Economic Analysis of Cost-Effectiveness of Community Engagement to Improve Health

Liberty of association is one of the building blocks of a democratic society, and presumes that community engagement in a democratic society is universally a good thing. This presumption is not subject to economic analysis, but the issue considered here is whether community engagement is a better vehicle for improving the community’s health than another approach. The problems of applying the standard framework of economic evaluation to consider this issue include: multiple perspectives and time frames; identifying and costing activities and specifically the costs of volunteer time; identifying and measuring benefits; identifying comparator communities; how the intervention interacts with the community and therefore identifying end gainers and losers and eventually how the former might compensate the latter; attribution of any changes in community (health) to the approaches and methods of community engagement (CE); quantification across the whole range of community engagement. We consider three possible ways to apply the tools of economic appraisal to assess community engagement, these being: developing a typology; relying just on effectiveness data from the literature and guesstimating costs; and developing a scenario based on partial information about both costs and benefits. We assess the impact of community engagement on health and health behaviour; the contribution of community engagement to supporting social networks and social capital formation; and other impacts specific to a particular situation, including collective and ideological outcomes (whether of citizenship, obedience or political literacy). We conclude with a set of questions to ask of any CE intervention.

Flow and Fantasy: An Exploration of Role-Playing Games

This chapter lays out the conceptual foundation that one must possess in order to examine the role-playing game phenomenon. First. I will present what has been done in the scholarly community on rpgs . This section will also serve as a justification for this study. In the second section, I will examine the games themselves , explaining their form and history to the reader. Considering the massive popular impact that roleplaying games have had over the last two decades , there is remarkably little scholarship on them . Scanning across anthropological and sociological literature, one can find almost nothing that explicitly concerns this genre of play. With rare exceptions, the recent literature is still primarily dedicated to children\u27s play, traditional games, and general theory

Flow and Fantasy: An Exploration of Role-Playing Games

This chapter lays out the conceptual foundation that one must possess in order to examine the role-playing game phenomenon. First. I will present what has been done in the scholarly community on rpgs . This section will also serve as a justification for this study. In the second section, I will examine the games themselves , explaining their form and history to the reader. Considering the massive popular impact that roleplaying games have had over the last two decades , there is remarkably little scholarship on them . Scanning across anthropological and sociological literature, one can find almost nothing that explicitly concerns this genre of play. With rare exceptions, the recent literature is still primarily dedicated to children\u27s play, traditional games, and general theory

Investigating Blue Ocean v. Competitive Strategy: A Statistical Analysis of the Retail Industry

The recent work of Kim and Mauborgne (2005a) has sought to turn strategic management on its head. They note that the field has been dominated by Porter’s (1980, 1985) competitive strategy and it has placed too much emphasis on the importance of competition and rivalry. By contrast they argue in favour of an alternative strategic approach – blue ocean strategy – where firms focus on value innovation, creating consumer demand and exploiting untapped markets. So far empirical analysis in this debate has been focused on case study evidence and hence has been limited in its ability to generalise. The massive appeal of the blue ocean strategy is in stark contrast with the paucity of research testing the viability and relevance of this alternative strategic approach. In this paper we use a comprehensive data set on the Dutch retail industry in order to bring some statistical evidence to the debate. We investigate the prevalence of blue ocean versus competitive strategy in this industry over the period 1982-2000. Our results show that blue ocean strategy and competitive strategy coexist within the same competitive theoretical framework. The results highlight that the dominance of either form of strategy is not categorical but rather determined by the market conditions in which the firms operate.

Trapping and detection of single atoms using a spherical mirror

We fabricate a miniature spherical mirror for tightly focusing an optical dipole trap for neutral atoms. The mirror formation process is modelled to predict the dimensions for particular fabrication parameters. We integrate the spherical mirror with a neutral atom experiment to trap and detect a single atom with high efficiency. The mirror serves the dual purpose of focusing the dipole trap as well as collection of the atomic fluorescence into an optical fibre.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure