Decision-making In Matters Research Articles

Ways of telling new parents about their child and his or her mental handicap: a comparison of doctors’and parents’views

Views about ways of telling parents their child has a mental handicap were collected from a group of parents of children with mental handicaps and a group of doctors with some involvement in this field, using postal questionnaires. Four Likert-type scales were refined covering views about the fullness of information, how early parents should be told, whether parents should be protected from shock and unpleasant information, and who should take a primary role in decision-making. Results indicated that parents were more in favour of being given information about their children's handicaps at an early stage than doctors were, and that they saw themselves as the primary decision-makers in matters to do with their children, whilst doctors were more neutral about this. There were no differences in how parents and doctors felt about the fullness of explanations or about the explicit 'protection' of parents from shock and unpleasant information. The results support the findings of other studies which have stressed parents' wishes to be given as much information as early as possible and to be treated as the people primarily responsible for their child. In addition, a difference between what doctors believe to be the best approach and what parents believe to be the best approach is suggested, and the importance of doctors being given opportunities to learn directly from parents and people with mental handicaps themselves is emphasized.

Analyzing Web Server Statistics

The World Wide Web is regarded widely as an invaluable asset to teaching and extension programs. Data supporting this assertion can be gathered actively or passively and can be analyzed to aid decision makers in matters of personnel evaluation and resource allocation. Most Web server software applications keep a log of connections by time, location, and file size transferred. The server logs of Aggie Horticulture, the Web site of the Texas Horticulture program, are analyzed bi-weekly using WebStat 2.3.4 and the number of logins, file size transferred (total and amount per sub-site), and client domain are tabulated. The number of “hits” increased from 15,000 to 120,000 per month (mid-February to mid-March of 1995 and 1996, respectively) over the last year. The logins came from 61 Internet domains representing 56 different countries. The “net” and “com” domains exhibited the greatest increase. “Active” data acquisition through a guest register at one of the sub-sites indicated that only 9% of the visitors registered. However, the data obtained from the active registrants were useful in determining the distribution of users by state and county within Texas.