Harris Reports Research Articles

The Assurance of Standards at Masters level: An empirical investigation

This article presents the findings of a study of 94 Postgraduate Taught Masters programmes (PGTMs) offered in twelve Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the UK. It is based on interviews with administrators and with degree programme directors. Documentation was also analysed. The study was commissioned by the HEQC/QAA as a result of the recommendations of the Harris and Dearing Reports. The study reveals wide variation in regulatory frameworks relating to Masters programmes and in the design of programmes, but consensus on the defining characteristics of work at this level and the nature of benefits that students obtain. While institutional procedures for initial approval and validation appear to be rigorous and effective, the ongoing assurance and monitoring of standards is heavily dependent on the external examiner system and informal academic networks with virtually no systematic staff development or benchmarking in place. Several issues are identified in relation to the proposed national typology of courses/levels.

Joint Supervision and the PhD: safety net or panacea?

ABSTRACT This paper provides an analysis of the 1996 Harris report of postgraduate education. Arguably the most comprehensive report on postgraduate education in recent years, the Harris report is an important statement concerning present and future funding and organisation of postgraduate education in the UK. This paper focuses on issues of postgraduate supervision raised in the review and links them to some of the findings of a five‐year research programme which has focused on the socialisation and supervision of doctoral students in six disciplines. The paper engages with issues relating to the research environment in which postgraduate study is to be located, codes of practice for postgraduate work and different approaches to supervision. In particular, the paper discusses differences in supervision which occur between the social and natural sciences and considers the role and feasibility of joint supervisory arrangements. The paper has particular salience in the light of the results of the most recent Research Assessment Exercise and the continued growth in postgraduate education throughout the UK.

Reply: Scientific inquiry and fish stock assessment in the Canadian Department of Fisheries and OceansandReply: The interplay of policy, politics, and science

The collapse of Atlantic cod was the unifying theme of Memorial University’s EcoResearch project “Sustainability in a cold ocean coastal environment.” The project entailed a broad-scale examination of the history, context, and consequences of that collapse. One objective was to analyze the role of science in fishery management decisions. The research question that became the title of our paper (Hutchings et al. 1997) was developed within that framework. We concluded that an environment in which information can be controlled, for whatever reason, is not one in which the scientific process can exercise its full potential. Our attention was drawn to the institutional structure that results in such an environment. After identifying what we perceived to be undesirable consequences of having science fully integrated within government, we posed the question, how should the structure be changed? Doubleday et al.’s (1997) comment is a welcome contribution to this examination. They make the valid point that the present stock assessment review process is more open to nonDFO employees than in the past. However, they charge that by misinterpreting and selectively quoting from Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) documents, Hutchings et al. (1997) “give a false impression of stock assessments of Northern cod in the 1980s and 1990s.” Because of our comparatively minor treatment of northern cod stock assessments, Doubleday et al.’s point of departure is surprising and draws attention away from the main points of our perspective. We examined neither the structure of stock assessment models nor their ability to estimate stock size and fishing mortality, rendering superfluous the discussion of the Alverson and Harris reports by Doubleday et al. Doubleday et al. (1997) describe the stock assessment review process presently used by the DFO. We agree that the recently modified system has many desirable aspects. For example, the presence of fishers and non-DFO scientists at assessment meetings has been viewed in a positive light by all parties. However, the integration of outsiders in the assessment process is not nearly as complete as Doubleday et al. imply. First, assessment documents are not written in a form readily accessible to non-scientists. Second, in Atlantic Canada, involvement of non-DFO scientists can range from a full review of assessment documents received prior to assessment meetings (a good practice) to a simple response to general open invitations to attend meetings and provide comment (a considerably less effective practice). However, involvement by nonDFO employees in actual stock assessment data analysis, i.e., running and tuning Virtual Population Analyses (VPAs), is rare, if it occurs at all. Thus, in practice, the production of, and the ability to comprehensively review, stock assessment documents remains a DFO “in house” affair in many important respects. Doubleday et al. (1997) appear to have misunderstood our discussion of scientific concerns regarding northern cod in 1986. We focused on the convergence of conclusions among DFO and non-DFO scientists regarding both the overestimation of northern cod biomass and the underestimation of fishing mortality on this stock. We cited Winters (1986) because of the many uncertainties that he identified. Although scientific uncertainty with respect to stock size and fishing mortality prompted several recommendations by CAFSAC at the time, it was not until 1989 that these uncertainties were reflected by somewhat reduced catch quotas. Doubleday et al. (1997) do not explain why these significant recommendations were not enacted within the time frame specified by CAFSAC. Regarding the projected increases in northern cod spawning stock biomass between 1992 and 1994 (Doubleday et al. 1997), these were based on numbers-at-age estimates from VPA. Uncertainties in these numerical estimates were not quantified. In addition, the projections did not account for the well-known “retrospective” problem associated with VPA numerical estimates (Smith and Gavaris 1993; Myers and Cadigan

Critical mass and doctoral research: Reflections on the Harris report

ABSTRACT Drawing on empirical research in a number of academic disciplines, and on contrasting doctoral research training in laboratory sciences with that in social sciences, the article examines the notion of ‘critical mass˚s, which has informed recent policy and debate about research training in the UK. Based on a critique of the Harris Review of Postgraduate Education, it is argued that such policy perspectives are insensitive to the fundamental differences between academic cultures and modes of organisation in different academic disciplines.

Discussion of The Impact of U.S. Tax Law Revision on Multinational Corporations' Capital Location and Income-Shifting Decisions and Geographic Income Shifting by Multinational Corporations in Response to Tax Rate Changes

The principal research question in these papers involves transfer pricing: Did multinational corporations shift income into the United States following the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA 86) to minimize worldwide taxes? To address this question, Harris compares the tax expense and income of multinationals domiciled in the United States (U.S. multinationals) to the tax expense and income of U.S. domestics and to the income of foreign corporations. Klassen, Lang, and Wolfson (henceforth KLW) use geographic segment disclosures by U.S. multinationals to divide income into domestic and foreign sources. They compare the changes in domestic and foreign income to determine whether tax-motivated income shifting occurred. The results from these papers are inconclusive and puzzling. Consistent with income shifting, Harris reports that U.S. multinationals paid more U.S. taxes and reported more U.S. income than U.S. domestics from 1987-90 and reported less foreign income than foreign compa-

Timing of Psychosocial Changes in Women’s Lives

This symposium focuses on understanding developmental experiences in the adult lives of women, including the nature of psychosocial changes and their relation to chronological age, family-cycle phase, and historical time. Harris, Reinke, and Ellicott report on a research program oriented to hypothesis testing. They interviewed 124 middle-class women randomly selected from seven age-groups (30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, and 60) about their life experiences retrospectively. Noteworthy findings included major transitions associated with ages 27–30 and with the preschool, launching, and postparental phases of the family cycle. In particular, the family cycle, which implies a context of relationships and social roles, illuminated many psychosocial regularities across women’s lives. In her discussion, Hancock describes some theory-generating research which suggests that women’s developmental crises, precipitated by ruptures in relationships, challenge assumptions about relationships and impel women toward active self-emergence.

The Teaching of Psychology in High Schools: A Review of the Literature

~HE EARLIEST DATE at which psychology was introduced into the high school as a separate area of instruction appears to be 1910. Harris reports it was added at about that time to the Kansas high-school curriculum as an elective subject open to Seniors, with a course in either biology or physiology as a prerequisite (18). Courses and course materials with psychological content had, of course, been in the schools long before 1910, but this review is concerned only with the teaching of psychology as such. From 1925 to 1930, William F. Linehan, dean of the Teachers College of the City of Boston, headed a committee studying the educability of the emotions. This committee produced three manuscripts: The Educability of the Emotions: A Suggested Discussion Approach (23), Fear (24), and Controlling Self-assertion (25), which were designed to provide a guide to a discussion approach to these topics. Pupils were to be given an opportunity to talk about fears and thwartings in general, and their own fears and thwartings in particular. Fear found some use in Boston high schools, though it was intended primarily for use in Grades VII and VIII. Controlling Selfassertion never reached the stage of publication. In the 1930's there was evidence of

"DIATHERMY IN CALCIFIED SUBDELTOID BURSITIS"

To the Editor: —Arthur L. Fisher (The Journal, October 24, p. 1324), San Francisco, takes good exception to the article on Action of Diathermy in Calcified Subdeltoid Bursitis, by Dr. Joseph F. Harris (The Journal, October 10, p. 1134). In that article Dr. Harris reports only one case. Dr. Fisher also cites the well known occurrence that for some unknown reason the calcification of bursae sometimes disappears without treatment. This could hardly be the situation with Dr. Harris' case, the symptoms of which condition existed seven years. I have had a few cases of this condition to treat in which diathermy plus static brush discharge has been used, and at the meeting of the American Academy of Physiotherapy in New York during September, 1923, eleven such cases were reported. All the roentgenograms and their diagnoses, both before and after treatment, were made outside my office, some of them having been

ON THE GENUS AGROTIS

In the Reports of Dr. Harris and Prof. Riley and some other State Entomologists, the structural characters of the genus Agrotis are not given, and the term is evidently loosely applied to cover certain Noctuidæ known as “cut-worms.” In Dr. Harris's Report, as I have shown, the moth Hadena devastatrix (the Agrotis devastator of Brace) is considered to be an Agrotis, while Agrotis Clandestina, which has the structural characters of Agrotis, is referred to the old Linnean gents Noctua, now without standing in our lists. The three genera to which the “cut-worms” are referable, Agrotis, Hadena and Mamestra, are separated in the Preface to my list of the Noctuidæ, p. 3. April, 1874, by their characters.