Sure Start Mellow Valley Baseline User Satisfaction Survey

Sure Start Mellow Valley is a 6 th wave Sure Start programme, currently in its second year. The Children’s Society is the lead partner and accountable body. The programme was approved in April 2003. Since then the team has grown – for a full list of current Sure Start staff, please Appendix A. Sure Start Mellow Valley has established links with many other local initiatives that aim to improve the lives of families and children aged 04 years and promotes an inclusive approach to the development of working with local agencies, organisations and funders. Sure Start Mellow Valley is characterised by high levels of parental involvement. Indeed, parents in Little London & Woodhouse and in Meanwood were closely involved in forums/groups lobbying for a Sure Start programme. The Parents Forum groups are always well attended and parents are also represented on the management board. It is a requirement for all local Sure Start programmes to undergo a process of evaluation to determine whether the programme is meeting the needs and expressed wishes of the population it serves. The Centre for Health Promotion Research at Leeds Metropolitan University has been commissioned to evaluate Sure Start Mellow Valley. An initial Baseline User Satisfaction Survey formed the first stage of the evaluation. It was conducted in Summer 2004. This report details the methods used and findings from the survey

Sure Start Harehills Evaluation Report Year One

The evaluation will try to reflect the particular issues arising at the various stages of programme implementation. For example, in the early stages we will focus on the way activities are being developed as well as identifying any early successes. As the programme matures there can be a gradual transition to assessing the achievement of objectives. In year 3, there is a requirement that we will formally report on progress towards meeting national targets

Are flexible contracts bad for workers? Evidence from job satisfaction data

If workers can choose between permanent and flexible contracts, compensating wage differentials should arise to equalize on-the-job utility in the two types of contracts. Estimating job satisfaction using the British Household Panel Survey shows that agency and casual contracts are associated with routinely lower satisfaction. This results because the low job satisfaction associated with less job security is not offset by higher compensation or other job characteristics. Job security is sufficiently important that holding constant this one facet of satisfaction eliminates the overall gap in job satisfaction between flexible and permanent contracts

The radial distributions of a heavy-light meson on a lattice

In an earlier work, the charge (vector) and matter (scalar) radial distributions of heavy-light mesons were measured in the quenched approximation on a 16^3 times 24 lattice with a quark-gluon coupling of 5.7, a lattice spacing of 0.17 fm, and a hopping parameter corresponding to a light quark mass about that of the strange quark. Several improvements are now made: 1) The configurations are generated using dynamical fermions with a quark-gluon coupling of 5.2 (a lattice spacing of 0.14 fm); 2) Many more gauge configurations are included (78 compared with the earlier 20); 3) The distributions at many off-axis, in addition to on-axis, points are measured; 4) The data-analysis is much more complete. In particular, distributions involving excited states are extracted. The exponential decay of the charge and matter distributions can be described by mesons of mass 0.9+-0.1 and 1.5+-0.1 GeV respectively - values that are consistent with those of vector and scalar qqbar-states calculated directly with the same lattice parameters.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, Lattice2002(heavyquark

Competitor-oriented Objectives: The Myth of Market Share

Competitor-oriented objectives, such as market-share targets, are promoted by academics and are commonly used by firms. A 1996 review of the evidence, summarized in this paper, indicated that competitor-oriented objectives reduce profitability. However, we found that this evidence has been ignored by managers. We then describe evidence from 12 new studies, one of which is introduced in this paper. This evidence supports the conclusion that competitor-oriented objectives are harmful, especially when managers receive information about market shares of competitors. Unfortunately, we expect that many firms will continue to use competitor-oriented objectives to the detriment of their profitability

Demand Forecasting: Evidence-based Methods

We looked at evidence from comparative empirical studies to identify methods that can be useful for predicting demand in various situations and to warn against methods that should not be used. In general, use structured methods and avoid intuition, unstructured meetings, focus groups, and data mining. In situations where there are sufficient data, use quantitative methods including extrapolation, quantitative analogies, rule-based forecasting, and causal methods. Otherwise, use methods that structure judgement including surveys of intentions and expectations, judgmental bootstrapping, structured analogies, and simulated interaction. Managers' domain knowledge should be incorporated into statistical forecasts. Methods for combining forecasts, including Delphi and prediction markets, improve accuracy. We provide guidelines for the effective use of forecasts, including such procedures as scenarios. Few organizations use many of the methods described in this paper. Thus, there are opportunities to improve efficiency by adopting these forecasting practices.Accuracy, expertise, forecasting, judgement, marketing.

Role thinking: Standing in other people’s shoes to forecast decisions in conflicts

Better forecasts of decisions in conflict situations, such as occur in business, politics, and war, can help protagonists achieve better outcomes. It is common advice to “stand in the other person’s shoes” when involved in a conflict, a procedure we refer to as “role thinking.” We tested this advice in order to assess the extent to which it can improve accuracy. Improvement in accuracy is important because prior research found that unaided judgment produced forecasts that were little better than guessing. We obtained 101 role-thinking forecasts from 27 Naval postgraduate students (experts) and 107 role-thinking forecasts from 103 second-year organizational behavior students (novices) of the decisions that would be made in nine diverse conflicts. The accuracy of the forecasts from the novices was 33% and of those from the experts 31%. The accuracy of the role-thinking forecasts was little different from chance, which was 28%. In contrast, when we asked groups of participants to each act as if they were in the shoes one of the protagonists, accuracy was 60%.combining; group decision-making; simulated interaction; unaided judgment