Non-response and population representation in studies of adolescent time use

Researchers have debated which methods are most valid and reliable for studying time use. One key instrument for measuring time use is the time diary, which has unique analytic properties that, if not adjusted for, can bias estimates. To assess sampling and non-response bias and potential under- or overreports of various activities, we use three different datasets to compare adolescents’ time use. Results of these comparisons are used to show how investigators can statistically adjust time use data to obtain more accurate estimates of time spent in various activities.Methodology for collecting, estimating, and organizing microeconomic data, correcting for sampling and non-response bias, comparing survey and ESM measures of time use

Jury deliberation: An observation study.

In this article, the way that the jury works is considered from a group-analytic perspective. Observational fieldwork of simulated jury deliberations is presented. The data was gathered from a joint funded Home Office and Law Commission project at the Socio- Legal Studies Centre, Oxford in 1995. Inferences are drawn from the observations and the unconscious group processes are considered. The efficacy of the jury process is discussed

FROM BIBLE COLLEGE TO UNIVERSITY: FACTORS RELATED TO INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE DURING THE LEADERSHIP OF THREE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS FROM 1979 TO THE PRESENT

Higher education is known for its slow rate of change, but as the 21st century continues institutions of higher education (IHEs) are feeling the pressure to adapt. In addition to the pressures faced by higher education at large, Christian IHEs faces increasing secularization. This qualitative case study examined the underlying history and rationale for transition and change during the administrations of three presidents. Using organization change theory, three administrators were interviewed to determine the factors that influenced change at a Christian IHE from 1979 to 2019. The institutional changes in Christian higher education provided rich areas for research on leadership and organizational change, growth, and development. Results indicated that religious identity, institutional identity, academic growth, student population and demographic growth, governance and leadership, and finances were all factors that influenced chang

Toward a geography of black internationalism: Bayard Rustin, nonviolence and the promise of Africa

This article charts the trip made by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin to West Africa in 1952, and examines the unpublished ‘Africa Program’ which he subsequently presented to leading American pacifists. I situate Rustin’s writings within the burgeoning literature on black internationalism which, despite its clear geographical registers, geographers themselves have as yet made only a modest contribution towards. The article argues that within this literature there remains a tendency to romanticize cross-cultural connections in lieu of critically interrogating their basic, and often competing, claims. I argue that closer attention to the geographies of black internationalism, however, allows us to shape a more diverse and practiced sense of internationalist encounter and exchange. The article reconstructs the multiplicity of Rustin’s black internationalist geographies which drew eclectically from a range of Pan-African, American and pacifist traditions. Though each of these was profoundly racialized, they conceptualized race in distinctive ways and thereby had differing understandings of what constituted the international as a geographical arena. By blending these forms of internationalism Rustin was able to promote a particular model of civil rights which was characteristically internationalist in outlook, nonviolent in principle and institutional in composition; a model which in selective and uneven ways continues to shape our understanding of the period

Outcome of ATP-based tumor chemosensitivity assay directed chemotherapy in heavily pre-treated recurrent ovarian carcinoma

BACKGROUND: We wished to evaluate the clinical response following ATP-Tumor Chemosensitivity Assay (ATP-TCA) directed salvage chemotherapy in a series of UK patients with advanced ovarian cancer. The results are compared with that of a similar assay used in a different country in terms of evaluability and clinical endpoints. METHODS: From November 1998 to November 2001, 46 patients with pre-treated, advanced ovarian cancer were given a total of 56 courses of chemotherapy based on in-vitro ATP-TCA responses obtained from fresh tumor samples or ascites. Forty-four patients were evaluable for results. Of these, 18 patients had clinically platinum resistant disease (relapse < 6 months after first course of chemotherapy). There was evidence of cisplatin resistance in 31 patients from their first ATP-TCA. Response to treatment was assessed by radiology, clinical assessment and tumor marker level (CA 125). RESULTS: The overall response rate was 59% (33/56) per course of chemotherapy, including 12 complete responses, 21 partial responses, 6 with stable disease, and 15 with progressive disease. Two patients were not evaluable for response having received just one cycle of chemotherapy: if these were excluded the response rate is 61%. Fifteen patients are still alive. Median progression free survival (PFS) was 6.6 months per course of chemotherapy; median overall survival (OAS) for each patient following the start of TCA-directed therapy was 10.4 months (95% confidence interval 7.9-12.8 months). CONCLUSION: The results show similar response rates to previous studies using ATP-TCA directed therapy in recurrent ovarian cancer. The assay shows high evaluability and this study adds weight to the reproducibility of results from different centre

Institutional creativity and pathologies of potential space: The modern university

This paper proposes the applicability of object relations psychoanalytic conceptions of dialogue (Ogden, 1986, 1993) to thinking about relationships and relational structures and their governance in universities. It proposes that: the qualities of dialogic relations in creative institutions are the proper index of creative productivity; that is of, as examples, ’thinking’ (Evans, 2004), ’emotional learning’ (Salzberger-Wittenburg et al., 1983) or ’criticality’ (Barnett, 1997); contemporary institutions’ explicit preoccupation in assuring, monitoring and managing creative ’dialogue’ can, in practice, pervert creative processes and thoughtful symbolic productivity, thus inhibiting students’ development and the quality of ’thinking space’ for teaching and research. In this context the paper examines uncanny and perverse connections between Paulo Freire’s (1972) account of educational empowerment and dialogics (from his Pedagogy of the oppressed) to the consumerist (see, for example, Clarke & Vidler, 2005) rhetoric of student empowerment, as mediated by some strands of managerialism in contemporary higher education. The paper grounds its critique of current models of dialogue, feedback loops, audit and other mechanisms of accountability (Power, 1997; Strathern, 2000), in a close analysis of how creative thinking emerges. The paper discusses the failure to maintain a dialogic space in humanities and social science areas in particular, exploring psychoanalytic conceptions from Donald Winnicott (1971), Milner (1979), Thomas Ogden (1986) and Csikszentmihalyi (1997). Coleridge’s ideas about imagination as the movement of thought between subjective and objective modes are discussed in terms of both intra- and inter-subjective relational modes of ’dialogue’, which are seen as subject to pathology in the pathologically structured psychosocial environment. Current patterns of institutional governance, by micromanaging dialogic spaces, curtail the ’natural’ rhythms and temporalities of imagination by giving an over-emphasis to the moment of outcome, at the expense of holding the necessary vagaries of process in the institutional ’mind’. On the contrary, as this paper argues, creative thinking lies in sporadic emergences at the conjunction of object/(ive) outcome and through (thought) processes

Comfort radicalism and NEETs: a conservative praxis

Young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are construed by policy makers as a pressing problem about which something should be done. Such young people's lack of employment is thought to pose difficulties for wider society in relation to social cohesion and inclusion and it is feared that they will become a 'lost generation'. This paper(1) draws upon English research, seeking to historicise the debate whilst acknowledging that these issues have a much wider purchase. The notion of NEETs rests alongside longstanding concerns of the English state and middle classes, addressing unruly male working class youth as well as the moral turpitude of working class girls. Waged labour and domesticity are seen as a means to integrate such groups into society thereby generating social cohesion. The paper places the debate within it socio-economic context and draws on theorisations of cognitive capitalism, Italian workerism, as well as emerging theories of antiwork to analyse these. It concludes by arguing that ‘radical’ approaches to NEETs that point towards inequities embedded in the social structure and call for social democratic solutions veer towards a form of comfort radicalism. Such approaches leave in place the dominance of capitalist relations as well as productivist orientations that celebrate waged labour

Systematic Analysis of Circulating Soluble Angiogenesis-Associated Proteins in ICON7 Identifies Tie2 as a Biomarker of Vascular Progression on Bevacizumab

background: There is a critical need for predictive/resistance biomarkers for VEGF inhibitors to optimise their use. methods: Blood samples were collected during and following treatment and, where appropriate, upon progression from ovarian cancer patients in ICON7, a randomised phase III trial of carboplatin and paclitaxel with or without bevacizumab. Plasma concentrations of 15 circulating angio-biomarkers were measured using a validated multiplex ELISA, analysed through a novel network analysis and their relevance to the PFS then determined. results: Samples (n=650) were analysed from 92 patients. Bevacizumab induced correlative relationships between Ang1 and Tie2 plasma concentrations, which reduced after initiation of treatment and remained decreased until progressive disease occurred. A 50% increase from the nadir in the concentration of circulating Tie2 (or the product of circulating Ang1 and Tie2) predicted tumour progression. Combining Tie2 with GCIG-defined Ca125 data yielded a significant improvement in the prediction of progressive disease in patients receiving bevacizumab in comparison with Ca125 alone (74.1% vs 47.3%, P<1 × 10−9). conclusions: Tie2 is a vascular progression marker for bevacizumab-treated ovarian cancer patients. Tie2 in combination with Ca125 provides superior information to clinicians on progressive disease in patients with VEGFi-treated ovarian cancers

An exploration of the use of infant observation methods to research the identities of severely learning disabled adolescents and to enhance relationship-based practice for professional social work practice

This paper considers how infant observation methods may be adapted to explore and research the identities of severely learning disabled adolescents, a group of young people whose experiences are poorly represented in the literature. Through focusing on emotion and relationship, this ‘practice-near’ research method also offers a way for social workers to develop their reflective capacity in relation to the often hidden, uncomfortable emotions aroused by experiencing impairment and difference, but without the defences usually involved in assuming the professional role. The importance of taking time to get on a disabled child’s ‘wavelength’ is illustrated through extracts from the research which show how a young person’s agency and identity can be appreciated. The method also has the potential to develop social workers’ awareness of the powerful undercurrent of emotions apparent at times within families of severely disabled young people and tentative suggestions are made about the projective processes and hidden hostilities at work within one of the families observed as part of the research project. Professionals may be able to use this knowledge to become resilient and reflective practitioners and the observation method itself has something to offer by way of a containing experience for families

Fourth worlds and neo-Fordism: American Apparel and the cultural economy of consumer anxiety

This article examines the strategies of the ‘sweatshop-free’ clothing company American Apparel in the context of ongoing debates over the cultural turn and cultural economy. American Apparel’s key selling point is that it does not outsource: it manufactures in Los Angeles, pays ‘good’ wages and provides healthcare, yet the workers are not unionised and the migrant labour it depends upon is often temporary. These same employees are used in promotional material to create its brand identity of an irreverent, hip and quasi-sexualised ‘community’ of consumers and workers. A design- and brand-led company that nonetheless doesn’t see itself as a brand in any conventional sense, and markets itself as ‘transparent’, the company’s ethos turns on consumer anxiety towards the socio-economic injustices of post-Fordism. Indeed, it marks a partial return to Fordist modes of production by aiming to manufacture everything under one roof, whilst deploying modes of informality (and technology) stereotypically associated with the post-Fordist creative industries. This paper considers the complex dynamics of American Apparel’s emergence in a reflexive marketplace (in relation to what Callon has termed an ‘economy of qualities’) and discusses its problematic negotiations with ‘fourth worlds’, or the zones of exclusion Castells terms ‘the black holes of informational capitalism’