Local Peer Research Articles

The Pastoral Needs of International Students in New Zealand Secondary Schools.

A study of some 400 international students reveals that they are, on average, modestly successful in coping with the challenges of settling into the local school and peer community. While they receive support from other overseas-born students, many teachers, and some local peers, their integration into the peer community remains thwarted by the perceived attitude of local peers. These findings form a background of current research evidence against which the potential of specific pastoral care provisions can be explored and developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of New Zealand Journal of Counselling is the property of New Zealand Association of Counsellors and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Minority game with peer pressure

To study the interplay between global market choice and local peer pressure, we construct a minority-game-like econophysical model. In this so-called networked minority game model, every selfish player uses both the historical minority choice of the population and the historical choice of one's neighbors in an unbiased manner to make decision. Results of numerical simulation show that the level of cooperation in the networked minority game differs remarkably from the original minority game as well as the prediction of the crowd–anticrowd theory. We argue that the deviation from the crowd–anticrowd theory is due to the negligence of the effect of a four point correlation function in the effective Hamiltonian of the system.

Peer review time: how late is late in a small medical journal?

Background Timeliness is an important attribute of peer review because it brings information promptly to its users. This has become even more important with the development of on-line submission and on-line peer review. Small journals usually must rely on regular mail and traditional peer review. We evaluated the review time in a small medical journal outside of mainstream science. Methods We analyzed 1,346 editorial requests for manuscript peer review sent from the Croatian Medical Journal to 690 reviewers from February 1998 to December 2001. Results Peer reviewer response rate was 78.6% (1,057 of 1,346 requests for review) and median review time was 29 days (95% confidence interval [95% CI] = 28–31 days). Of returned reviews, 554 (52.4%) arrived on time (before the deadline established by the editor) and the others arrived late. Median delay was 12 days (95% CI = 10–15 days). There was no difference in delay for Croatian- and non-Croatian-authored manuscripts, but more reviews of articles on clinical medicine were delayed than those on public health. More reviews from non-Croatian or male reviewers were never returned to the editors. For reviews that arrived late, those from male reviewers were more delayed than those from female reviewers (median, 13 days, 95% CI = 11–15 days vs. median, 8 days, 95% CI = 5–12 days, respectively). Logistic regression analysis revealed that odds for reviewer's positive response to an editorial request for manuscript review were greater for female Croatian reviewers, who received up to three review requests. Conclusions Peer review time in a small general medical journal may be comparable to review times in larger and more prestigious journals. Choice of reviewers may improve the expediency of peer review: editors from small journals may profit from building and educating local peer reviewers, bearing in mind that female reviewers may provide more expedient reviews.

Developing effectiveness: Frontline perspectives

The pursuit of 'effectiveness' is a predominant theme in contemporary probation and, increasingly, in all forms of social work. Even if it were accepted that empirical research studies have identified some principles of effective programmes, there would still be room for differing organisational and educational approaches to fostering effectiveness. This article explores the contributions and limitations of different forms of managerialism to this purpose, as well as the potential contribution that a renewed professionalism might offer. In addition, the author reports some of the findings of an in-depth qualitative research study which explored frontline workers' perspectives on the definition and delivery as well as the development of effective probation. Focussing mainly on findings concerning workers' views about factors which might have been expected to influence the development of their effectiveness, the author notes that workers had mixed views about the contributions of education, training and supervision, and stressed the significance of local peer influences. They also reported a disjunction between education and research on the one hand, and practice on the other. It is argued that, although this disjunction is consistent with managerialism in some senses, it will undermine efforts to develop effectiveness. Therefore in the concluding discussion, the author explores the roles that academics as researchers and educators might usefully play in fostering effectiveness.

Cancer Education Among Primary Care Physicians in an Underserved Community; Cancer Screening and Prevention Practices of Inner-City Physicians

Am J Prev Med 2000;19:53–58, 59–62 These reports from a New York epidemiology group explored knowledge about and practice of cancer prevention strategies among primary care physicians from north Manhattan, Harlem, and south Bronx. Inner-city physicians were less knowledgeable about cancer prevention and screening guidelines than surveyed national and local peers, although 98% claimed to usually recommend Pap smear screening. Barriers to provision of cancer prevention services included lack of time and lack of reimbursement; only 11% cited cultural differences as a major barrier. An intervention trial explored the utility of academic visits to clinicians' offices, which were defined as educational sessions conducted by the survey team to improve knowledge about the value of various screening and health maintenance measures, including Pap smears. The cancer prevention teams did not find significant improvement in clinicians' scores that were designed by the researchers to measure cognitive knowledge about screening and health maintenance when tested on the subject, though the authors speculated that the lack of improvement was due to a pre-test study that may have artificially raised scores. Comment: Indigent urban women, often from minority groups, suffer disproportionately from cervical cancer. Reducing this burden requires educated clinicians who will recommend screening. Although inner-city clinicians appear to know less than local and national peers about cancer prevention in general, further education did not improve screening, and they do appear to be highly aware of Pap smear screening guidelines. These studies evaluated self-reported not actual practice, which may be limited by time and financial barriers. (LSM)

Cost Efficiency in Australian Local Government: A Comparative Analysis of Mathematical Programming anf Econometrical Approaches

A sample of one hundred and seventy‐seven New South Wales’ local governments is used to compare the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier approaches to cost efficiency measurement. The results suggest that the choice of reference technology implies different levels of efficiency and rankings for identical samples and thereby has a dramatic influence on the policy implications drawn from frontier cost efficiency measures. Notwithstanding these comments, DEA and stochastic frontiers should be thought of as complementary tools in the analysis of local public sector efficiency. In the first instance, the frontier adheres closely to the notion of best‐practice efficiency, whereas in the second it refers to an absolute measure of efficiency. Clear advantages thereby accrue to DEA in identifying benchmark local governments and peer groups for comparison, while the stochastic frontier permits the opportunity for direct comparison with other institutional milieus.

Uneasy alliances: managed care plans formed by safety-net providers.

Health care providers that have traditionally served the poor are forming their own managed care plans, often in alliance with local safety-net peers. These alliances make it easier to raise needed capital, increase the pool of likely enrollees, and enable plans to benefit from efficiencies of scale. At the same time, however, the alliances often are undermined by conflicts of interest among the different sponsors and between the sponsors and the plan. This paper suggests that these plans are most likely to do well when the state makes special efforts to help and when plans have the leadership and financial reserves to take advantage of their supportive state policies.

Using a Virtual Room Platform To Build a Multimedia Distance Learning Environment For The Internet

Introduction The rapid rate at which new technologies and related products are invented or updated is certainly one of the defining characteristics of our time. This phenomenon is both a result of, and a driver for, more efficient and effective modes of education. Clearly without a well-educated work force we would not have the kinds of advances that are commonplace today; but it is equally clear that the pace of these advances make education and re-education ever more important to everyone, both as workers as well as consumers. Just at the time that education and training have taken on increased importance in society due to the pace of technology, we now find that education itself is a prime candidate for reinvention via new technology. The technologies that have brought us the personal computer, the Internet, and multimedia, have made revolutionary change in education a real possibility (Laws, 1996; Lawrence, 1996). The use of the is expected to dramatically decrease education costs. For example, in the case of corporate training, online education means less traveling for employees, hence lower costs. The should also make it possible for remote students to have access to the renowned instructors in a subject, as well as allow for broader student interactions: instead of just interacting with their local peers, students can interact with their counterparts anywhere in the world. (Unless otherwise noted, we use the term Internet to include intranets as well.) Some of the functionality needed for interactive internet-based education is obvious, such as the use of shared audio, video, and objects, such as whiteboards, or applications in a classroom. Other functionality, such as multimedia recording and indexing (see below), may appear more exotic, but may eventually become commonplace features of such environments. The system discussed in this paper, Persyst, currently supports all the functionality discussed above as well as additional functions. In this paper, however, we will not discuss video or application sharing at all, since these have been added to the system only recently. Clearly new technology can impact the ways things are done, and equally clearly, people are often resistant to change. Common sense tells us that users are more likely to accept innovation if they perceive it as arising within a familiar context. For education this means trying to preserve activities such as live interaction among students and instructors, the role of the instructor as lecturer, etc. Therefore, the challenge for internet-based education systems during a transitional era is to allow educators and trainers to work from known models, while simultaneously letting them experiment with innovations without requiring frequent retooling. Providing non-programmers with the power to easily create and customize instances of distance learning environments is just as important as providing them with such environments at all. Indeed, distance learning is just one example of a remote collaboration environment using multimedia technologies for which the notion of providing a flexible platform for user customization makes a lot of sense. The same considerations apply to areas such as online customer service, technical support services, and so on. Work in distance learning, of interest in its own right, is also a test bed for our attempt to define a set of primitive classes for building remote collaboration environments, and then to build toolkits using these classes, and other more specific classes, that will address the particular requirements of various collaboration environments. Our basic premise is that the virtual room concept (Ahuja, Ensor, and Horn, 1988), together with other fundamental concepts, provides such a foundation. The first step in achieving this goal is to build a software development platform using these basic general concepts, and then show how specific instances of collaboration environments, such as distance learning systems, can be built on top of this platform. …

Adolescent Immigrants' Well-Being: The Case of Ethnic German Immigrants in Germany

About 3.5 million citizens in Germany are so-called Aussiedler.This is a group of ethnic Germans whose ancestors used to live in various countries of Eastern and Southeastern Europe. The political changes in the post-Soviet nations resulted in a steady influx of ethnic Germans, who in most regards resemble immigrants but, due to particularities of German laws, are eligible for immediate citizenship in contrast to about 8 million former “guest workers” and their families who are treated as aliens. In this article, we report a study on 220 adolescent Aussiedler and their parents. In a four-wave longitudinal design, the course of well-being after immigration and some predictors of individual differences in their adaptation were investigated for a group of novices (0 to 18 months of residence in Germany) and a group of experienced Aussiedler (19–36 months of residence), both on average 13.5 years of age. Results showed, first, that in line with previous research on immigrants in other cultures, well-being gradually improved from rather low levels soon after immigration. Second, the predictors of inter-individual differences were distinguished by length of residence. Among the experienced group, more improved levels of well-being were observed at the final assessment, if the adolescents shared their families' decision to emigrate, were given more leeway for their own decisions, came from families with higher cohesion, and engaged in leisure activities with local age-mates. In contrast, newcomers were better off affectively if their parents shared less collectivist value orientations and if they entertained fewer contacts with local peers. These distinct patterns were interpreted against the backdrop of social comparison processes with local German age-mates. The article concludes with some informed speculations about differences from other groups of immigrants in Germany.

Relaying the message of safer sex: condom races for community-based skills training.

This paper describes a community-based HIV prevention program designed to improve confidence in condom use skills by giving community members 'hands-on' experience in using condoms correctly. A condom race activity which had been effective in increasing condom skills confidence among university students in the US was modified and implemented with the general population in rural Northeast Thailand. In addition to providing training in condom use skills, the condom race was part of an integrated condom promotion and distribution campaign which responded to needs identified by the community, built upon the credibility and influence of local leaders and peers, and extended access to condoms into rural communities. Local leaders who had participated in a training-of-trainers program organized condom races in their communities, serving as positive role models for community acceptance of condom use. The condom race stimulated community discussion about condoms and increased participants' feelings of self-efficacy in correct condom use. Participation in the condom race activity was particularly empowering to women, who reported increased confidence in their ability to use condoms and to suggest using condoms with their partners after the race.

Quality management of occupational health services: The necessity of a powerful medical profession

Over the past few years there has been a growing interest in quality management in occupational health services. In this article the central role of the medical profession in this area is highlighted from a personal point of view. It is argued that a powerful and active profession is needed as a countervailing power in the field of tension between employees and the company, and for balancing the interests of these two main clients. Therefore, the medical profession should develop a policy on quality and apply quality management on national and local levels to reach a high professional level. In this way the profession can maintain the clinical autonomy that is necessary to be a countervailing power. Elements of such quality management are national guidelines, local peer review and intercolleagual visitation. These activities must be incorporated in the quality management of the occupational health services unit.

Inter‐university cooperative learning: an exploratory study

This paper presents some preliminary findings from continuing action research involving university students of Education and examines the creation of a community of learners through the use of electronic media for remote collaboration. The main goal of this community was the design and implementation of a Web site about the curricula content of two parallel courses. The research focussed on the evaluation of the impact of technologies on communication processes among local peers and remote peers, and on the role of experts in the learning process. Qualitative analyses were conducted on information gathered from videorecordings of local interactions, personal portfolios, and cognitive maps. Students also completed rating scales on their perceptions of desired and actual function fulfilment (direct instruction, cognitive scaffolding, and affective scaffolding) by local and remote peers and tutors in the accomplishment of goals.

The viability of minority-owned banks

The poor performance of minority-owned banks that has been widely documented in the literature over the last three decades is not due to their operating environments. Even after local market conditions are considered, the findings of this study reveal that black and Hispanic banks generally underperform their nonminority peers competing in the same marketplace. High levels of government deposits in minority banks did not improve the long-term viability of these institutions. The one exception appears to be the Asian-American banks which are not found to be significantly different from their local nonminority peer banks.

Audience Awareness in Technology-Mediated Environments

Fifth graders interacted with their teacher, local, and distant peers over a telecommunications network. Activities included developing and exchanging questions, responses to questions, and descriptive compositions with their audiences. The investigation focused on how the information exchanges impacted students' development of audience awareness in written discourse. The fifth graders were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups where they were instructed to construct an informative composition that would be read by 1) their teacher, 2) a self-selected classmate, or 3) their distant peers. Analytic and holistic scoring procedures were applied to determine differences in the performance of students' writing performances for the different audiences. Compositions directed to the distant audiences consisted of more elaborations, better organization and cohesion, and overall, a higher interest level. Those prepared for the local peers received the relatively lowest ratings. Results are discussed in the context of the literature base relevant to the importance of audience considerations in discourse.

School Adaptation of Greek Children after Remigration

The aim of the study is to explore the patterns of adjustment of Greek remigrant children (coming from the former Federal Republic of Germany) as compared to their peers in the Greek public schools. Teacher, peer, and self-ratings were used and achievement data were obtained. The sample consisted of two age groups, elementary and secondary school students of public schools in Greece. The remigrant students were divided into two groups ("early return" and "late return") based on the year of return to Greece, and the control group consisted of all the classmates of the students. Return students were found to experience problems mainly in school performance. Contrary to the authors' hypotheses, remigrant students do not seem to experience any severe interpersonal or intrapersonal problems as compared to their local peers, indicating a rather smooth psychosocial adjustment. The authors' findings underscore the importance of the right time for remigration.

Development of a community mammography registry: experience in the breast screening program project.

To assess the formation, implementation, and operation of a community mammography registry, which is a consolidated database for all mammography and breast biopsy reports within a community. A registry was created in Lee County, Fla. Mammography interpretation data were provided by 13 facilities and 38 radiologists organized in several private practice groups. The registry contains data on 87,926 mammograms and 3,234 breast biopsies performed between June 1991 and May 1994. The registry calculates individual and group mammography interpretation accuracy measures, such as sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, false-positive and false-negative rates, and clinical outcome measures such as sizes and stages of malignant lesions detected. The registry allows community radiologists and mammography practices to compare their outcomes with those of their local peers and to published data and encourages focused interventions for quality improvement based on objective experience.

Costs vs Quality in Different Types of Primary Care Settings

To determine the relationship between efficiency in use of resources and quality of care provided by physicians serving as the usual source of care for patients in a state Medicaid program. Retrospective quality-of-care review of 2024 outpatient medical records of 135 providers sampled from system-wide Medicaid claims data in Maryland. Providers in three types of practice settings (hospital outpatient clinic, community health center, and physician's office) were stratified into three case mix-adjusted resource use groups (high, medium, and low). A sample of patients with the diagnoses of diabetes, hypertension, asthma, well-child care, or otitis media were identified from Medicaid claims forms from visits during 1988. Case mix was controlled by the application of the ambulatory care groups, a method that characterizes populations according to their burden of morbidity. Nurses from the local peer review organization audited medical records using explicit criteria for quality of care in several categories: evidence of impaired access, evidence of compromised technical quality, evidence of inappropriate care, outcome of care, and several generic indicators of quality. Well-adult care was assessed for patients with the adult diagnoses. Although there were some systematic differences by type of facility in some aspects of quality of care (more access problems for patients in hospital clinics and more technical quality problems for patients in office-based practice), there were no consistent differences in quality of care overall for patients in different types of settings and no consistent relationships between cost-efficiency and quality of care. However, patients in medium-cost community health centers had the best or second best scores for most of the 21 comparisons of type of quality assessed. Quality of care provided for common conditions in primary care is not associated with costs generated by providers. Policies directed toward the choice of low-cost vs high-cost providers will not necessarily lead to a deterioration in the quality of care. States can both improve quality and lower costs by consistent monitoring of programs over time. The finding of generally higher quality of care for patients in medium-cost community health centers deserves further study.

Costs vs quality in different types of primary care settings

<h3>Objective.</h3> —To determine the relationship between efficiency in use of resources and quality of care provided by physicians serving as the usual source of care for patients in a state Medicaid program. <h3>Design.</h3> —Retrospective quality-of-care review of 2024 outpatient medical records of 135 providers sampled from system-wide Medicaid claims data in Maryland. <h3>Subjects.</h3> —Providers in three types of practice settings (hospital outpatient clinic, community health center, and physician's office) were stratified into three case mix—adjusted resource use groups (high, medium, and low). A sample of patients with the diagnoses of diabetes, hypertension, asthma, well-child care, or otitis media were identified from Medicaid claims forms from visits during 1988. Case mix was controlled by the application of the ambulatory care groups, a method that characterizes populations according to their burden of morbidity. <h3>Main Outcome Measures.</h3> —Nurses from the local peer review organization audited medical records using explicit criteria for quality of care in several categories: evidence of impaired access, evidence of compromised technical quality, evidence of inappropriate care, outcome of care, and several generic indicators of quality. Well-adult care was assessed for patients with the adult diagnoses. <h3>Results.</h3> —Although there were some systematic differences by type of facility in some aspects of quality of care (more access problems for patients in hospital clinics and more technical quality problems for patients in office-based practice), there were no consistent differences in quality of care overall for patients in different types of settings and no consistent relationships between cost-efficiency and quality of care. However, patients in medium-cost community health centers had the best or second best scores for most of the 21 comparisons of type of quality assessed. <h3>Conclusions.</h3> —Quality of care provided for common conditions in primary care is not associated with costs generated by providers. Policies directed toward the choice of low-cost vs high-cost providers will not necessarily lead to a deterioration in the quality of care. States can both improve quality and lower costs by consistent monitoring of programs over time. The finding of generally higher quality of care for patients in medium-cost community health centers deserves further study. (<i>JAMA</i>. 1994;272:1903-1908)

The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory by P.J.C. Field (review)

276A RT HURIANA towards violently disruptive behaviour had alienated his local peers - the Suffolk esquire John Belsham perhaps being a comparable, if rather more extreme, example from the 1430s (P.C. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: EastAnglia 1422-1442, Oxford, 1992: 154-66) - than of the 'very special prisoner' whom the Lancastrian authorities were detetmined to keep under lock and key (117) proposed here. (It may be wotth noting that, Fauconberg apart, the only magnate apparently prepared to take an active interest in Malory by the mid-i450s was the duke of Norfolk, whose involvement in East Anglian local affairs was characterised by consistently poor political judgement, and who had been the only landowner from that region, gentle or noble, prepared to offer support to John Belsham.) TheLifeand Times ofSir Thomas Malory is a noteworthy and painstaking examination (presented, frustratingly, without a bibliography) of the surviving evidence relating to the man who, in all probability, wrote the Morte Darthur. However, largely because of the limitations of the source material, it is a book which rarely comes to life. It is a shame that such momentum as the text gathers is most often provided by the personal tone with which previous work on Malory's life (particularly that of Matthews and Carpenter) is criticised - a tone which seems ill-judged both in terms of analytical style, and because the points at issue are frequently not as clear-cut as Dr Field suggests. HELEN CASTOR Jesus College, Cambridge p.j.c. field, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory. Arthurian Studies 29. Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, N.Y: D. S. Brewer, 1993. Pp. x, 218. isbn: 085991 -385-6. $53.00. This should not be the first biography of Sir Thomas Malory that you read, but it should be the last. Given the paucity ofevidence regarding the life ofThomas Malory of Newbold Revel, it is a staggering achievement to say so much so economically as Field does; Kittredge's work, after all, was just a pamphlet ( Who Was Sir ThomasMahry? Boston, 1897), and Flick's (Sir Thomas Malory: His Turbulent Career, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1928) a slim volume. Here, Field amasses a wealth ofprimary documentary evidence and fleshes out Malory's profile from the work ofthe Warwickshire historian Christine Carpenter (Locality and Polity: A Study ofWarwickshire Landed Society 1401pp , Cambridge: 1992). However, since the latest book-length treatment of the author of the Morte took him to be someone other than the knight of Newbold Revel (William Matthews, The Ill-FramedKnight: A SkepticalInquiry into the Identity ofSir Thomas Malory, Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1966), and since R.R. Griffith and others have recently put forward yet another candidate for serious consideration ('The Authorship Question Reconsidered: A Case for Thomas Malory of Papworth St. Agnes, Cambridgeshire,' Aspects ofMalory, ed. Toshiyuki Takamiya and Derek Brewer, Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1981: 159-77), it was obviously necessary to justify Field's choice before relating any of the subject's life. Thus, he devotes the first two REVIEWS277 chapters to establishing the claim for Sir Thomas ofNewbold Revel and to disproving the others. Of the nine candidates for authorship, one 'is certainly Sir Thomas of Newbold Revel under a different appellation' (6); the second, an M.P. for Bedwin and Wareham, Field suggests was the same person (94-96); the third was a fiction 'created by John Bale'(7) the sixteenth-centuty antiquarian; a further four Field discounts on the grounds either that they were not knights or did not have sufficient social rank or income to have been granted knighthood; and this leaves two: the subject ofthe book, and Thomas Malory ofHutton Conyers in Yorkshire, favoured by William Matthews. Field builds a convincing case that this latter candidate was not a knight, and therefore also not the author of the Morte. In the second chapter, Field argues persuasively that the four documents cited by Matthews as referring to Thomas Malory of Hutton Conyers actually refer toThomas Malory ofNewbold Revel. All this depends, ofcourse, on likelihood, rather than categorical proof. The whole book is such; but all the evidence is so circumstantial that the matter can hardly be decided otherwise. There...

Appropriating others' words: Traces of literature and peer culture in a third-grader's writing

ABSTRACTMikhail Bakhtin's notion of appropriation is a potentially powerful way to conceptualize discourse development in children. Typically, studies of discourse development have emphasized structural aspects of text. However, children appropriate not only forms, but also words, themes, purposes, and styles. From a developmental point of view, the concept of appropriation raises at least three questions: What is it that children appropriate? Where do they get their material? And what do they do with that material? In an attempt to make sense of appropriation as a developmental construct, we examine one third-grader's writing: Suzanne's book, The missing piece. We find that Suzanne appropriated material from two major sources: (a) adult-authored text – Margaret Sidney's novel, Five little Peppers and how they grew – and (b) the meanings and values of a stratified local peer culture. We conclude by discussing the significance of this work for future research on children's discourse development. (Discourse development, Mikhail Bakhtin, peer culture, social context of writing, children's writing, appropriation)