Superannuation fund choice: Opening Pandora's box

Informed choice is essential for the choice of superannuation fund objectives to be met, but significant barriers to informed choice presently exist. These barriers include an absence of relevant information disclosures by superannuation funds and the greater problem of members who are unable or are unwilling to exercise choice. While the first barrier could be overcome by establishing standardised measures of fund performance, the potential problem of large numbers of workers not exercising choice requires rethinking the default option. A possible solution is the establishment of a universal default fund

Financial literacy : an essential tool for informed consumer choice?

Increasingly, individuals are in charge of their own financial security and are confronted with ever more complex financial instruments. However, there is evidence that many individuals are not well-equipped to make sound saving decisions. This paper demonstrates widespread financial illiteracy among the U.S. population, particularly among specific demographic groups. Those with low education, women, African-Americans, and Hispanics display particularly low levels of literacy. Financial literacy impacts financial decision-making. Failure to plan for retirement, lack of participation in the stock market, and poor borrowing behavior can all be linked to ignorance of basic financial concepts. While financial education programs can result in improved saving behavior and financial decision-making, much can be done to improve these programs’ effectiveness

Informed consent, or, consent on a form : an ethical or legal dilemma? : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University

Informed consent is a worthwhile concept but in my view it does not work within the hospital institution in New Zealand. Why? • Because the continued emphasis in theory and in practice is still on consent rather than choice and so the focus of the healthcare professional continues to be a signed consent form rather than the process of informing leading to choice? • Because, to 'fully' inform and to ensure a person 'fully' understands is impossible...fully should be replaced with 'substantially' to make informed consent possible. • Because the underlying principle of the present model of informed consent is autonomy, a Western concept centered on individualism, a view that is not held by all healthcare professionals or all healthcare consumers. A combination of autonomy, cross-cultural approach, 'ethics of care', and feminist perspective needs to be incorporated within moral theory that informs bioethics - ensuring the patient is viewed as autonomous and relational. • And lastly, to accommodate true informed consent/choice a different approach to the relationship within the clinical encounter needs to happen; one of effective communication, collaboration and shared decision-making

Informed choice and public health screening for children: the case of blood spot screening

Objective: To examine parents' and health professionals' views on informed choice in newborn blood spot screening, and assess information and communication needs. Design and participants: A qualitative study involving semi-structured telephone interviews and focus groups with 47 parents of children who were either found to be affected or unaffected by the screened conditions, and 35 health professionals with differing roles in newborn blood spot screening programmes across the UK. Results and conclusions: Parents and health professionals recognize a tension between informed choice in newborn blood spot screening and public health screening for children. Some propose resolving this tension with more information and better communication, and some with rigorous dissent procedures. This paper argues that neither extensive parent information, nor a signed dissent model adequately address this tension. Instead, clear, brief and accurate parent information and effective communication between health professionals and parents, which take into account parents' information needs, are required, if informed choice and public health screening for children are to coexist successfully

Individually Rational, Balanced-Budget Bayesian Mechanisms and the

We investigate the issue of implementation via individually rational ex-post budget-balanced Bayesian mechanisms. We demonstrate that all social choice rules that generate a nonnegative ex-ante surplus, including ex-post efficient ones, can generically be implemented via such mechanisms for any profile of the utility functions. The aggregate expected surplus in these mechanisms can be distributed in an arbitrary way. Also generically, any ex-post efficient social choice rule can be implemented in an informed principal framework, i.e. when the mechanism is offered by one of the informed parties. Only ex-post efficient social choice rules that allocate all surplus to the party designing the mechanism are both sequential equilibrium outcomes and neutral optima, i.e. outcomes that can never be blocked. This result implies that even an informed principal can extract all surplus from players in a Bayesian mechanismmechanism design, individual rationality, ex-post budget balancing, surplus allocation, informed principal.

The Curse of Knowledge in Economic Settings: An Experimental Analysis

In economic analyses of asymmetric information, better-informed agents are assumed capable of reproducing the judgments of less-informed agents. We discuss a systematic violation of this assumption that we call the "curse of knowledge." Better-informed agents are unable to ignore private information even when it is in their interest to do so; more information is not always better. Comparing judgments made in individual-level and market experiments, we find that market forces reduce the curse by approximately 50 percent but do not eliminate it. Implications for bargaining, strategic behavior by firms, principal-agent problems, and choice under un-certainty are discussed

Psychometric Properties of the Altarum Consumer Engagement (ACE) Measure of Activation in Patients with Prediabetes.

BackgroundPatient activation is associated with better outcomes in chronic conditions.ObjectiveWe evaluated the psychometric properties of the 12-item Altarum Consumer Engagement™ Measure (ACE-12) in patients with prediabetes.ParticipantsACE-12 was administered to patients in the Prediabetes Informed Decisions and Education Study.Main measuresWe conducted an exploratory factor analysis followed by confirmatory factor analytic models. We evaluated item response categories using item characteristic curves. Construct validity was assessed by examining correlations of the ACE-12 scales with education, depressive symptoms, self-rated health, hemoglobin A1c, body mass index, and weight loss.Key resultsParticipants (n = 515) had a median age of 58; 56% were female; 17% Hispanic; 54% were non-White. The scree plot and Tucker and Lewis reliability coefficient (0.95) suggested three factors similar to the original scales. One item loaded on the navigation rather than the informed choice scale. Ordinal alpha coefficients for the original scales were commitment (0.75); informed choice (0.71); and navigation (0.54). ICCs indicated that one or more of the response categories for 5 of the 12 items were never most likely to be selected. Patients with lower education were less activated on the commitment (r = - 0.124, p = 0.004), choice (r = - 0.085, p = 0.009), and overall score (r = - 0.042, p = 0.011). Patients with depressive symptoms had lower commitment (r = - 0.313, p ≤ 0.001) and overall scores (r = - 0.172, p = 0.012). Patients with poorer health scored lower on the Commitment (r = - 0.308, p ≤ 0.001), Navigation (r = - 0.137, p ≤ 0.001), and overall score (r = - 0.279, p ≤ 0.001).ConclusionThe analyses provide some support for the psychometric properties of the ACE-12 in prediabetic patients. Future research evaluating this tool among patients with other chronic conditions are needed to determine whether Q1 (I spend a lot of time learning about health) should remain in the informed choice or be included in the navigation scale. Additional items may be needed to yield acceptable reliability for the navigation scale

Workplace 2000: A Delphi-Study

[Excerpt] Prognosticate and one thing is certain: you are likely to be wrong. Then why speculate about Workplace 20001 Because Boulding is right; as the future unfolds, surprise is preferable to astonishment. Informed speculation enhances anticipation and understanding, the bases of informed decision-making. It produces a vision with which to agree or disagree, and the means to ascertain why. If the vision proves disagreeable, there is a baseline from which to plot a preferred scenario. For in the end, Workplace 2000 will emerge not from prediction, but from choice

Professionalism, prejudice and personal taste: does it matter what we wear?

An earlier opinion piece considered the professional issues surrounding the occupational therapist’s dress code within the work place (Davys et al, 2006). This second paper considers the role of the occupational therapist when a client choice of clothing may conflict with social expectations and negatively impact upon social inclusion. Three practice based scenarios are presented, which serve as the prompts for reflection upon informed choice, professional responsibilities and the therapeutic relationship. This paper concludes that there needs to be debate about the conflict between each of these areas and the concept of social inclusion