Substantive Contributions Research Articles

Build on Success: CIPHI Challenges for the Next Millennium

Build on Success: CIPHI Challenges for the Next Millennium

Democracy is good for the poor: A procedural replication of Ross (2006)

Here I propose procedural replication as a method for diagnosing errors and omissions and identifying research artifacts in published studies. The goal of procedural replication is not to make substantive contributions so much as improve research practice, or how scientists go about doing science. This is accomplished by generating checklists of lessons learned that scholars can use to assess the reliability of new or existing studies, guide editorial reviews, and make scientific knowledge production more reliable. I demonstrate the method by implementing a procedural replication of Michael Ross’s controversial finding that democracy has no effect on child mortality. I find this null finding is an artifact of the way five-year averages were computed and the static nature of the preferred model. I demonstrate, using causal diagrams, how concerns about listwise deletion and selection bias affecting previous studies may have been overstated. I also provide a checklist with lessons learned.

Fracture Healing via Periosteal Callus Formation Requires Macrophages for Both Initiation and Progression of Early Endochondral Ossification

The distribution, phenotype, and requirement of macrophages for fracture-associated inflammation and/or early anabolic progression during endochondral callus formation were investigated. A murine femoral fracture model [internally fixed using a flexible plate (MouseFix)] was used to facilitate reproducible fracture reduction. IHC demonstrated that inflammatory macrophages (F4/80(+)Mac-2(+)) were localized with initiating chondrification centers and persisted within granulation tissue at the expanding soft callus front. They were also associated with key events during soft-to-hard callus transition. Resident macrophages (F4/80(+)Mac-2(neg)), including osteal macrophages, predominated in the maturing hard callus. Macrophage Fas-induced apoptosis transgenic mice were used to induce macrophage depletion in vivo in the femoral fracture model. Callus formation was completely abolished when macrophage depletion was initiated at the time of surgery and was significantly reduced when depletion was delayed to coincide with initiation of early anabolic phase. Treatment initiating 5 days after fracture with the pro-macrophage cytokine colony stimulating factor-1 significantly enhanced soft callus formation. The data support that inflammatory macrophages were required for initiation of fracture repair, whereas both inflammatory and resident macrophages promoted anabolic mechanisms during endochondral callus formation. Overall, macrophages make substantive and prolonged contributions to fracture healing and can be targeted as a therapeutic approach for enhancing repair mechanisms. Thus, macrophages represent a viable target for the development of pro-anabolic fracture treatments with a potentially broad therapeutic window.

Much More than Money: Remittances and Human Development

In Migrant Remittances and Development in the Global Economy, Manuel Orozco analyzes “the ways that migrant remittances operate worldwide and the implication of these inflows for developing countries” (p. 1). He defines development broadly defining it as “a condition that enables individuals and society to enjoy a healthy quality of life, be free, have opportunities for upward mobility, and improve their material circumstances” (p. 5). Orozco aptly argues that the regulations that shape marketplaces and financial service access in both the host and home states also shape remittances' impact on development. Orozco supports his claim using comparative analyses of four major remittance corridors: the United States to Latin America and the Caribbean; Japan to Southeast Asia; Russia to Central Asia and the Caucasus; and Europe to Western Africa. Remittances and Development is empirically and theoretically strong in the sense that it employs a variety of original studies to identify and describe how remittances have a positive impact on human lives. Its description of remittance trends and the myriad of regulations that shape them is a particular strength. Orozco also covers an impressive range of subjects regulations and remittance trends, including the role of microfinance institutions, migrant philanthropy through transnational organizations, and nostalgic trade. However, this wide scope limits the depth of discussion and, ultimately, the book's substantive contributions.

Energieeffizienz als Verwaltungsaufgabe

<bold>Energy Efficiency as a Governance Task</bold> Both German as well as European law contain manifold and dynamic rules that aim at enhancing energy efficiency. In the context of the German <italic>Energiewende</italic> (Energy Reforms), these rules are of utmost importance. The emphasis of the energy efficiency law is on rules on the efficient use of buildings and products. In addition, there are some general provisions as well as rules regarding the efficiency of energy production. The instruments used are manifold. Regulative rules are complemented by various duties of information, which are meant to induce citizens’ and companies’ behaviour that is conscious about energy efficiency. Finally, public authorities bear an exemplary role. To this mixture of instruments corresponds a mixture of competences for the pursuit of the aims of energy efficiency law. The administration is equipped with a central function which is also visible in terms of administrative organisation. Various obligations to create transparency and to trigger the relevant incentives are added to government’s traditional executive function. Next to this, energy efficient public procurement is important. But energy efficiency law also requires substantive contributions of private individuals going as far as to privatise the implementation of that important task.

The Third-Person Effect Goes to Congress

This article examines floor speeches of members of the U.S. Congress, who introduced and supported legislation regarding online pornography, to test the current understanding of the Third-Person Effect (TPE). This article makes three substantive contributions to the TPE literature. First, the article confirms the presence of the TPE in a context where people are empowered to engage in actual censorship. Second, this article utilizes a naturalistic method as opposed to the self-report and experiment-based methodologies that dominate the TPE literature. Third, this article identifies subtleties of the TPE that have not yet been examined fully in past scholarship.

Time to get serious? Psychiatric/mental health nurses and an evidence-informed drug policy for the USA

In 2001, Portugal enacted what, for some, was a radical shift in its national drug policy, decriminalized drugs, and implemented a treatment-driven response to drug use. Empirical evaluation of the impacts of this policy “U-turn” continues and the evidence produced so far is both consistent and convincing. It seems by almost any measurement, the Portuguese experiment of drug decriminalization/treatment-driven responses, has been a resounding success. However, these empirical findings do not yet appear to have influenced national drug policy in the USA, which continue to regard decriminalization as “radical” and “extreme”. Similarly disturbing is the lack of substantive contributions to this debate from nurses, especially Psychiatric/Mental Health (P/MH) nurses, which is troubling in a number of ways. Therefore what the authors do in this paper is: first, highlight Portugal's drug decriminalization policy and the evidence forthcoming from evaluations. Second, illuminate the disconcerting lack of substantiv...

Practice-centred evaluation and the privileging of care in health information technology evaluation.

BackgroundElectronic Patient Records (EPRs) and telemedicine are positioned by policymakers as health information technologies that are integral to achieving improved clinical outcomes and efficiency savings. However, evaluating the extent to which these aims are met poses distinct evaluation challenges, particularly where clinical and cost outcomes form the sole focus of evaluation design. We propose that a practice-centred approach to evaluation - in which those whose day-to-day care practice is altered (or not) by the introduction of new technologies are placed at the centre of evaluation efforts – can complement and in some instances offer advantages over, outcome-centric evaluation models.MethodsWe carried out a regional programme of innovation in renal services where a participative approach was taken to the introduction of new technologies, including: a regional EPR system and a system to support video clinics. An ‘action learning’ approach was taken to procurement, pre-implementation planning, implementation, ongoing development and evaluation. Participants included clinicians, technology specialists, patients and external academic researchers. Whilst undergoing these activities we asked: how can a practice-centred approach be embedded into evaluation of health information technologies?DiscussionOrganising EPR and telemedicine evaluation around predetermined outcome measures alone can be impractical given the complex and contingent nature of such projects. It also limits the extent to which unforeseen outcomes and new capabilities are recognised. Such evaluations often fail to improve understanding of ‘when’ and ‘under what conditions’ technology-enabled service improvements are realised, and crucially, how such innovation improves care.SummaryOur contribution, drawn from our experience of the case study provided, is a protocol for practice-centred, participative evaluation of technology in the clinical setting that privileges care. In this context ‘practice-centred’ evaluation acts as a scalable, coordinating framework for evaluation that recognises health information technology supported care as an achievement that is contingent and ongoing. We argue that if complex programmes of technology-enabled service innovation are understood in terms of their contribution to patient care and supported by participative, capability-building evaluation methodologies, conditions are created for practitioners and patients to realise the potential of technologies and make substantive contributions to the evidence base underpinning health innovation programmes.

Expanding the Boundaries of Entertainment Research: An Epilogue

As editors of this Special Issue, we think the articles contained herein have achieved our stated goal: They expand the boundaries surrounding the social-scientific study of media entertainment through substantive and novel contributions and by providing a road map for future investigations in this burgeoning field. The works collectively offer new insight into the functions and complex processes involved in the entertainment experience and help to develop research agendas that move the field well beyond its previous focus on pleasure and enjoyment. We hope that the reader agrees with this assessment. As a result, we conclude this project more energized than when we started (which is admittedly quite a feat). We are convinced that in the coming decades, entertainment psychology is poised to (continue to) offer the scientific community, academia as a whole, politicians and policy makers, parents, medical professionals and clinical psychologists, religious and spiritual leaders, and folks in all walks of life important and socially significant research. To make this come to pass, scholars must accept the challenge that we see as emanating from the articles: Take these ideas, build upon them, and keep expanding those boundaries. As a final word, we will attempt to do just that.

A Content Analysis of College Reading Association/Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers Teacher Education Publications: Past, Present, and Future

The purpose of this investigation was to conduct a content analysis of the publications of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER), previously known as College Reading Association (CRA), in the area of preservice teacher education in literacy. As a service to the organization, 71 articles published in ALER’s flagship journals between 1961 and 2011 were analyzed. Articles were coded to document descriptive characteristics, topics and issues addressed, and recommendations for improving teacher education. Findings are discussed in light of challenges to teacher educators in general and to ALER’s Teacher Education Division in particular as we continue to raise the bar in terms of making substantive contributions to the improvement of the next generation of teachers.

Big Data in Communication Research: Its Contents and Discontents

I had two goals in mind when I decided to dedicate a special issue of the Journal of Communication to “Big Data.” One was to provide an outlet for the growing number of excellent Big Data studies on mass communication, digital technologies, political communication, health communication, and many other areas of interest to our discipline. My focus was on empirical papers that made substantive contributions using newmethods, rather than on explanations, endorsements, or critiques of the Big Data movement.The goal was to showcase the state of the art in recent research in computational communication science. My second goal was to provide a benchmark for research innovation. Big Data research is still in its infancy in communication. Relatively little of the work done in this early stage will stand the test of time, but all of it will likely be critical in the on going process of conceptual andmethodological advance.The articles featured in this issue represent the best of what is currently being done. Their strengths will guide future work, but so, too, will their limitations.

Patterns and Transitions in Substance Use Among Young Swiss Men

This study investigates the potential stages of drug use. Data from the longitudinal Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factors were used ( N = 5,116). Drug use (alcohol, tobacco, and 16 illicit drugs) over the previous 12 months was assessed at two time points. Patterns and trajectories of drug use were studied using latent transition analysis (LTA). This study’s substantive contributions are twofold. First, the pattern of drug use displayed the well-known sequence of drug involvement (licit drugs to cannabis to other illicit drugs), but with an added distinction between two kinds of illicit drugs (“middle-stage” drugs: uppers, hallucinogens, inhaled drugs; and “final-stage” drugs: heroin, ketamine, GHB/GBL, research chemicals, crystal meth, and spice). Second, subgroup membership was stable over time, as the most likely transition was remaining in the same latent class.

Conceptual and empirical problems with game theoretic approaches to language evolution

The importance of game theoretic models to evolutionary theory has been in formulating elegant equations that specify the strategies to be played and the conditions to be satisfied for particular traits to evolve. These models, in conjunction with experimental tests of their predictions, have successfully described and explained the costs and benefits of varying strategies and the dynamics for establishing equilibria in a number of evolutionary scenarios, including especially cooperation, mating, and aggression. Over the past decade or so, game theory has been applied to model the evolution of language. In contrast to the aforementioned scenarios, however, we argue that these models are problematic due to conceptual confusions and empirical difficiences. In particular, these models conflate the comptutations and representations of our language faculty (mechanism) with its utility in communication (function); model languages as having different fitness functions for which there is no evidence; depend on assumptions for the starting state of the system, thereby begging the question of how these systems evolved; and to date, have generated no empirical studies at all. Game theoretic models of language evolution have therefore failed to advance how or why language evolved, or why it has the particular representations and computations that it does. We conclude with some brief suggestions for how this situation might be ameliorated, enabling this important theoretical tool to make substantive empirical contributions.

Digital crossroads: telecommunications law and policy in the Internet age

In Digital Crossroads, two experts on telecommunications policy offer a comprehensive and accessible analysis of the regulation of competition in the U.S. telecommunications industry. The first edition of Digital Crossroads (MIT Press, 2005) became an essential and uniquely readable guide for policymakers, lawyers, scholars, and students in a fast-moving and complex policy field. In this second edition, the authors have revised every section of every chapter to reflect the evolution in industry structure, technology, and regulatory strategy since 2005. The book features entirely new discussions of such topics as the explosive development of the mobile broadband ecosystem; incentive auctions and other recent spectrum policy initiatives; the FCC's net neutrality rules; the National Broadband Plan; the declining relevance of the traditional public switched telephone network; and the policy response to online video services and their potential to transform the way Americans watch television. Like its predecessor, this new edition of Digital Crossroads not only helps nonspecialists climb this field's formidable learning curve, but also makes substantive contributions to ongoing policy debates.

Comparing learning from observing and from human tutoring.

A promising instructional approach corresponds to learning by observing others learn (i.e., by watching tutorial dialogue between a tutor and tutee). However, more work is needed to understand this approach’s pedagogical utility. Thus, in 2 experiments we compared student learning from collaborative observation of dialogue with 2 other instructional contexts: 1-on-1 human tutoring and collaborative observation of monologue. In Study 1 (N = 50), there was no significant difference in learning outcomes between the dialogue and tutoring conditions, while the dialogue condition was superior to the monologue condition. Study 2 (N = 40), which involved a younger population than in Study 1, did not replicate these results, in that students learned less from observing dialogue than from being tutored, and there was no significant difference between the dialogue and monologue conditions. To shed light on our results, we analyzed the verbal data collected during the 2 experiments. This analysis showed that in Study 1, the dialogue observers generated more substantive contributions than did the monologue observers. In contrast, in Study 2 there was no significant difference between the observers in terms of substantive contributions; moreover, the total number of contributions was modest, which may have hindered observer learning in that study. In general, our findings suggest that collaboratively observing tutorial dialogue is a promising learning paradigm, but more work is needed to understand how to support young students to effectively learn in this paradigm.

Psychologists in medical schools and academic medical centers: Over 100 years of growth, influence, and partnership.

Psychologists have served on the faculties of medical schools for over 100 years. Psychologists serve in a number of different roles and make substantive contributions to medical schools' tripartite mission of research, education, and clinical service. This article provides an overview of the history of psychologists' involvement in medical schools, including their growing presence in and integration with diverse departments over time. We also report findings from a survey of medical school psychologists that explored their efforts in nonclinical areas (i.e., research, education, administration) as well as clinical endeavors (i.e., assessment, psychotherapy, consultation). As understanding of the linkage between behavioral and psychological factors and health status and treatment outcomes increases, the roles of psychologists in health care are likely to expand beyond mental health. An increasing focus on accountability-related to treatment outcomes and interprofessional research, education, and models of care delivery-will likely provide additional opportunities for psychologists within health care and professional education. The well-established alignment of psychologists' expertise and skills with the mission and complex organizational needs of medical schools augurs a partnership on course to grow stronger. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

The “Silent Majority” in Black and White

Over the past decade, mass incarceration has received much scholarly attention from historians, social scientists, and legal scholars. Despite the substantive contributions of this research, the overreliance on functionalist and top–down political explanations has undermined its descriptive force and explanatory power. Many accounts fold the peculiarities and nuances of the “law and order” discourse of the late 1960s and early 1970s—the period during which the seeds of mass incarceration were sown—into neat, imprecise narratives that render black politics invisible and relegate white politics to the stifling abyss of whiteness. Consequently, in order to understand the miscellany of law and order concerns and identify the role African Americans played in the construction of this discourse, this essay returns to the social and cultural context of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It situates the cultural concepts of law and order within local contexts in order to excavate their meanings, relative importance, and relationships. It describes the “black silent majority” and argues that the individual components of law and order were united by class considerations rather than racial motivations.

Svein G Dahl

Svein Dahl, Professor and Chair of Pharmacology at the University of Tromso, and an ACNP Fellow, succumbed to cancer on 8 December 2012. He died at his home near Tromso, Norway, the city where he was born in 1942. Svein spent his entire professional life in the faculty at the University of Tromso, having been appointed in 1976 immediately after obtaining his PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Oslo. Besides creating and maintaining a highly productive psychopharmacology research group in Norway, Svein expanded his capabilities and network of collaborators through a series of sabbaticals. These included stays at Synthelabo in Paris, the University of California, San Francisco, the Universite Rene Descartes, the Universite de Creteil, and at the C.N.R.S. in Montpellier. From 1994 to 1997 he was Research Director at the Institut de Recherche Jouveinal/Parke Davis while maintaining his faculty position. The breadth of his scientific interests and skills are evidenced by his substantive contributions to basic and clinical psychopharmacology. He was an early pioneer in combining computational and molecular graphics techniques to generate three-dimensional models of drug targets and to simulate drug–receptor interactions. Using this approach, he was the first to construct a complete model of a G protein-coupled receptor. His work provided important insights into the molecular dynamics of the interaction of antipsychotics with the dopamine D2 receptor, drug attachment to monoamine transporters, and the actions of antidepressants. In recent years he expanded his work to create pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic models to explain and predict therapeutic and toxic responses to drugs. Svein's work is described in seven patents, eight books, and scores of research and review articles. Among the honors he received were appointments to the Governing Board of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility, the Council of Scientists of the Human Frontier Science Program, and the Steering Group of the Norwegian Research Council's NevroNor Initiative. Besides his scientific interests, Svein was an accomplished saxophonist and an avid fan of jazz history and music. Until the very end he continued performing with his jazz group in Tromso. His enthusiasm for science and music, as well as his creativity, self-effacing personality, and dry wit endeared him to legions of students, co-workers and colleagues across the globe. An ACNP member since 1990, Svein contributed significantly to the College and the discipline, and enriched the lives of all who knew him. He is survived by his wife Janet and their three children.

Self-Plagiarism: Another Reminder to Authors

Self-Plagiarism: Another Reminder to AuthorsThomas H. BerquistAudio Available | Share

Chinese Outward Direct Investment Research: Theoretical Integration and Recommendations

AbstractThis article reports a detailed analysis of 138 peer-reviewed articles in 41 journals published in the last 12 years (2001-2012) that focus on Chinese outward foreign direct investment from a theoretical advancement perspective. It assesses how the topic has been explored both conceptually and empirically and identifies the substantive contributions to the literature using a thematic analysis. The article argues that research on the international expansion of Chinese multinational corporations offers a unique opportunity to extend and develop extant theorizing in four primary research streams: the latecomer perspective; Chinese state and government influences; the dynamics of firms and institutions; and the liability of foreignness. Building on the results of this analysis, the article offers five recommendations as promising ways to open up theoretical inquiry: (1) cross-fertilization among the four research streams; (2) integration of resource- and institution-based theories with other theoretical lenses; (3) research on the process dimensions using a longitudinal approach; (4) adoption of multi-levels of analysis; and (5) consideration of the wider emerging market literature.