Exploiting the Irish Border to Estimate Minimum Wage Impacts in Northern Ireland. ESRI DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 11585, June 2018

This paper examines employment and hours impacts of the 1999 introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) and the 2016 introduction of the UK National Living Wage (NLW) in Northern Ireland (NI). NI is the only part of the UK with a land border where the NMW and NLW cover those working on one side of the border (NI) but not those working on the other side of the border (Republic of Ireland). This discontinuity in minimum wage coverage enables a research design that estimates the impacts of the NMW and NLW on employment and hours worked using difference-in-differences. We find a small decrease in the employment rate of 22-59/64 year olds in NI, of up to two percentage points, in the year following the introduction of the NMW, but no impact on hours worked. We find no evidence that the introduction of the NLW impacted either employment or hours worked in NI

Employment and Hours Impacts of the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage in Northern Ireland, 2017

This report examines the employment and hours impacts of the 1999 introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) and the 2016 introduction of the UK National Living Wage (NLW) in Northern Ireland (NI) using Labour Force Survey data. Because NI is a relatively low-wage region of the UK we might expect minimum wages to have more impact on employment and hours in NI than in other parts of the UK. NI is also the only part of the UK with a land border – the border between NI and the Republic of Ireland (RoI) – where the NMW and NLW cover those working on one side of the border but not those working on the other side of the border. This discontinuity in minimum wage coverage enables a research design that estimates the impacts of the NMW and NLW by comparing changes in employment and hours north and south of the border around the time of the NMW and NLW introductions. In practice we estimate a number of alternative models using this approach. Although no existing study of minimum wage impacts has previously exploited this particular border, there is a long tradition of estimating minimum wage impacts in this way, particularly within the US where the minimum wage varies across states and even within states

An Enquiry into Using Supplementary Bioscience Resources in Health

The learning and teaching of bioscience subjects has been recognised to be problematic for well over 20-30 years. Various reasons have been suggested but it is evident that better support for learning at least is required. Various strategies have been tried and effective online support looks promising, especially as an aid to help those students who struggle with science and for whom English is not their first language. This project sought to introduce an online module designed to support student self-efficacy on the basics of science that are fundamental to gaining an understanding of more advanced bioscience processes. The module went ‘live’ in February 2013 as a voluntary adjunct to curriculum teaching. Though designed with students in mind the subsequent access has been disappointing and raises questions about the willingness of some students to voluntarily access extracurricular material. This might be a focus for further exploration

Appreciative inquiry for stress management

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the innovative application of an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach for the design and implementation of organizational stress management interventions, alongside a case study of the successful design and implementation of the approach. By utilizing the AI methodology to develop a “local stress theory” for the participating organization, the authors propose a model which can be utilized in other similar organizations. Design/methodology/approach: Stage 1: 35 participants completed up to ten daily logs by answering four positively framed questions regarding their working day. Stage 2: semi-structured interviews (n=13). The interview schedule was designed to further elaborate log findings, and begin looking into feasible organizational changes for improvement of stress. Stage 3: two focus groups (Stage 3, total 13 employees) verified interventions from logs and interviews and discuss how these can be implemented. Findings: The log phase identified two key themes for improvement: managerial/organizational support and communication. From these, interviews and focus groups led to workable proposals for simple but likely effective changes. The authors reported findings to management, emphasizing organizational change implementation, and these were subsequently implemented. Research limitations/implications: The study demonstrated the effectiveness of AI to identify and implement relatively simple but meaningful changes. The AI cycle was completed but allocating lengthy follow-up time for evaluation of outcomes was not possible, although initial responses were favorable. There are also issues of generalizability of the findings. Originality/value: This is the among first studies to utilize an AI approach for the design of stress management interventions

Learning from older citizens’ research groups

This article adds to an ongoing conversation in gerontology about the importance of training and involving older people in research. Currently, the literature rarely distinguishes between the one-off involvement of older citizens in research projects and the development of research groups led by older people that sustain over time as well as the nature of educational initiatives that support their development. This article presents a case-study based on evaluative data from the WhyNot! Older Citizens Research Group which has been running independently for nearly eight years. Members’ evaluations of and reflections on the impact of the training programme, explore from their perspective: Why older people want to get involved in research training and research groups, what they value most in the training and the types of impact their involvement has had. Creating an educational environment where participants were able to contribute their knowledge in a new context as well learn new skills through group-work based experiential learning were key. Regular role-modelling provided by inputs from successful established citizen research groups was also important. Of the many benefits members gained from being part of a research group, emphasis was given to the relational aspects of the experience. Likewise the benefits members’ accorded to taking part in training and research transcended individual benefits encompassing benefits to the collective and the wider community. Linking health, social care and educational policies is important in providing coherence and opportunity for older people’s voices to shape research, policy and practice

Releasing latent compassion through an innovative compassion curriculum for Specialist Community Public Health Nurses

Aims: To evaluate the impact of a curriculum based on the Compassionate Mind Model designed to facilitate the expression of compassion in Specialist Community Public Health Nurses. Background: The Compassionate Mind Model identifies that fear of compassion creates a barrier to the flow of compassion. There is some evidence linking self-compassion to compassionate care but no previous research has explored this potential with post registration specialist community public health nursing students. Design: Prospective, longitudinal design using focus group interviews. Methods: 26 students (81% of cohort) agreed to participate in a wider evaluation (2014-2015). For this study, two groups were drawn from those participants (total 13 students) who attended audio-taped group interviews at the course mid- and end-points to explore their perceptions on compassion and compassionate care. Transcripts were analysed thematically. Findings: A number of sub-themes were identified. ‘Cultural change in the NHS’, ‘Workload and meeting targets’ and ‘Lack of time were barriers to compassionate care, as was negative ‘Role modelling’. These were collated under a macro-theme of ‘A culture lacking in compassion’. Secondly, the sub-themes ‘Actualisation of compassion’ and ‘Transformation’ were collated within a macro-theme: ‘Realisation of compassion’. This theme identified realisation of latent compassion from their previous roles that in some transferred into students’ personal lives suggesting a transformation beyond professional attitude. Conclusion: The curriculum facilitated a realisation of compassion in students over the period of the course by enhancing their capacity to be self-compassionate and by actualisation of compassion that had previously been suppressed

Advances in the homogenization of daily peak wind gusts: an application to the Australian series

Póster presentado en: EGU General Assembly 2018 celebrada del 8 al 13 de abril en Viena, Austria.Daily Peak Wind Gusts (DPWG) time-series are valuable data for evaluation of wind related hazard risk to the population and different economic sectors. Yet wind time-series are prone to be affected by inhomogeneities temporally and spatially (e.g. through change of instruments at a site compared to surrounding sites) that may mislead the studies of their variability and trends. The aim of this work is to present the advances in the homogenization of DPWG by analyzing 548 sites time-series across Australia covering the 1941-2016 time period. Due to the low correlation coefficients between these series, especially in the first decades when the station density is much lower, the average wind speed data from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis were tried as reference series. However, their lower correlations with the DPWG data suggests avoiding this approach. We proposed a robust monthly homogenization using the R package Climatol, which detected 353 break-points at the monthly scale. Some of them were supported by the history of the stations, but detailed analysis of the metadata of 35 selected stations did not find a good correspondence since many changes do not necessarily produce inhomogeneities. When NCEP/NCAR reanalysis are used as references, more break-points are detected around 2003, but it is not clear whether they are due to a general change of the DPWG algorithm in the observation network or rather an artifact due to inhomogeneities in the reanalysis series. The monthly dates of the detected break-points were used in a new application of the Climatol package to adjust the series at daily basis, yielding a homogenized and filled DPWG database for assessing the variability of extreme wind events. Resultant trends of the homogenized DPWG series showed the benefits of the homogenization in the form a much lower dispersion of their values.This work has been also supported by the Project “Detection and attribution of changes in extreme wind gusts ove rland” (2017-03780) funded by the Swedish Research Council, and the MULTITEST (Multiple verification of automatic software homogenizing monthly temperatura and precipitation series; CGL2014-52901-P) Project ,funded b ythe Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity

An approach to homogenize daily peak wind gusts: an application to the Australian series

Daily Peak Wind Gust (DPWG) time series are important for the evaluation of wind-related hazard risks to different socioeconomic and environmental sectors. Yet, wind time series analyses can be impacted by several artefacts, both tempo-rally and spatially, which may introduce inhomogeneities that mislead the study of their decadal variability and trends. The aim of this study is to present a strategy in the homogenization of a challenging climate extreme such as the DPWG using 548 time series across Australia for 1941–2016. This automatic homogenization of DPWG is implemented in the recently developed Version 3.1 of the R package Climatol. This approach is an advance in homogenization of climate records as it identifies 353 break points based on monthly data, splits the daily series into homo- geneous subperiods, and homogenizes them without needing the monthly corrections. The major advantages of this homogenization strategy are its ability to: (a) automatically homogenize a large number of DPWG series, including short-term ones and without needing site metadata (e.g., the change in observational equipment in 2010/2011 was correctly identified); (b) use the closest reference series even not sharing a common period with candidate series or presenting missing data; and (c) supply homogenized series, correcting anomalous data (quality control by spatial coherence), and filling in all the missing data. The NCEP/NCAR reanalysis wind speed data were also trialled in aiding homogenization given the station density was very low during the early decades of the record; however, reanalysis data did not improve the homogenization. Application of this approach found a reduced range of DPWG trends based on site data, and an increased negative regional trend of this climate extreme, compared to raw data and homogenized data using NCEP/NCAR. The analysis produced the first homogenized DPWG dataset to assess and attribute long-term variability of extreme winds across Australia.C.A.-M. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 703733 (STILLING project). This work was also supported by the project “Detection and attribution of changes in extreme wind gusts over land” (2017-03780) funded by the Vetenskapsrådet, and the MULTITEST (Multiple verification of automatic software homogenizing monthly temperature and precipitation series; CGL2014-52901-P) project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity

A new approach to homogenize daily peak wind gusts: an application to the Australian series

Póster presentado en: EMS Annual Meeting - European Conference for Applied Meteorology and Climatology 2018, celebrado en Budapest del 3 al 7 de septiembre de 2018.Daily Peak Wind Gusts (DPWG) time-series are valuable data for the evaluation of wind related hazard risks to different socioeconomic and environmental sectors. Yet wind time-series analyses can be impacted by several artefacts, both temporally and spatially, that may introduce inhomogeneities that mislead the studies of their decadal variability and trends. The aim of this study is to present a new strategy in the homogenization of a challenging climate extreme such as the DPWG using 548 time-series across Australia for 1941-2016. This automatic homogenization of DPWG is implemented in the recently developed Version 3.0 of the R package Climatol. The new approach is an advance in homogenization of climate records as identifies 353 breakpoints based on monthly data, splits the daily series into homogeneous sub-periods, and homogenizes them without needing the monthly corrections. The major advantages of this homogenization strategy are its ability to: (i) automatically homogenize a large number of DPWG series, including short-term ones and without needing site metadata (e.g., the change in observational equipment in 2010/2011 was correctly identified); (ii) use the closest reference series even not sharing a common period with candidate series or presenting missing data; and (iii) supply homogenized series, correcting anomalous data (quality control by spatial coherence), and filling in all the missing data. The NCEP/NCAR reanalysis wind speed data was also trialled in aiding homogenization given the station density was very low during the early decades of the record; however, reanalysis data did not improve the homogenization. Application of the new approach found a reduced range of DPWG trends based on site data, and an increased negative regional trend of this climate extreme, compared to raw data and homogenized data using NCEP/NCAR. The analysis produced the first homogenized DPWG dataset to assess and attribute long-term variability of extreme winds across Australia.This work has been also supported by the Project “Detection and attribution of changes inextreme wind gusts over land ”(2017-03780) funded by the Swedish Research Council, and the MULTITEST (Multiple verification of automatic software homogenizing monthly temperatura and precipitation series; CGL2014-52901-P) project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity

Trends of daily peak wind gusts in Australia, 1948-2016

Póster presentado en: EGU General Assembly 2019 celebrada del 7 al 12 de abril en Viena, Austria.Daily Peak Wind Gust (DPWG) time series are important for the evaluation of wind-related hazard risks to different socioeconomic and environmental sectors. Yet wind time series analyses can be impacted by several artefacts, such as anemometer changes and site location changes, both temporally and spatially, that may introduce inhomogeneities that mislead the study of their decadal variability and trends. A previous study (EGU2018-14546 and Azorin-Molina et al. 2019. Int. J. Climatol. 39(4), 2260-2277) presented a strategy in the homogenization of this challenging climate extreme such as the DPWG. The automatic homogenization of this DPWG dataset was implemented in the recently developed version 3.1 of the R package Climatol which: (i) represents an advance in homogenization of this extreme climate record; and (ii) produced the first homogenized DPWG dataset to assess and attribute long-term variability of extreme winds across Australia. Given the inconsistencies of wind gust trends under the widespread decline in near-surface wind speed (stilling), the aim of this poster presentation is to show DPWG trends in 35 Bureau of Meteorology operated stations for 1948-2016, with particular focus on the spatiotemporal magnitude (wind speed maxima) of DPWG at annual, seasonal and monthly timescales.This work has been supported by the project “Detection and attribution of changes in extreme wind gusts over land” (2017-03780) funded by the Swedish Research Council