Strategic Planning for Recreation Administrators in Private Sector Recreation Organizations

The purpose of this study is to describe strategic planning and its implications for administration in private sector recreation organizations. This study consists of three parts. The first part presents the ideology of strategic planning. The second part describes the strategic planning process. Whereas, the third part discusses the strategic planning process for application by recreation administrators in private sector recreation organizations. The strategic planning process suggested for application by administrators in private sector recreation organizations consists of six steps: ( 1) understanding recreation trends and values of society, (2) understanding the current state of condition of the recreation organization, (3) recreation problem diagnosis, (4) recreation resource analysis, (5) determining strategic planning alternatives, and (6) selection of strategic recreation alternatives. It is concluded that strategic planning may be an effective means of managing for private sector recreation administrators because it provides an opportunity to diagnose management decisions before change is actually implemented

Managing Recreation Services for Immigrants: Recommendations for Leaders, Programmers and Administrators

The United States and Canada are multicultural societies consisting of populations who find themselves attached to two cultural societies, their ethnic homeland and mainstream society. This attachment is often reflective in the cultural recreational activities and pursuits desired, with these being representative of the ethnic culture or the culture of mainstream society. The challenge thus posed for recreation leaders, programmers and administrators centers around fulfilling diverse recreation needs. This paper presents five recommendations to assist recreation leaders, programmers and administrators in serving and preparing to serve multi-ethnic populations

An EM algorithm for fitting a new class of mixed exponential regression models with varying dispersion

Regression modelling involving heavy-tailed response distributions, which have heavier tails than the exponential distribution, has become increasingly popular in many insurance settings including non-life insurance. Mixed Exponential models can be considered as a natural choice for the distribution of heavy-tailed claim sizes since their tails are not exponentially bounded. This paper is concerned with introducing a general family of mixed Exponential regression models with varying dispersion which can efficiently capture the tail behaviour of losses. Our main achievement is that we present an Expectation-Maximization (EM)-type algorithm which can facilitate maximum likelihood (ML) estimation for our class of mixed Exponential models which allows for regression specifications for both the mean and dispersion parameters. Finally, a real data application based on motor insurance data is given to illustrate the versatility of the proposed EM-type algorithm

Confidence intervals of the premiums of optimal Bonus Malus Systems

In view of the economic importance of motor third-party liability insurance in developed countries the construction of optimal BMS has been given considerable interest. However, a major drawback in the construction of optimal BMS is that they fail to account for the variability on premium calculations which are treated as point estimates. The present study addresses this issue. Specifically, nonparametric mixtures of Poisson laws are used to construct an optimal BMS with a finite number of classes. The mixing distribution is estimated by nonparametric maximum likelihood (NPML). The main contribution of this paper is the use of the NPML estimator for the construction of confidence intervals for the premium rates derived by updating the posterior mean claim frequency. Furthermore, we advance one step further by improving the performance of the confidence intervals based on a bootstrap procedure where the estimated mixture is used for resampling. The construction of confidence intervals for the individual premiums based on the asymptotic maximum likelihood theory is beneficial for the insurance company as it can result in accurate and effective adjustments to the premium rating policies from a practical point of view

Detailed statistical assessment of the characteristics of the ESMO Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale (ESMO-MCBS) threshold rules

Background The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has developed the ESMO Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale (ESMO-MCBS), a tool to assess the magnitude of clinical benefit from new cancer therapies. Grading is guided by a dual rule comparing the relative benefit (RB) and the absolute benefit (AB) achieved by the therapy to prespecified threshold values. The ESMO-MCBS v1.0 dual rule evaluates the RB of an experimental treatment based on the lower limit of the 95%CI (LL95%CI) for the hazard ratio (HR) along with an AB threshold. This dual rule addresses two goals: inclusiveness: not unfairly penalising experimental treatments from trials designed with adequate power targeting clinically meaningful relative benefit; and discernment: penalising trials designed to detect a small inconsequential benefit. Methods Based on 50 000 simulations of plausible trial scenarios, the sensitivity and specificity of the LL95%CI rule and the ESMO-MCBS dual rule, the robustness of their characteristics for reasonable power and range of targeted and true HRs, are examined. The per cent acceptance of maximal preliminary grade is compared with other dual rules based on point estimate (PE) thresholds for RB. Results For particularly small or particularly large studies, the observed benefit needs to be relatively big for the ESMO-MCBS dual rule to be satisfied and the maximal grade awarded. Compared with approaches that evaluate RB using the PE thresholds, simulations demonstrate that the MCBS approach better exhibits the desired behaviour achieving the goals of both inclusiveness and discernment. Conclusions RB assessment using the LL95%CI for HR rather than a PE threshold has two advantages: it diminishes the probability of excluding big benefit positive studies from achieving due credit and, when combined with the AB assessment, it increases the probability of downgrading a trial with a statistically significant but clinically insignificant observed benefit.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Medical conditions at enrollment do not impact efficacy and safety of the adjuvanted recombinant zoster vaccine:a pooled post-hoc analysis of two parallel randomized trials

In two pivotal efficacy studies (ZOE-50; ZOE-70), the adjuvanted recombinant zoster vaccine (RZV) demonstrated >90% efficacy against herpes zoster (HZ). Adults aged ≥50 or ≥70 years (ZOE-50 [NCT01165177]; ZOE-70 [NCT01165229]) were randomized to receive 2 doses of RZV or placebo 2 months apart. Vaccine efficacy and safety were evaluated post-hoc in the pooled (ZOE-50/70) population according to the number and type of selected medical conditions present at enrollment. At enrollment, 82.3% of RZV and 82.7% of placebo recipients reported ≥1 of the 15 selected medical conditions. Efficacy against HZ ranged from 84.5% (95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 46.4–97.1) in participants with respiratory disorders to 97.0% (95%CI: 82.3–99.9) in those with coronary heart disease. Moreover, efficacy remained >90% irrespective of the number of selected medical conditions reported by a participant. As indicated by the similarity of the point estimates, this post-hoc analysis suggests that RZV efficacy remains high in all selected medical conditions, as well as with increasing number of medical conditions. No safety concern was identified by the type or number of medical conditions present at enrollment

Les droits disciplinaires des fonctions publiques : « unification », « harmonisation » ou « distanciation ». A propos de la loi du 26 avril 2016 relative à la déontologie et aux droits et obligations des fonctionnaires

The production of tt‾ , W+bb‾ and W+cc‾ is studied in the forward region of proton–proton collisions collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.98±0.02 fb−1 . The W bosons are reconstructed in the decays W→ℓν , where ℓ denotes muon or electron, while the b and c quarks are reconstructed as jets. All measured cross-sections are in agreement with next-to-leading-order Standard Model predictions.The production of $t\overline{t}$, $W+b\overline{b}$ and $W+c\overline{c}$ is studied in the forward region of proton-proton collisions collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.98 $\pm$ 0.02 \mbox{fb}^{-1}. The $W$ bosons are reconstructed in the decays $W\rightarrow\ell\nu$, where $\ell$ denotes muon or electron, while the $b$ and $c$ quarks are reconstructed as jets. All measured cross-sections are in agreement with next-to-leading-order Standard Model predictions