Measuring party affiliation

Party affiliation is a key concept used in many social science surveys. To measure such affiliations, one can either ask about previous, current or future voting behavior, about party identification or about party proximity. Moreover, there are questions that ask about an evaluation of different parties simultaneously. This guide provides an overview of the different concepts to measure party affiliation, shows examples of their use in Swiss surveys and outlines the implications for researchers who have to choose among them

Make it so! Jean-Luc Picard, Bart Simpson and the design of e-public services

In this paper, we report on a project applying participatory design methods to include people who have experience of social exclusion (in one form or another) in designing possible technologies for e-(local)-government services. The work was part of a project for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in the UK, and was concerned with ‘access tokens’ that can provide personal identification for individuals accessing public services, based on technologies such as multi-functional smartcards, flash memory sticks, mobile phone SIMs or similar devices. In particular we report on our experience using the ‘pastiche scenarios’ technique recently developed by Mark Blythe. Our findings indicate that the technique can be effective and engaging in helping people to create realistic scenarios of future technology use and highlight some possible pitfalls to consider when using this technique.</p

Diagnostic and Monitoring CERN Accelerator Controls Infrastructure : The DIAMON Project First Deployment in Operation

The CERN accelerator controls infrastructure spans over several machines and several thousands of devices are used to collect and transmit piece of control data. Each of these remote devices might fail and therefore prevent correct operation. A complete diagnostic and monitoring infrastructure has been developed in order to provide Operation crews with complete and easy to use graphical interface presenting the state of the controls system. Simple agents running in each surveyed item periodically report monitoring information to a central server. Graphical JAVA clients in the operation centers subscribe to this monitoring data and display a view of the current state of the machines. Mouse actions from these clients allows for diagnostic commands to be sent to the agent to get additional details or to repair a faulty situation. This presentation will describe the overall architecture of DIAMON, present the different agents running in the controls system and a few views of the graphical clients. The outcome of the first months in operation of the DIAMON tools will also be presented. Finally, the future plans will be exposed

Torn Between International Cooperation and National Sovereignty: Voter Attitudes in Trade‐off Situations in Switzerland

This research note examines voter preferences in Swiss-EU relations. We identify large shares of cross-pressured voters, i.e., citizens who support the bilateral treaties but wish to either control immigration into Switzerland or oppose a liberalization of social protection measures on the job market. Voters experiencing a trade-off between immigration control and international cooperation are mainly located on the Right. Their share decreased between 2015 and 2019, whereas the share of neutral voters sharply increased. Moreover, negotiations about an Institutional Framework Agreement between Switzerland and the EU have given rise to a new trade-off – namely between social protection and international cooperation – with cross-pressured voters mainly concentrated on the Left. This tension has generated a high share of undecided voters. When pressured to decide on these trade-offs, cross-pressured and neutral voters opt for the bilateral treaties over immigration control, whereas they prefer social protection over the new agreement. Partisanship is a strong predictor of these choices

The impact of values on information systems development.

The continuing occurrence of information systems development (ISD) failure persists as a strong motivator for both industrial and academic research to identify factors and develop methodologies which are more likely to lead to ISD project success.While good technical design is fundamental to the successful implementation of information systems, it is well understood that social and behavioural factors also have an important impact on the design and development process. It is proposed here that values held by individuals - enduring beliefs about what is worthwhile that influence behaviour - are important in relation to the chances of success for corporate ISD projects. It is further proposed that values implicitly determine the underlying philosophy of corporate approaches to ISD and also inform definitions of success. However, it is also recognised that greater specificity is required to more clearly understand the impact of these factors on ISD projects. Obtaining a clearer understanding of this should lead to greater success in developing methodologies or approaches which recognise and utilise values in the processes involved in the development of information systems. This research has addressed the need to provide greater specificity of these factors by investigating the process of systems development as undertaken in a large financial institution. The approach employed was exploratory and descriptive, including techniques such as survey, interviews and observation to examine the impact of personal and corporate values in ISD projects. The results of the investigation are based on an interpretive case study of a team of systems developers who were using a traditional structured systems methodology to help analyse and design the merging of a standalone database with a corporate information system. The research has employed a qualitative approach, using the interpretive skills of the researcher to provide the essential detailed descriptions and explanations of how social and behavioural factors affected the project at the micro-level.The significance of the contribution of this research is the level of detailed explanation it provides about the impact that the social, economic, political and theoretical values of individuals have on an ISD project taking place within a corporate setting. In particular, it demonstrates the significance of the role of the IT project manager in relation to managing the interface between the competing demands of corporate, personal and project team values and highlights the importance of social values in doing this. The thesis proposes that by paying greater regard to social values, for example altruism, which engenders trust and honesty, the project manager will ensure greater congruence between corporate and personal values, thus creating favourable conditions for project success

Model of Housing Satisfaction for Families in Low-Income Rural Areas

This study is a part of the Southern Regional Research Project, S-95, funded through the Oklahoma State University Agricultural Experiment Station. Concentration for the study deals with the family's satisfaction with its present housing and the desire to change housing. Four hundred families in Adair and Okfuskee counties of Oklahoma were interviewed. The goal of this study was to stimulate a better understanding of the factors which influence housing satisfaction and aid in identifying and implementing programs to assist families in reaching their housing goals.Housing, Design and Consumer Resource

Cost efficiency of incentives in mature probability-based online panels

Little is known about the trade-off between response rates and sample selection on the one hand and costs of different incentives on the other hand in mature online panel surveys. In wave 5 of the Panel Survey of the Swiss Election Study (Selects), a conditional CHF 20 (cash) is used for the politically least interested, while the remaining sample is randomized in two incentive groups: a conditional CHF 10 (cash) and a lottery (5x300 CHF). In the two experimental groups, there are only small differences regarding sample composition, and response rates are only slightly higher in the more expensive cash group. Given that costs are significantly lower in the lottery group, we conclude that it may be possible to save costs on incentives in a mature panel

Disseminated Fusarium oxysporum Infection in Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis

Abstract : The portal of entry of disseminated Fusarium spp. infections is still not clearly defined. We report on a disseminated Fusarium oxysporum infection occurring during a long period of severe neutropenia in a child with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis. A nasogastric feeding tube was the possible source of entry of the fungu

Laboratoire SCI-Mobility: inauguré lors de l’année jubilée

Le 7 avril 2022, lors de l’année du jubilée de la BFH, a eu lieu l’inauguration du laboratoire SCI-Mobility de la Haute école spécialisée bernoise. « SCI » pour spinal cord injury, et « mobility » pour ce qui concerne les moyens de déplacement, en allant du simple fauteuil roulant au vélo à trois roues connectées à la moelle épinière de son pilote