Observations of the bright radio sources in the North Celestial Pole region at the RATAN-600 radio telescope

A survey of the North Celestial Pole region using the RATAN-600 radio telescope at five frequencies in the range 2.3 to 21.7 GHz is described. Sources were chosen from the NVSS catalogue. The flux densities of 171 sources in the Declination range +75 to +88 are presented; typical flux density errors are 5-10 percent including calibration errors. About 20 percent of the sources have flat spectra or a flat component.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures; to be published in Astronomy and Astrophysics (without last figure with the spectra of the observed sources

DoNCP: Incorporating step two of the Nutrition Care Process into hospital dietetic practice using an implementation package

The Nutrition Care Process (NCP) and accompanying International Dietetic and Nutrition Terminology (IDNT) has been endorsed internationally as the standard model for nutrition care. However, there is limited published Australian literature on the implementation of the NCP and IDNT including the attitudes, knowledge and support requirements of dietitians to facilitate this. This study aimed to develop and test a survey to assess attitudes, support and knowledge of NCP and use the findings in conjunction with literature to design and implement a NCP package and evaluate the package. The research was conducted in two phases: (1) formative research to inform development of the implementation package, and (2) implementation and evaluation. Phase One involved dietitians from two hospitals who had undergone informal NCP implementation in Queensland (termed “postimplementers”) and three hospitals in Western Australia who were yet to implement the NCP (termed “pre-implementers”) completing an online questionnaire, Attitudes Support Knowledge NCP survey (ASK NCP). This questionnaire surveyed demographics, knowledge, familiarity, confidence, support, value, barriers and training requirements for NCP. From this a NCP implementation package and resources were developed for the implementation of step two of the NCP specifically, in conjunction with literature and a change management framework. In Phase Two, the NCP implementation package was implemented over a 5-month period at two test hospitals that were yet to undergo implementation, whilst a control hospital did not receive the package. Evaluation occurred by re-administering the ASK NCP survey to the test and control sites and by conducting focus groups at the test sites. The fist phase of the study demonstrated that post-implementers had higher knowledge scores, were more familiar with NCP and more confident to implement then pre-implementers. Time required to implement was a concern for all participants. Lack of knowledge, training/support and resources were barriers to implementation for the pre-implementers. Post implementers identified that dedicated time to practice and regular tutorials; support and leadership from management; and professional growth through understanding how change could benefit practice were keys to successful implementation. Phase Two showed that the resulting NCP implementation package led to significantly higher NCP knowledge scores and confidence to use step two in practice within the test group. Emerging themes from focus groups included the usefulness of the package to build confidence, the value of education and resources, peer support and leadership team establishment. This research has resulted in the development of a structured NCP implementation package focusing on step two of the NCP, for hospital dietitians that utilises a change management framework to support NCP in practice. The evaluation of the package provides support for future implementation of NCP in clinical dietetic practic

Engaged Citizens: A Tale of Status, Satisfaction or Structure? A Study of Citizens’ Willingness to Participate in Mini-Publics

Based on the reported participatory shift from traditional political channels to non-traditional channels, scholars are emphasising the importance of continuously developing the political channels through which individuals are able to act in order to maintain levels of political participation and political satisfaction. In 2017, Bergen municipality formed the Local Democracy Committee to investigate the need for democratic reform in the city, and despite finding stable levels of political participation, they recommended the implementation of mini-publics to ensure that the level of political participation and satisfaction is maintained. Incorporating such democratic innovations necessitates a knowledge of who wants to engage, who does not, and how they should be created to pique citizens' interests. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to uncover the determinants of the wish to participate in mini-publics. Because there is no explicit theoretical framework for this type of participation, the study controls for internal and external levels of political efficiency as potential causes for participatory inclination in regard to mini publics, which have been heavily emphasised as important determinants in classical political participation theory. I use an OLS regression to uncover whether the traditional individual-level determinants of participation in traditional political channels are also important factors for participation in mini-publics, and data from a survey experiment is used to assess patterns of complex, multidimensional structural composition favourability in a conjoint analysis. The findings suggest that predicting the willingness to participate in mini-publics in accordance with internal levels of political efficacy may be insufficient, however, the analysis finds that younger people are more inclined to participate. The structural components of mini-publics, on the other hand, were employed as sources of external efficacy and were found to be influential predictors of the willingness to participate. Individuals were found to value financial compensation for their participation, secret votes, and to receive a formal invitation through the process of random selection. In order to further elaborate on the findings, subsequent conjoint analyses are included, analysing the relationship between the mini-publics’ potential structural composition, but also whether these preferences vary according to subgroup affiliation.MasteroppgaveSAMPOL350MASV-SAP

Climate change lifestyle narratives among Norwegian citizens: A linguistic analysis of survey discourse

The present study proposes an analysis of climate change (CC) narratives in answers to an open-ended survey question, where we ask what a climate-friendly lifestyle may imply. The representative survey has been conducted online by the Norwegian Citizen Panel/DIGSSCORE, located at the University of Bergen. The survey provided 1,149 answers from respondents across Norway. The analysis combines a lexical and a text linguistic approach (Fløttum & Gjerstad, 2017), based on Adam's (2008) analysis of the narrative text sequence (initial situation–complication–(re)action–resolution–final situation), and inspired by the Narrative Policy Framework's (NPF) notions of plot and narrative characters (Jones et al., 2014). Our analysis identified four main topics: consumption, transportation, politics, and energy, while the cast of characters is dominated by the first-person singular, frequently portrayed as hero, and the first-person plural in a predominantly villainous role. The frequent use of negation and argumentative connectives reflects the contentious nature of the issue.publishedVersio

Taxing the 1 per cent: Public Opinion vs Public Policy

Recent studies suggest that public policy in established democracies mainly caters to the interests of the rich and ignores the average citizen when their preferences diverge. I argue that high-income taxation has become a clear illustration of this pattern, and I test the proposition on a least likely case: Norway. I asked Norwegians to design their preferred tax rate structure and matched their answers with registry data on what people at different incomes actually pay in tax. I find that within the top 1 per cent, tax rates are far below (by as much as 23 percentage points) where citizens want them to be. A follow-up survey showed that this divergence is entirely driven by capital incomes being taxed too low. My results suggest that even in a reasonably egalitarian society like Norway, the rich get away with paying considerably less in tax than what people deem fair.publishedVersio

The Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008 and the aggregate demand for consumption

Households in the Nielsen Consumer Panel were surveyed about their 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment. In estimates identified by the randomized timing of disbursement, the average household׳s spending rose by 10 percent the week it received a Payment and remained high cumulating to 1.5–3.8 percent of spending over three months. These estimates imply partial-equilibrium increases in aggregate demand of 1.3 percent of consumption in the second quarter of 2008 and 0.6 percent in the third. Spending is concentrated among households with low wealth or low past income; a household׳s spending did not increase significantly when it learned about its Payment.Sloan School of ManagementNorthwestern University (Evanston, Ill.). Kellogg School of ManagementUniversity of Chicago. Initiative for Global MarketsNorthwestern University (Evanston, Ill.). Kellogg School of Management. Zell Center for Risk ResearchHarvard University. Laboratory for Applied Economics and Polic

Self-reported reasons for (not) being worried about climate change

A national sample from Norway (N = 2001) was asked to report how much they worry about climate change (closed-ended question), and then to write down their reasons for (not) being worried (open-ended question). Answers to the open-ended question were content analyzed and compared across responses to the closed-ended question. The results showed that the most common reason for being at least somewhat worried was concern about the consequences of climate change. Respondents reporting high worry were in particular more likely to bring up consequences for humans than those reporting medium worry. Respondents who reported low worry referred to a broader range of reasons in their answers, such as believing in natural rather than human causes of climate change, expressing a sense of optimism towards potential solutions, or being discontent with political measures or public discourse on climate change. These findings add novel insights into understanding the subjective meaning associated with the degree to which people report being worried about climate change.publishedVersio

Why Don’t Households Smooth Consumption? Evidence from a $25 Million Experiment

This paper evaluates theoretical explanations for the propensity of households to increase spending in response to the arrival of predictable, lump-sum payments, using households in the Nielsen Consumer Panel who received $25 million in randomly distributed stimulus payments. The pattern of spending is inconsistent with models in which identical households cycle rapidly through high and low- response states as they manage liquidity, but is instead highly predictable by income years before the payment. Spending responses are unrelated to expectation errors, almost unrelated to crude measures of procrastination and self-control, significantly related to sophistication and planning, and highly related to impatience