Public support for older disabled people: evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing on receipt of disability benefits and social care subsidy

In England, state support for older people with disabilities consists of a national system of non-means tested cash disability benefits, and a locally-administered means-tested system of social care. Evidence on how the combination of the two systems targets those in most need is lacking. We estimate a latent factor structural equation model of disability and receipt of one or both forms of support. The model integrates the measurement of disability and its influence on receipt of state support, allowing for the socio-economic gradient in disability, and adopts income and wealth constructs appropriate to each part of the model. We find that receipt of each form of support rises as disability increases, with a strong concentration on the most disabled, especially for LA-funded care. The overlap between the two programmes is confined to the most disabled. Less than half of recipients of local authority-funded care also receive a disability benefit; a third of those in the top 10% of the disability distribution receive neither form of support. Despite being non means-tested, disability benefits display a degree of income and wealth targeting, as a consequence of the socio-economic gradient in disability and likely disability benefit claims behaviour. The scope for improving income/wealth targeting of disability benefits by means testing them, as some have suggested, is thus less than might be expected

Determinants of Treatment Adherence Among Smear-Positive Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients in Southern Ethiopia

Bergen funded this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist

Registratie, uitstroom en bestemming schoolverlaters VO-Monitor 2014

De VO-Monitor is gericht op schoolverlaters van het algemeen voortgezet onderwijs (HAVO, VWO) en het voorbereidend beroepsonderwijs (VMBO). Het onderzoek wordt uitgevoerd door het Researchcentrum voor Onderwijs en Arbeidsmarkt (ROA) van de Universiteit Maastricht. Met het onderzoek wordt de overgang van school naar werk dan wel het vervolgtraject in het onderwijs in kaart gebracht. De schoolverlaters worden ongeveer anderhalf jaar na het verlaten van de opleiding ondervraagd door middel van een schriftelijke/internet vragenlijst. Deze vragenlijst bestaat uit een gedeelte dat voor elke onderwijssoort identiek is en uit een variabel gedeelte waarbij de inhoud afhankelijk is van de onderwijssoort en/of de opleidingssector. Voor schoolverlaters van HAVO en VWO ligt het accent op de doorstroom naar vervolgonderwijs, waarbij vooral de aansluiting met het hoger onderwijs aan bod komt. Bij VMBO wordt vooral het bereiken van een startkwalificatie belicht alsmede de doorstroom naar de arbeidsmarkt. Databestand n.a.v. schoolverlatersenquête onder de gediplomeerde uitstroom van het AVO/VMBO (meetjaar 2014)

Registratie, uitstroom en bestemming schoolverlaters BVE-Monitor 2014

De BVE-Monitor is gericht op schoolverlaters van de beroepsopleidende leerweg (BOL) en de beroepsbegeleidende leerweg (BBL). Het onderzoek wordt uitgevoerd door het Researchcentrum voor Onderwijs en Arbeidsmarkt (ROA) van de Universiteit Maastricht. De financiering ligt thans bij OCW, SZW, LNV en de deelnemende onderwijsinstellingen. Met het onderzoek wordt de overgang van school naar werk dan wel het vervolgtraject in het onderwijs in kaart gebracht. De schoolverlaters worden ongeveer anderhalf jaar na het verlaten van de opleiding ondervraagd door middel van een schriftelijke/internet vragenlijst. Deze vragenlijst bestaat uit een gedeelte dat voor elke onderwijssoort identiek is en uit een variabel gedeelte waarbij de inhoud afhankelijk is van de onderwijssoort en/of de opleidingssector. Bij de BVE-Monitor ligt de nadruk met name op het vervolgonderwijs en de intrede op de arbeidsmarkt. Databestand n.a.v. schoolverlatersenquête onder de gediplomeerde uitstroom van het BVE (meetjaar 2014)

Examining the impact of opportunity bursaries on the financial circumstances and attitudes of undergraduate students in England

Notwithstanding the expansion of higher education across the OECD, there continues to be concern about the levels of participation amongst those from disadvantaged backgrounds. In response to this, a new form of financial support for students from low-income families, the 'opportunity bursary', was introduced for a limited period in England from 2001/02. Surveys of two cohorts of opportunity-bursary applicants were carried out and these suggested possible psychological, behavioural and economic impacts. Fewer opportunity-bursary recipients than non-recipients reported that part-time work had interfered with their studies and more reported that the bursary had made them less worried about meeting the costs of going to university. There was some evidence that the scheme led to increased retention in the first year of university study; it also appeared to lead to lower levels of debt, in particular bank overdrafts or credit card debt

Statistical analysis of performance indicators in UK higher education

Attempts to measure the quality with which institutions such as hospitals and universities carry out their public mandates have gained in frequency and sophistication over the last decade. We examine methods for creating performance indicators in multilevel or hierarchical settings (e.g. students nested within universities) based on a dichotomous outcome variable (e.g. drop-out from the higher education system). The "profiling" methods that we study involve the indirect measurement of quality, by comparing institutional outputs after adjusting for inputs, rather than directly attempting to measure the quality of the processes unfolding inside the institutions. In the context of an extended case-study of the creation of performance indicators for universities in the UK higher education system, we demonstrate the large sample functional equivalence between a method based on indirect standardization and an approach based on fixed effects hierarchical modelling, offer simulation results on the performance of the standardization method in null and non-null settings, examine the sensitivity of this method to the inadvertent omission of relevant adjustment variables, explore random-effects reformulations and characterize settings in which they are preferable to fixed effects hierarchical modelling in this type of quality assessment and discuss extensions to longitudinal quality modelling and the overall pros and cons of institutional profiling. Our results are couched in the language of higher education but apply with equal force to other settings with dichotomous response variables, such as the examination of observed and expected rates of mortality (or other adverse outcomes) in investigations of the quality of health care or the study of retention rates in the workplace. Copyright 2004 Royal Statistical Society.

Part-time higher education in English colleges: Adult identities in diminishing spaces

Adult participation in higher education has frequently entailed mature students studying part time in lower-ranked institutions. In England, higher education policies have increasingly emphasised higher education provision in vocational further education colleges, settings which have extensive adult traditions but which mainly teach employment-based skills and are widely regarded as ‘outside’ higher education. This paper interrogates the significance of these dimensions of college higher education, through a qualitative study of identity formation by adult part-time students. Their accounts, developed through individual interviews and focus groups, emphasised the significance of work to their interpretations of higher education participation: these are compared here to a range of conceptualisations of identity that have been applied in relation to work organisations. This analysis indicates some of the ways in which pathways which adults may interpret as meaningful in terms of work-related identities may correspondingly be constrained by a narrow discourse of work-based skills and credentials