Framing Decisions Research Articles

Bringing Politics into SAI

AbstractIn order to advance a neatly deductive argument, Christopher J. Preston must make a number of assumptions and framing decisions that exclude important practical points from the scope of his analysis. We do not criticize him for doing so, as these simplifications allow him to advance a concise argument about an ethically complex subject. However, as scholars of politics and law, we are interested in what this ethical argument means—and does not mean—for the messy politics of climate engineering. Accordingly, in our response we unpack the political implications of some of Preston's assumptions and framing decisions in an effort to add a layer of practical richness to the abstraction of Preston's analysis.

Health Promotion Through the Media: Challenges and Opportunities

Aim: The world is changing from day to day, developing new tools of communication. The greatest tool developed in the 21 st century is the media. Media provides news of all kinds, including health information. The aim of this study is to describe the role of media, analyzed according to the case study of swine flu news in newspapers in Turkey. Method: This study seeks to examine the way in which swine flu (and the subsequent actions and discussion) was reported in the Turkish press, with particular attention to the framing devices used and the factors that might influence these framing decisions. Newspapers were chosen to represent the media as the design of the study. Influenza-related news for two consecutive years was chosen as the analytical subject; 575 related news reports were found. Results: There were 496 news reports in the first study year, and 50 in the second. Influenza news occurred primarily (300 news sources) between October-December 2009, while only 14 appeared during the same period in the second year. It was observed that the news pieces were initially located on first pages/covers and the upper part of the pages, covering larger areas. Disease and prevention related pictures were chosen at the crisis point, in particular. In the second year, the area occupied by swine flu news was smaller, occurring on inner pages and written by reporters (p<0.05). Conclusion: Health-related media content is provided when the subject is high on the public agenda, and if the issue poses a threat to the society, such as during crisis periods. In fact, protection is more important for health, so that health related topics should be provided in advance of crisis periods. KeywordsHealth; News; Communications Media; Newspapers; Pandemic

Explaining the Efficacy of Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV Prevention: A Qualitative Study of Message Framing and Messaging Preferences Among US Men Who have Sex with Men.

We investigated message comprehension and message framing preferences for communicating about PrEP efficacy with US MSM. We conducted eight focus groups (n=38) and n=56 individual interviews with MSM in Providence, RI. Facilitators probed comprehension, credibility, and acceptability of efficacy messages, including percentages, non-numerical paraphrases, efficacy ranges versus point estimates, and success- versus failure-framed messages. Our findings indicated a range of comprehension and operational understandings of efficacy messages. Participants tended to prefer percentage-based and success-framed messages, although preferences varied for communicating about efficacy using a single percentage versus a range. Participants reported uncertainty about how to interpret numerical estimates, and many questioned whether trial results would predict personal effectiveness. These results suggest that providers and researchers implementing PrEP may face challenges in communicating with users about efficacy. Efforts to educate MSM about PrEP should incorporate percentage-based information, and message framing decisions may influence message credibility and overall PrEP acceptability.

How far does it feel? Construal level and decisions under risk

Research has shown that framing decisions as gains or losses distorts human judgment. Human judgment is also assumed to be influenced by the actual level of construal. Whether decisions are construed in a more detailed manner (low level construal) or in a more abstract manner (high level construal) can depend on perceived psychological distance. In the present studies, we examined the influence of framing and psychological distance on risk taking. In three studies with students (n=65), physicians (n=60), and hotel managers (n=39), we found evidence that construal level influences risk seeking in gain situations, but not in loss situations. Furthermore, the framing effect could be replicated in psychologically close situations, and was eliminated (Studies 1 and 2) or reversed (Study 3) in psychologically distant situations. Our findings illuminate the interplay of framing and construal level, and points out their applicability in organizational decision making.

The promotion of domestic grid-connected photovoltaic electricity production through social learning

An effective social learning process which enhances public understanding of photovoltaic installations in residential dwellings and the economic instruments used by governments to encourage investment in this form of energy is regarded as an important component of implementing renewable energy policy in Australia. The development of social learning was explored in deliberative workshops conducted in 2005 and 2012 in New South Wales, Australia. Participants had informed discussion of the operation of photovoltaic panels and how such panels could be integrated into domestic building structure and the economic instruments used by their State and Federal governments to encourage the installation of grid-connected photovoltaic systems. Their attitudes to the technology and investment were surveyed at the end of the workshops. The participants expressed favourable attitudes toward the design, reliability and environmental benefits of such technology and positive attitudes towards the building integration of such panels. However, despite this, the participants were unwilling to invest in this technology, primarily because in 2005 they perceived the financial benefits of doing so as being marginal and in 2012 they were framing investment decisions in terms of reductions in tariff rates since 2010 rather than current returns. Social learning principles can provide a range of benefits for communication and decision making in the informed promotion of grid-connected photovoltaic technology. Public perceptions and citizens’ investment decisions should move beyond framing decisions relative to subsidy levels to consider long-term investment returns. Retailers and installers of residential photovoltaic systems in Australia are encouraged to promote the option of building-integrated panels given favourable preferences shown for such technology.

Modelling Force Flows in a Wood Light-Frame Buildings

Questions associated with analysis and design of wood light-frame buildings are addressed with emphasis on three-dimensional system analysis. Specifically, concepts for very detailed finite element modelling are presented along with verification based on full system and substructure experiments. Such detailed modelling is not intended for application in normal design practice but is a necessary precursor to framing decisions about design level practice and development of associated provisions in timber design codes. Ongoing activities are applying what is discussed within the context of the Canadian code system and potentially others.

Message Framing and Perinatal Decisions

Message Framing and Perinatal Decisions

Women's Political Discourse: A 21st Century Perspective

Women's Political Discourse: A 21st Century Perspective. By Molly Mayhead and Brenda Devoe Marshall. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 2005. 304 pp. 26.00 paper.Political discourse has proven a worthy source of material for scholarly investigation into power, politics, and policymaking. Policy scholars have frequently used discourse to explore issue framing, media content, and policy decisions (e.g., Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics, 1993; Roger W. Cobb and Charles D. Elder, Participation in American Politics: The Dynamics of Agenda Building, 1983; Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox, 1997; Nayda Terkildsen, Frauke I. Schnell, and Cristina Ling, “Interest Groups, the Media, and Policy Debate Formation: An Analysis of Message Structure, Rhetoric, and Source Cues,” Political Communication 15 [1998]: 45–61). As a tool for investigating abortion debates (e.g., Myra Marx Ferree, William Anthony Gamson, Jurgen Gerhards, and Dieter Rucht, Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the U.S., 2002) or sex education (e.g., Janice M. Irvine, Talk about Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the U.S., 2002), discourse also reveals the gendered dimensions of contemporary American politics. At the same time, this insight is not lost on advocates and opinion leaders: “Words are … bullets” in the culture wars, says James Dobson, founder of the conservative evangelical group Focus on the Family (quoted in Irvine 2002, 73).

Can real-options analysis improve decision-making? Promises and pitfalls

Executive Overview Managers are faced with uncertainty in nearly every aspect of their decisions. Reducing uncertainty, then, often leads to better decisions and greater potential firm success. The real-options literature provides one tool to reduce uncertainty. A real option is commonly defined as any decision that creates the right, but not the obligation, to pursue a subsequent decision. Used effectively, these options can minimize losses while preserving potential gains. Real options are used both formally, as a modeling tool for specific decisions, and informally, as a perspective for framing decisions in a different light. We separate real options into four distinct types—immediate entry, immediate exit, delayed entry, and delayed exit. We then provide additional understanding into how they differ and how each can reduce uncertainty. We also suggest that firms should use all four types of real options to search for additional benefits beyond uncertainty reduction. We identify several pitfalls to avoid, as well as processes to help avoid such pitfalls as escalation of commitment. In addition, we show that real options are as vulnerable to the frailties of managers as are other types of decision tools, frailties which may affect both the appropriate writing and exercising of a real option. A real-options perspective encourages both low-cost trials, where failure is not catastrophic, as well as a conscious search for benefits that may emerge from the learning embedded inside the option.

Income Rights, Mothers' Rights, or Workers' Rights? Collective Action Frames, Organizational Ideologies, and the American Welfare Rights Movement

Previous research highlights how social movement organizations (SMOs) strategically construct collective action frames in light of their political and cultural environments in order to maximize community support. We argue that activists' organizational ideologies, in interaction with their political and cultural environments, shape their framing processes. SMOs form collective action frames that are consistent with their organization's core norms, values, and beliefs. SMOs are more or less instrumental in their framing decisions, depending on the qualities of their organizational ideology, a characteristic which helps to determine organizational success and survival. We use this perspective to explain the framing choices of three kinds of welfare rights groups and their consequences.

COALITION FORM AND MOBILIZATION EFFECTIVENESS IN LOCAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Little has been written on the form that coalitions take in social movements. Three months of fieldwork by a five-person team documented the population of social movement events (SMEs) across seven movements in a Southwestern city. We investigated the process and form that led to these events at the interorganizational level. Three different coalition forms, as well as single social movement organizations (SMOs) acting alone, organized the SMEs. The network invocation form a single SMO making strategic and framing decisions while encouraging other SMOs in its network to mobilize participants was significantly more effective than other forms at mobilizing attendance at events.

Frame related restrictions, cores and Shapley values

In an earlier paper Ryan (1998c) showed how a multi criteria approach to decision making can be used as a general means of modelling the process of framing decisions. In this paper we extend these frame related ideas to secure an explicitly frame related generalization of the linear programming characterizations of the emptiness or nonemptiness of the core of an N person characteristic function game by Scarf and by Charnes and Kortanek. As an extension of this idea we then derive an explicitly framed linear programming characterization of Shapley’s coalition building motivation for the derivation of the Shapley value for an N person game. In that way we not only generalize the Shapley value to cases in which the number of players is endogenous but also determine critical values of framing parameters which in turn determine conditions under which the Shapley value is (or is not) in the core. In that context we introduce the idea of negative probabilities associating these with differences from relatively larger event spaces -and thence with the anticipation of growth of an event space. (Here such growth will be induced by opportunities to grow coalitions and in that way to realize previously unattainable probabilities of formation of relatively larger coalitions of cardinality S ⊆ N.)

Multiple criteria and framing of decisions

This paper shows how a multi criteria approach to decisionmaking can be used as a general means of modelling the process of framing decisions. A multi objective goal programming approach is used to show how well known linear and nonlinear programming models, including the constant sum game, the distribution (transportation) model and peak load pricing problems can be seen as preemptively framed specializations of more general non preemptive specifications. In these specializations choices of optimal frames and of optima within those frames can be seen as potentially interactively optimizing parts of an overall multi criteria decisionmaking process. The paper also shows how this new way of modelling such interactions can be highly significant and leads directly to new kinds of frame related motivations for Allais-like revealed preference reversals and resolutions of the more for less and more for nothing paradoxes in the distribution model.

Early Discharge of Newborns-Reply

In Reply —Drs Cass and Volk suggest that the NNT concept should be applied to inform decisions about the trade-offs between postpartum hospital days and newborn readmissions. Based on findings from the studies by Dr Liu and colleagues ' and by Dr Edmonson and colleagues, 2 they calculate that society and insurers would be expected to pay for an estimated 232 additional days of postpartum hospitalization to save an estimated 2.5 newborn readmission days. We believe that framing decisions about early discharge in terms of a trade-off between LOS and newborn readmissions oversimplifies the relationship between services and outcomes. The experiences of Dr Cook and colleagues, who describe the range of services associated with a voluntary early-discharge program offered by their managed care organization in Connecticut, suggest that we should consider the full span of relevant services actually received by mothers and infants before, during, and after the postpartum hospital stay, rather than

When Individual Child Psychotherapy Exacerbates Family Systems Problems in Child Abuse Cases: A Clinical Analysis

Children who have suffered physical or sexual abuse are as vulnerable as adult trauma victims to experience `secondary trauma', in which the reactions of the family or broader system exacerbate the child's difficulties. Three clinical cases are presented that suggest that this secondary trauma can be made worse by either excessive or insufficient provision of individual child psychotherapy, and the way the system interprets and reacts to these clinical decisions. Types of secondary trauma and their interactions with clinical decisions are discussed. Ways of framing clinical decisions to minimize the potential secondary trauma are presented.

Mental accounting and categorization

Mental accounting is an oft-discussed type of decision framing in which individuals are hypothesized to form psychological accounts of the advantages and disadvantages of an event or option. Most discussions of mental accounting have focused on the consequences of framing decisions in this manner rather than on the processes underlying mental accounting. Close examination of these processes suggests they are the same as the processes described in categorization, schema, and script theories. The present manuscript provides insights into the processes hypothesized to underlie mental accounting. This is accomplished by documenting the conceptual equivalence of selected categorization and mental accounting principles and by using empirical data to illustrate the similarity of the principles. In doing so, a mental account is treated as a type of category.

Pressure Politics and Resources Administration

W A TRITING IN THE tenth and fifty-first essays of The Federalist, NV VMadison concluded that the great virtue of the federal union and the separation of powers was that the variety of interests and territory embraced by the United States would render a majority of the whole either incap-able or indisposed to invade the rights and interests of other members of the community. Even, however, if a majority were to discover its common, motive and power, he thought that it would be difficult for it to act in u.nison. As a deterrent to democratic government in the eighteenth century, the effectiveness of Madison's proposition does not seem open to serious challenge. The real question is whether, in the twentieth century, it ought to be materially revised to take into account the prolific growth of pressure groups and their special relationships with legislative committees and administrative agencies. Would it not be more accurate to say that at present, because of the variety of sentiments growing out of the diversity of geographic, cultural, economic, ethnic, and other factors in the United States, particular interests are actually forced to discover their strength and to pursue their objectives, often with little serious regard for a majority or national interest? Among the current problems awaiting rational public decision, the orderly conservation of water an.d land resources is caught up in this web. While much of the recent discussion concerning the failure to develop a comprehensive policy has centered in devising workable administrative machinery, one may ask whether the difficulty does not lie much deeper in a constitutional system which was deliberately intended to frustrate majority action. Many of the obstacles to be overcome in framing legislative and administrative decisions regarding this matter are illustrated by the history of the Salt-Wahoo flood control project in southeastern Nebraska and its relation with the Watershed Protection and Flooid Prevention Act of 1954. Hailed initially as an example of true co-ordination between federal agencies and a local interest group in resources development and later damned as an instance