Qualitative data in demography

Qualitative methods and insights from other disciplines are increasingly integrated into demography’s traditionally quantitative toolkit. Whereas this is not problematic for multi-disciplinary research projects difficulties may arise when quantitatively trained demographers diversify to use less familiar data collection tools. We review the scale of this recent trend and the choice of qualitative methods typically employed by demographic researchers. Using insights from a comparative qualitative study undertaken in Zimbabwe and Senegal, we discuss some problems inherent in qualitative data collection and analysis and propose ways in which such data should and should not be used. Focussing in particular on semi-structured in-depth interviews, we discuss issues of representativity, investigate respondents’ silence on specific topics, and the role of interviewer characteristics in influencing the interview subject matter.data collection, in-depth interviews, interviewers, qualitative data, research methods, Senegal, Zimbabwe

Growth of Large-Scale Credit Unions in Iowa: Implications for Public Policy

Over the past two decades, the financial services industry has experienced a significant increase in competition and internal rivalry. Driven by deregulation and advances in information technologies, many historical institutional distinctions among financial intermediaries have disappeared or blurred considerably. The fundamental assumption that has guided many of the policy changes is that consumers are best served when businesses offering the same services are allowed to compete within a similar regulatory or institutional environment. Despite this general leveling of the playing field, credit unions continue to operate under tax and regulatory rules that differ, in important ways, from most of the firms in the financial services industry. Many of the tax and regulatory distinctions arose in the early 20th century during a time when credit unions were being established to meet the needs of individuals or communities that could not or were not being adequately served by commercial banks. However, as the financial services industry has evolved, the justification for continuing or maintaining credit unions

Growth of large-scale credit unions in Iowa: implications for public policy

Over the past two decades, the financial services industry has experienced a significant increase in competition and internal rivalry. Driven by deregulation and advances in information technologies, many historical institutional distinctions among financial intermediaries have disappeared or blurred considerably. The fundamental assumption that has guided many of the policy changes is that consumers are best served when businesses offering the same services are allowed to compete within a similar regulatory or institutional environment. Despite this general leveling of the playing field, credit unions continue to operate under tax and regulatory rules that differ, in important ways, from most of the firms in the financial services industry. Many of the tax and regulatory distinctions arose in the early 20th century during a time when credit unions were being established to meet the needs of individuals or communities that could not or were not being adequately served by commercial banks. However, as the financial services industry has evolved, the justification for continuing or maintaining credit union

Futures options and their use by financial intermediaries

Futures ; Options (Finance) ; Bank investments

Standby letters of credit

Bank loans ; Letters of credit

Futures market regulation

Futures

Comparative projectile trauma: an examination of the differences in skeletal trauma inflicted by firearms and archery weapons

In recent years, the defining characteristics of cranial projectile trauma have been reported extensively in experimental studies as well as forensic case reports. The existing literature, however, focuses on trauma inflicted by firearms, primarily handguns and rifles. Though firearms are the most common form of projectile weapon used in a forensic context, there are several types of projectile weapons which have not been examined through experimental research. This gap in the literature not only limits the examination of forensic cases, but also inhibits the examination of trauma found within an archaeological context. This study sought to differentiate the skeletal trauma caused by different projectile weapons that are classified as either firearms (handgun, rifle, and shotgun) or archery weapons (recurve hand bow with field tip arrows, compound hand bow with fixed broadhead arrows, and compound crossbow with field tip bolts, fixed broadhead bolts, and mechanical broadhead bolts). Using polyurethane spheres as proxies for human cranial vaults, samples were shot by one of the specified weapons (n=5) and 35 features resulting from projectile impact (both qualitative and quantitative) of the entrance and exit defects were recorded. Using principal component analysis, it was found that the features of trauma which accounted for the highest proportion of variance observed in the subset which included both entry and exit defects were the maximum fracture length on the external table of the entrance site, the minimum fracture length on the external table of the entrance site, the entrance defect diameter, the minimum fragment length of the fragments that originated from the entrance defect, the width of the reconstructed exit defect, the maximum fracture length on the external table of the entrance defect, and the width of the reconstructed entrance defect. These accounted for 96.74% of the variance within this dataset. When only examining the entrance defects, the most distinguishing variables were the maximum fracture length on the external table of the entrance defect, the width of the entrance defect, the minimum fracture length on the external table of the entrance defect, and the width of the reconstructed entrance defect, accounting for 95.89% of the variance within this dataset. Machine learning (linear discriminant analysis) was applied to test the predictive strength of these variables. In testing the accuracy of these predictions, it was found that the program could correctly predict the weapon used for 74.19% of the samples when examining both the entrance and exit defects and 60.87% of the samples when only examining the features of the entrance defect. The findings of this research exhibit the indiscernible qualitative features between trauma inflicted by different projectile weapons, calling to attention the need to change the current methods of weapon identification. This study has established new quantitative methods for projectile trauma analysis which are simple to perform, require minimal equipment, and are easily applied to forensic and archaeological remains