Changes In Demand For Services Research Articles

COVID-19 Impact on Children’s Social Work Practice and Social Worker Well-being: A Mixed Methods Study from Northern Ireland and Great Britain during 2020–2022

Abstract Social workers were heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we examined the well-being, burnout and work conditions of UK children’s social workers at five time points of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a cross-sectional mixed methods study analysing data from 1,621 social workers who worked in children’s services in the UK in 2020–2022. Data were collected using anonymous online surveys which included both quantitative and qualitative questions. The mental well-being of participants decreased as the pandemic progressed and work-related burnout increased. In the later stages of the pandemic, children’s social workers in Northern Ireland fared better than their Great Britain counterparts in relation to their well-being and levels of burnout. Thematic analysis of qualitative data revealed four major themes: Changes in service demand and referrals, Adapted ways of working, Staff shortages and Emotional impact. The findings highlight the challenges that the children’s social workers encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic and have implications for policy, practice and research.

Translation and interpretation in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly had a significant influence on the translating and interpret­ing industry. Even while certain tendencies are now apparent, it will take some time to fully under­stand how profound and transformative the years of pandemic measures and social isolation were. This paper summarises findings from two surveys conducted among translators and interpreters in Slovakia. The first was conducted during the first wave of the pandemic and focused on the immediate economic and psychological implications of the first lockdown measures on the transla­tion community. Apart from measuring the changes in demand for services, the share of cancelled assignments and general mood among professionals, we have also enquired about the demand for remote interpreting. The proportion of those who encountered offers for remote interpreting nearly doubled in the six weeks after the introduction of the first lockdown measures in Slovakia (an increase from 18.75% to 39.69%). The second source of data is a survey of rates which already captures how much remote interpreting penetrated the structure of interpreting service one year after the onset of the pandemic. Based on our findings, the average number of remote interpreting days in 2021 was 67.53% of the total number of interpreting days. This rapid onset of remote inter­preting recovered demand for interpreting services as the volume of work began to catch up with pre-pandemic levels, but also brought a greater psychological burden and stress resulting from the different nature of remote interpretation.

Transaction fee economics in the Ethereum blockchain

AbstractWe study the economic determinants of transaction fees in the Ethereum blockchain. We estimate an empirical model based on queueing theory and analyze the factors determining the “gas price” (transaction cost per unit of service, “gas”). Using block‐ and transaction‐level data from the Ethereum blockchain, we show that changes in service demand significantly affect the gas price—when there is high block utilization, per‐unit fees increase on average, with strong nonlinear effect above 90% utilization. The transaction type is another important factor—larger fraction of regular transactions (direct transfers between users) is associated with higher gas price.

Implementation of hormonal contraceptive furnishing in San Francisco community pharmacies

BackgroundIn 2013, California passed Senate Bill 493, which allowed pharmacists to furnish hormonal contraceptives without a physician’s prescription. Despite this expanded scope of practice, only 11% of the pharmacies reported furnishing hormonal contraception over the following 6 years. ObjectivesOur study objectives were to determine the extent of hormonal contraceptive furnishing and identify the factors that led to successful implementation in San Francisco community pharmacies. MethodsBackspace we conducted a cross-sectional survey to identify community pharmacies furnishing hormonal contraception in San Francisco. Interviews were coded inductively to identify consistent themes. Semistructured interviews with pharmacists at the locations that furnished contraception identified the factors that had led to successful implementation in local community pharmacies, as well as assessing changes in practice during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. ResultsSan Francisco had 113 operational community pharmacies in April 2020. Of these, 21 locations reported that they furnished hormonal contraception (19%), and we interviewed pharmacists at 12 of those locations. We identified 3 key factors that drove implementation at the pharmacy level: administrative support, advertising, and pharmacist engagement. Additional drivers of implementation involved the nature of the community. The respondents also reported on barriers that continued to slow adoption, including consultation fees, time constraints, and patient privacy. Changes in demand for services owing to COVID-19 risks were inconsistent. ConclusionOur findings suggest strategies that community pharmacies can use to expand their scope of practice and improve quality and continuity of care for patients.

DyNet-LCCA: a simulation framework for dynamic network-level life- cycle cost analysis in evolving infrastructure systems

ABSTRACT Civil infrastructure systems transform over the long-term due to complex interactions among socio-environmental stressors, degradation of physical networks, and decision-making processes of infrastructure agencies. To incorporate such complex transformation mechanisms into infrastructure cost management, this study integrates simulation modeling and life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) to create a framework for dynamic network-level LCCA in infrastructure systems. The proposed framework was implemented using a multi-agent simulation model in a numerical case study related to a road network affected by sea-level rise, population growth, and uncertain maintenance funding. The results include identification of several state transition, and tipping point behaviors at which small changes in service demand, maintenance budget, and adaptation investment may result in significant improvement in network cost and performance conditions. The results show the capability of the proposed framework in modeling the long-term trajectories of life-cycle costs at the network level under different stressors and decision scenarios.

Price and Income Elasticity of Demand for Services in India: A Macro Analysis

India has a higher share of services and rapid growth in its services sector that have contributed to the overall economic growth phenomenally. The services revolution recently experienced have caused services-led growth in India. There have been questions raised on the sustainability of services-led growth achieved by India. Besides exports of services, domestic consumers and producers also consume services. Domestic demand for services equally contributes to India’s services-led growth paradigm. The New Economic Policy, 1991 has a significant role in taking India on a services-led growth paradigm. The present study is an attempt to provide a substantial theoretical explanation through demand-side to support services-led growth. The paper estimates the demand for services overall and also for disaggregated sub-sectoral services. The present study estimates the price and income elasticity of demand for services from 1951 to 2010. The study endeavours to find structural changes in demand for services during pre and post-liberalised periods (1951–1990 and 1991–2010) through the most important determinants of demand for any product/service, that is, price and income. The study finds a structural change in demand for services corresponding to income and price. The study finds that India’s services are income elastic and are very unresponsive for the increase in price. Hence, it substantiates that domestic demand for services will help to sustain the services-led growth.

Practice Patterns Revisited in Pediatric Psychosomatic Medicine

Given the heightened focus on the implementation of integrated care and population health management strategies, there is a critical need for an analysis of pediatric psychosomatic medicine (PPM) programs. The goal was to survey current practice patterns in academic PPM programs in North America regarding their service composition, clinical consultation services, changes in service demand, funding, and major challenges so as to inform and support advocacy efforts on behalf of children in their need for responsive and effective PPM services. With a 52.5% survey response rate from 122 child and adolescent psychiatry programs in North America, the demand for PPM services was reported to have significantly increased over the past decade as seen in the described expansion in clinical consultation services and the reported higher patient acuity, as well as new responsibilities in the care of youth with psychiatric illnesses who require boarding on medical inpatient services. Although an increased willingness by hospital administrators to fund PPM services was apparent, adequate funding remained a core issue. Although the value of research is well recognized, few programs are engaged in systematic PPM investigation. This survey provides evidence that the current field of PPM appears to be in an increasingly stronger position within academic medical centers. It is just as apparent today, as it has been in the past, that there is a need to communicate at local, regional, and national levels that PPM is an essential behavioral health service.

Decomposition analysis from demand services to material production: The case of CO2 emissions from steel produced for automobiles in Mexico

According to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, several mitigation strategies for the industrial sector are needed to achieve global mitigation scenarios that include: carbon intensity, energy intensity, material intensity, product-service intensity, and the global demand for services. Under this contextual, this paper presents a decomposition analysis of energy related carbon dioxide emissions from the steel produced to manufacture new automobiles. The novelty of this analysis is that it links energy related carbon dioxide emissions from service demand to material production, breaking changes in demand for services measured as passenger-kilometers driven by new automobiles either for replacement or for new demand; steel content in new automobiles (material intensity); production process (structure); final energy intensity; and carbon intensity. The study boundaries include direct and indirect steel imports (contained in automobile imports). This analysis is applied to the Mexican case from 1993 to 2011. The results show that an increase in the pass-km followed by the growth in the vehicle size is the most important factors influencing carbon dioxide emissions. The rise of fuels with higher carbon contents in countries that export vehicles and steel to Mexico is also an important variable that had increased emissions. A projection for CO2 emissions for 2025 was developed to understand the significance of the different variables in the reduction of CO2 emissions related to the steel production for new automobiles.

Foreign Aid and Economic Growth in Developing Countries: An Instrumental Variables Approach

There is little consensus on the capacity for foreign aid to cause economic growth in developing countries. This is due in large part to the fact that foreign aid recipients are selected by donors, confounding identification. This paper proposes an identification strategy that exploits exogenous variation in foreign aid receipts generated by participation in Human Rights Treaties at the UN to identify an average causal effect of aid on growth. Our approach allows for heterogeneous effects of aid on growth across recipients for unobservable reasons, and we thus identify a Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE). Further, we normalize aid with respect to population as opposed to the more commonly used GDP for the purposes of identification and show that this choice has important implications for the identification and interpretation of the effect of aid. Our estimates imply that a percentage point increase in aid as a fraction of GDP causes the annual average growth rate in a recipient country to increase by about 0.6 percentage points. Though LATE's are instrument specific and thus subject to concerns about external validity, we provide evidence suggesting that our estimate is indeed externally valid. The estimated effect is explained almost entirely by an expansion of the service industry, accompanied by a large increase in household consumption, with no evidence that aid causes Dutch disease. We conclude that aid increases growth by inducing a structural change in household demand for services.

Increasing prevalence of domiciliary ventilation: changes in service demand and provision in the South West of the UK

We examine the incidence and prevalence of domiciliary ventilation in the South West region of the UK, assess trends over 15 years, and describe patient outcome. We conducted a retrospective review of all patients below 18 years receiving domiciliary ventilation in the South West region of the UK between January 1994 and August 2009. Children who received long-term ventilation solely in hospital were excluded from the study. Information was obtained from a locally held database, medical notes, and hospital administration systems. One hundred-six patients were identified. Prevalence has increased since 1994 from 0.2 to 6.7 per 100,000 children. The incidence of both invasive and non-invasive ventilations has increased with a trend towards more non-invasive therapy. The commonest underlying disorders were airway pathology (37 patients), neuromuscular disease (34 patients), and central congenital hypoventilation disorder (17 patients). Sixty-seven patients had significant co-morbidities. Of 38 non-current patients, 19 were transferred to adult ventilation services, 11 died, and 6 were successfully weaned from ventilatory support. In conclusion, there has been a 30-fold increase in the prevalence of paediatric domiciliary ventilation, in the South West region of the UK, since 1994. Co-morbidities are common. Very few children discontinue long-term ventilation, and increasing numbers of ventilated children are transferred to adult services.

Service Placement in Ad Hoc Networks

Service placement optimizes the number of instances of a service and their location within an ad hoc network in light of changes in service demand and network topology. The goal is to reduce bandwidth usage and latencies between clients and servers, while improving scalability and availability of the service.

Imaging and interventional neuroradiology

Technical innovations in neuroimaging have improved diagnosis and prognosis, whereas developments in interventional neuroradiology have extended the range of therapy to different patient populations. These changes in service demand the identification of those clinical and technical factors distinguishing feasibility from futility, in order to increase population efficiency and reduce the harm associated with inappropriate therapy.

Migration and the Demand for Developmental Disabilities Services

Synthetic estimation techniques are used to project the number of developmentally disabled persons in Florida in the year 2000. This yields an idea of the future number of these persons if migration continues at its current pace. Next, the population is projected on the assumption that no net migration occurs in the future and the same prevalence rates are applied to that projection. The difference in the number of persons with developmental disabilities yielded by the two sets of synthetic projections illustrates the effects of migration upon demand. Demand for developmental disabilities services is projected to increase by 36% over 1985 levels by the year 2000. Only 11% of the projected increase is due to reproductive change among persons already resident in Florida in 1985. The remainder is due to net migration into Florida. Because the movement of persons who are developmentally disabled seems to be part of a general stream of migration to Florida rather than a separate one, the demands placed upon the state's infrastructure to prevent deterioration of per capita service levels is affected by decisions made elsewhere and the state must largely react to changes in service demand created by population change rather than playing an active role in shaping it.

Sources of Structural Change for the UK Service Industries 1979–84

Over the period 1979 to 1984 the UK economy experienced severe structural change in that the oil and services sectors increased their share of employment and output, whilst the share of manufacturing fell by about 5 percentage points. This paper uses input–output tables for 1979 and 1984 to decompose the changes in output of total marketed services and the component industries into the changes due to price changes and those due to volume changes. The volume changes are, in turn, decomposed into those internal to the service industries, e.g. changes in demand for business services by communication, and those external to the industries, e.g. changes in demand for services by manufacturing. The analysis is done at a 101-industry level with results presented in the paper for the five service industries, Distribution and Catering, Transport, Communications, Business Services and Other Market Services. The paper is intended to give insight into the answers to the following questions: How much of the increase in...