance and other contemporaries. It will consider L'Estrange's projection of his public image and defence of his reputation. L'Estrange was a prolific writer of pamphlets in defence of the government and he continually attempted to maintain a credible authorial persona in order that his publications and their contents retained some credibility. This was particularly important in the pamphlet exchanges of the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis in which L'Estrange was so heavily involved, and this fashioning of an authorial persona was a continual process: he did so rhetorically, pictorially with portraiture, through alignment with humanistic predecessors, and also with the physical artefact of the book, that object which became the focus of his later life and which occupied so much of his time.2 Indeed, L'Estrange's self-awareness with respect to the printed book and what their material forms could signify to readers provides us with fascinating insights into the production, circulation, and reception of political discourse in the late seventeenth century. As a gentleman writing cheap, popular pamphlets, and such a large amount of them, he was aware that there was a tension between this format and quantity of publication on the one hand, and his background and social status on the other, and he was therefore a somewhat compromised figure, as his contemporary adversaries were never slow or remiss in pointing out.This essay also looks at L'Estrange's subsequent reputation from the late seventeenth century to the present day as Prance's hostile characterisation of L'Estrange, and his reductive view of his motivation, have to a large extent endured. Why this is so needs analysis and is related to his positions as the Surveyor and a Licenser of the Press (which involved the attempted suppression of books and pamphlets) during the reigns of Charles II and James II, to his robust support of the King and the established Church of England, and to his prolific writing output, often with an uncompromising rhetoric.There is though a broader reason for the enduring negative evaluation of L'Estrange which this essay will seek to explore: this is the problematic notion of the credibility of printed political discourse in the late seventeenth century, but in particular during the final years of Charles II's reign. …

Broad geographic, taxonomic and ecological patterns of interpopulation variation in the dietary habits of snakes

Abstract. Because of their unique morphological and ecological characteristics (i.e. being obligate carnivorous, solitary, and ingesting their prey whole), snakes are expected to show unusual dietary patterns compared to other ectothermic vertebrates, and the best way to explore this is to analyse the snake dietary patterns globally. Here I review and analyse the peer-reviewed snake diet literature available in order to explore whether there are broad patterns in the interpopulation variability of diet composition in these unique ectothermic predators. I collated data for 181 independent populations belonging to 58 species of snakes from some of the main families (1 Boidae, 2 Pythonidae, 27 Colubridae, 10 Elapidae, and 18 Viperidae) and from all the continents (4 from South and Central America, 13 from North America, 12 from Europe, 18 from Africa, 4 from Asia, and 7 from Australia). All these populations satisfied some precise criteria of inclusion, and were therefore re-analysed in a comparative perspective. I classified each literature entry according to 1) snake species, 2) snake family, 3) geographic position (continent) of the study areas, 4) climatic region (temperate versus tropical), 5) guild (if the species is aquatic, terrestrial, or arboreal), 6) hunting strategy (sit-and-wait versus active forager), and 7) venom (if the species is venomous or not). All these seven factors were analysed by GLM procedures to evaluate their effects on the interpopulation diet variation within snake species, that was assessed by using a univariate similarity index. The various taxonomical categories of snake prey were grouped according to two different levels of taxonomic affinity: a) general affinity, e.g. frogs and toads, salamanders, lizards, birds, etc., and b) close affinity, by grouping prey types belonging to a same genus. My study revealed that, within-species snake populations showed a very low variability in terms of diet composition. As for the general affinity criterion, there was no single factor that produced a significant effect on the interpopulation diet variation but, with regard to the interaction terms between factors, significant effects were determined by 1) continent × climatic region (with Asian, African and South-American tropical populations having significantly lesser similarity values), 2) continent × hunting strategy (diets being less diverse in ambush predators in Africa, Asia and South America), and 3) climatic region × guild (with arboreal tropical snakes showing less interpopulation similarity). As for the close affinity criterion, there was also no effect of single factors on interpopulation diet variability, but the interaction term hunting strategy × venom was significant, with sit-and-wait venomous species being less variable in their diet composition. Snake family was completely un-influent in determining any effect on snake interpopulation diet variation. The broad reasons that may explain these generalized patterns are discussed.

A Noncognitivist Reading of Quine's Ethics

Until recently it has been tacitly assumed that Quine is a cognitivist about ethical sentences, that ethical sentences have cognitive meaning. I argue that for broad systematic reasons Quine must be read as a noncognitivist concerning ethical sentences. Because Quine himself has written as if he were a cognitivist, he has a number of claims about ethics which turn out to conflict with the noncognitivist reading of his position, and I make explicit the conflicts engendered by three particular claims. I tentatively explore a pair of strategies for eliminating the conflicts or reducing their effects. In the end these strategies do not appear promising, and Quinean ethics, on this noncognitivist reading of Quine, ends up somewhat the worse for wear.

Children's advertising: the ethics of economic socialisation

AbstractThere is focus upon advertising and children for two broad reasons. First, it is because children are children, and are considered separately. Second, it is because children will become adults. Advertising therefore effects behaviour during childhood and continues to do so into adulthood. Advertising to children rarely receives a good press, and it remains a controversial topic in the wider domain. Is it responsible for poor diet? Does it make children pester their parents? Is there too much of it? And does Christmas have to start in September? Subsequently the issue has evolved to question whether there should be advertising to children, and if so whether it should be regulated. This discussion paper examines arguments for and against children's advertising, and concludes that whilst there are compelling arguments on both sides, advertising to children remains an economic necessity in need of adjustment and regulation.

Serving Deaf Adult Psychiatric Inpatients

The unique treatment needs of psychiatric inpatients who are deaf require added dimensions to their care. Because of the scarcity of specialized units for persons who are deaf, descriptions of these treatment needs are infrequent. This study assessed diagnoses and linguistic and cognitive comorbidities in this population. A total of 62 percent of the inpatient sample had major mental illnesses, 58 percent had psychotic illnesses, and 26 percent had a dual diagnosis of a mental disorder and substance use disorder. Case examples illustrate some of the unique characteristics of these patients. The broad reasons for admission are illustrated, as are some of the treatment adaptations made by a specialized unit for deaf persons.

Clever hounds: social cognition in the domestic dog ( Canis familiaris)

This paper reviews the reasons why domestic dogs make good models to investigate cognitive processes related to social living and describes experimental approaches that can be adopted to investigate such processes in dogs. Domestic dogs are suitable models for investigating social cognition skills for three broad reasons. First, dogs originated from wolves, social animals that engage in a number of co-operative behaviours, such as hunting and that may have evolved cognitive abilities that help them predict and interpret the actions of other animals. Second, during domestication dogs are likely to have been selected for mental adaptations for their roles in human society such as herding or companionship. Third, domestic dogs live in a human world and “enculturation” may facilitate the development of relevant mental skills in dogs. Studies of social cognition in animals commonly use experimental paradigms originally developed for pre-verbal human infants. Preferential gaze, for example, can be used as a measure of attention or “surprise” in studies using expectancy violation. This approach has been used to demonstrate simple numerical competence in dogs. Dogs also readily use both conspecific and human social signals (e.g. looking or pointing) as information sources to locate hidden rewards such as food or favourite toys. Such abilities make dogs particularly good models for investigating perspective-taking tasks, where animals are required to discriminate between apparently knowledgeable and apparently ignorant informants.

Reasoning Dimensions Underlying Science Achievement: The Case of Performance Assessment

Snow argued for multidimensional science achievement in the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) along dimensions of basic knowledge and reasoning, spatial-mechanical reasoning, and quantitative science. We focused the generality of these reasoning dimensions in other multiple-choice tests and performance assessments. Confirmatory factor analyses retrieved the 3 dimensions for a test composed of NELS:88, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) multiple-choice items, and the NELS:88 items alone. We used the latter because factor correlations were lower. We administered 3 reasoning-dimension-linked performance assessments to a subsample of 35 students from the main study. Performance assessments correlated moderately with each other and NELS:88 reasoning scores; the 2 methods partially converged on the dimensions. Performance scores scattered across multiple-choice scores due to the broad reasoning and knowledge spectrum tapped. Findings are tentative; larger samples and cognitive studies of reasoning and knowledge might shed light on convergence.

The Wisdom of Serpents: Why Religious Groups Use Secular Language

Civil religion, the use of religious symbolism and ceremony to pro mote secular political ends, has long been a field of serious inquiry, dating at least to Plato's The Laws.1 However, its opposite, the promo tion of religiously inspired agendas through secular means has not re ceived much attention. Two recent developments, however, make addressing this scholarly neglect more urgent. The first is the articula tion of liberal theories of public reason that forbid the use of religious language in public discourse. The second is the shift of strategy in re cent decades of religious groups, most notably the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, of abandoning explicitly religious language in favor of secular language to advance their goals. The main body of this essay is empirical in nature, an attempt to chart and document the reasons why religious groups have employed secular language in promoting religiously inspired political ends. In deed, I argue that religious groups employ secular language to promote their political ends for four broad reasons: theological, prudential, le gal, and liberal.2 As I hope to show in a brief examination of the Relig ious Right, these motivations are difficult to distinguish in practice and more than one motivation may be at work simultaneously. However, I hope to take the discussion beyond a mere description of events and reflect upon the dilemma of simultaneously encouraging secular politi

Comparative longitudinal structural analyses of the growth and decline of multiple intellectual abilities over the life span.

Latent growth curve techniques and longitudinal data are used to examine predictions from the theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence (Gf-Gc theory; J. L. Horn & R. B. Cattell, 1966, 1967). The data examined are from a sample (N approximately 1,200) measured on the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised (WJ-R). The longitudinal structural equation models used are based on latent growth models of age using two-occasion "accelerated" data (e.g., J. J. McArdle & R. Q. Bell, 2000; J. J. McArdle & R. W. Woodcock, 1997). Nonlinear mixed-effects growth models based on a dual exponential rate yield a reasonable fit to all life span cognitive data. These results suggest that most broad cognitive functions fit a generalized curve that rises and falls. Novel multilevel models directly comparing growth curves show that broad fluid reasoning (Gf) and acculturated crystallized knowledge (Gc) have different growth patterns. In all comparisons, any model of cognitive age changes with only a single g factor yields an overly simplistic view of growth and change over age.

THE ETHICS AND POLITICS OF MUTUAL OBLIGATION

Welfare schemes which require recipients of benefits to ‘give something back’ are often justified in terms of ‘fairness’ or fulfilling the ‘social contract’. The Australian Government's recent and proposed changes to unemployment benefits through the Mutual Obligation Scheme appeal to both justifications. However, insufficient attention has been paid the underlying ethical and political assumptions — a serious deficiency. given their role in legitimating harsh new penalties. There are two broad reasons the current trend to tie benefits to obligations is inappropriate. First, the unemployed have little choice about their contract. And second, there is insufficient mutuality shown towards the unemployed for the Scheme to be obligation‐generating. Rather than being a means of encouraging participation or mutuality, the Scheme is essentially punitive.

Race or People: Federal Race Classifications for Europeans in America, 1898--1913

In 1898 the U.S. Bureau of Immigration initiated a classification of immigrants into some 40 categories of or people; nearly all the categories covered Europeans. In 1909 an effort was made to extend this system of classification to the U.S. Census, and the relevant measure passed in the Senate. From the outset, organizations representing a segment of American Jews strongly opposed the measure, although not on the grounds of racism. But other groups of immigrants, including Jews, strongly supported the new racial classification of Europeans for the census. A compromise replaced the proposed new race question with a mother-tongue question. The paper explains the origin and development of the classification system and the ensuing controversy; extensive verbatim transcripts (in which participants argue their conception of race in the context of other terms) and unpublished letters constitute the basic sources. The or people classification was immensely important in its own right, since our knowledge of the socioeconomic characteristics of immigrants in the first half of the 20th century is organized in terms of that classification. But the topic is interesting for much broader reasons: discussion of a seemingly narrow and technical matter, namely a statistical classification scheme, illuminates the meaning of race for the debaters and sheds light on the dynamics of ideas, bureaucracy, and organized opposition to official procedures.

Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis

Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis

Role of NGOs in the Development of Non Formal Education in Nepal

If we discus s first about the place of the Non Governmental Organization(NGOs) in the civil society, it would helpful to understand the importance of NGOs and to appreciate the role of NGOs in the promotion of mass education and other community development activities. As the parliamentary democracy, the concept of civil society also has been learned by the developing countries from the Northern countries especially the Western Industrialized countries. NGOs are the part of civil society. UNDP(1993) has defined the Civil in these words: “ Civil society is together with State and Market, one of the three ‘Spheres’ that interface in the making of democratic societies. Civil society is the sphere in which social movements become organized. The organizations of the civil society, which represent many diverse and some times contradictory social interests are shaped to fit their social base, constituency, thematic orientations(i.g. environment, gender, human rights) and types of activity. They include church related groups, trade unions, cooperatives, service organizations, community groups(NGOs) and youth organizations as well as academic institutions and others.”(1) The civil society helps the developing countries to strengthen their democratization process. Since elected or selected rulers when they have got power they have a tendency to become intolerant towards the institutions of the civil society and they try to control them. Sometimes they also try to control market forces, but lately the market forces have become strong enough to defend themselves. Similarly other institutions of the civil society also should be made strong to help the people to defend themselves from the exploitation both from bad rulers as well as from bad market forces. Mr Remesh Thakur writes “ Th ere are three broad reasons for the rise of NGO influence. Political space for them opened up with the end of the Cold War.New issues like human rights, environmental degradation, and gender equality came to the forefront of public consciousness. These are the issues

Modeling the dynamic hypotheses of Gf–Gc theory using longitudinal life-span data

This research uses longitudinal data from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and linear structural equation models (e.g., LISREL) in an evaluation of the structural, kinematic, and dynamic hypotheses of the “theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence.” In a first set of analyses we use linear dynamic models in a formal evaluation of the growth and declines of abilities through latent growth and linear dynamic models. Our first results indicate separate trends over age for different intellectual abilities including broad knowledge, spatial reasoning, perceptual speed, and immediate memory. In a second set of analyses we extend these multivariate dynamic structural equation models to explore the age-based leading and lagging indicators. These results indicate a complex system of relationships, with memory losses as an important leading indicator. In a third set of analyses we use confirmatory techniques to test specific aging hypotheses. These results indicate support for both the “general memory loss” hypothesis and the “general slowing” hypothesis, provide some support for the “investment theory” at the adult level, and also suggest a single “general” factor does not describe the complexity of cognitive aging. These result synthesize prior WAIS studies and provide methods for further research on the dynamics of the growth and decline of intellectual abilities across the adult life-span.

Ageing in the 21st century

This article comments on the need for research on aging to help develop preventive measures that will lower the costs of health care for the aged in developed countries. Health-care statistics show that the proportion of the health-care budget spent on medical treatment of the aged is continually rising and is a major reason for the ever-increasing health care costs as a percentage of gross national product. This statistic raises what seems to be a central question as to how much of the infirmity of the aged is due to disease and from so-called natural aging. By examining the causes of infirmity of the aged it will help expound on the issue of the high cost of health care. Furthermore it was explained that with the advancement in medical research that led to the development of advance technological procedures for treating age-related diseases have aggravated the high expenses for medical treatment for aged. It was emphasized that instead of treating the multicausal pathology of the aged fundamental research in molecular biology cell biology and physiology plus the deleterious changes in genes proteins organelles membranes and homeostatic mechanisms should first be understood for effective preventive measures to be achieved. This initiative would in turn lower the cost of health care and increase the health span of an aged.

Three reasons for doubting the adequacy of the reciprocal‐concessions explanation of door‐in‐the‐face effects

This article discusses three broad reasons for concern about the adequacy of the reciprocal‐concessions explanation of door‐in‐the‐face (DITF) effects. First, the explanation ù not sufficiently well articulated to permit unambiguous identification of disconfirming evidence. Second, even acknowledging the explanation's suppleness, at least three sets of empirical results (concerning concession size effects, concession emphasis effects, and the necessity of concessions) are apparently inconsistent with the explanation. Third, there is no empirical evidence distinctly supportive of the explanation.

Second Language Acquisition Theories and Teaching Practice: How Do They Fit?

AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-TWO, MY DAUGHTER then a college senior was diagnosed as suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder, a learning disability characterized, in her case, by short attention span, easy distractability, poor motor coordination, poor handwriting, and inconsistent spelling.' Results of the WoodcockJohnson Psycho-Educational Battery indicated above average verbal ability and reading aptitude, but a severe deficit in visual perceptual speed, and below average scores in math and written language aptitude. All other abilities tested, such as broad cognitive ability, reasoning, memory, and knowledge aptitude, were well within the average ranges. You may wonder about the relevance of my daughter's learning disability to the topic of this paper. Of interest is that, as a result of that learning disability diagnosis, my daughter received a waiver for requirements in mathematics and foreign languages. Still more interesting is, however, that my daughter-whose psychological test profile indicates apparently little talent for learning a foreign language--is functionally trilingual. She has native fluency in English, rates probably a terminal on the ILR Scale in German, and about a 1 + in Spanish.2 When she was diagnosed as lacking foreign language learning aptitude, she had already fulfilled her language requirement and was enrolled in a third-year Spanish composition course with which she did, however, have major problems. A superficial examination of the facts reported may lead one to doubt the construct and predictive validities of the psychological tests used to determine learning disabilities. How, after all, can an individual who has acquired a functional proficiency in two nonprimary languages be suddenly considered as lacking in foreign language learning aptitude? A closer look at my daughter's second language learning history may provide some explanation for the apparent inconsistency. My daughter acquired German as a tongue. That is, the language spoken to her by her mother up to about age seven was predominantly German. In addition to the input she received from her mother in the US, she spent an average of about six weeks annually in Germany during her early childhood. Since the age of seven, English became with rare exceptions the exclusive language in the home. My daughter did, however, continue to spend intermittent summer vacations with German relatives. The two times she attempted to German as a foreign language in high school and college she did not do particularly well. At the time I gave the fault for her mediocre performance to the teachers whoin my opinion--were unable to deal with her superior conversational fluency within the constraints of a grammar-oriented classroom. My daughter's efforts to learn Spanish started in high school, but she dropped the course because she found the highly analytical grammatical approach boring. She then took the first two semesters at the university, completing both courses with a grade of C. After her year of elementary college Spanish she spent one summer in an intensive study program in Mexico, and the following summer holding summer employment in Costa Rica. To make a long story short, my daughter has been successful in acquiring three languages in a predominantly natural acquisition environment but has considerable problems learning a language in a formal school setting where the instructional goals, activities, and tests emphasize analysis and mastery of the grammatical code. Her experience has led me to reexamine The Modern Language Journal, 75, i (1991) 0026-7902/91/0001/017 $1.50/0 ?1991 The Modern LanguageJournal

Some parental views on the Community Dental Service

A sample of 220 adults accompanying children to Community Dental Service (CDS) clinics in two adjacent health districts in the North Western Health Region of England were questioned to gain insight into their views about the service. Seventy-five per cent reported that they had a dentist of their own; 82% of these claimed to have visited him/her in the previous 12 months. They had chosen the CDS for four broad reasons: 51% saw it as providing a specialised service, 27% came as a result of a school inspection, 15% used it because it was convenient, and 7% had been unhappy with the care provided by a general dental practitioner. Seventy-six per cent thought that the CDS should be allowed to treat adults. There were no significant differences between those with dentists of their own and those without, or between those who gave the specialised nature of the CDS as the reason for attending and those who did not. Those who came by car were significantly less likely to believe that the CDS should treat adults; nevertheless, 69% of these were in favour.

"Men Are More Able": Rural Chinese Women's Conceptions of Gender and Agency

W A rRITING ABOUT THE LIVES OF WOMEN IN CHINA moved some years ago from accounts of extraordinary successes to troubled accounts of a revolution postponed or unfinished.' The consensus at present is one which acknowledges changes for the better as well as persistent and contemporary structural obstacles to change. A major focus of discussion is the mixed effect of a succession of official policies and political movements. As the limits of these have become increasingly apparent, there has been a partial shift in attention toward examining the importance of a familially-based patriarchy.2 This direction has been encouraged by the rural reform programme of the 1980s, which has dissolved most of the country's rural collective structures and instituted a new rural economic system in which the household has an increased role. This reform programme was instituted for broad economic and political reasons and has not included policies specifically designed to address the interests of women.3 There is consequently much concern, both within and beyond China, about the present and future lives of rural Chinese women.