Devolved school-based financial management in New Zealand : observations on the conformity patterns of school organisations to change

This paper examines the intent and consequences of ‘new’ financial management (the ‘New Public Financial Management’) (NPFM) procedures invoked to facilitate a macro-micro interface within the context of the significant administrative reform of the New Zealand (NZ) state education system. The 1989 administrative reform of the NZ education system was predicated on a particular view of public sector management, which was characterised by the umbrella heading of ‘New Public Management’ (NPM). It was claimed that NPFM provided a link between the sets of values highlighted through the NPM reform process and the internal workings of various public sector organisations. The study provides case studies of the organisational financial management practices of four schools, some ten years after the reform. The observed practices are analysed and interpreted within a theoretical framework comprising two competing theories of change – NPM which provides the ‘normative’ intent for public sector organisational change, and institutional theory that offers an explanation of the ‘operational’ consequences of public sector organisational (i.e. schools) response to change. The findings suggest that accounting and management technologies have served a useful, political purpose, although not in the way espoused by NPM proponents

EXAMINING QUALITY INDICATOR RATES FOR OLDER HOME CARE CLIENTS WITH DUAL SENSORY IMPAIRMENT (DSI) AND EXPLORING THE HETEROGENEITY WITHIN DSI.

Older adults with impairments in both hearing and vision, called dual sensory impairment (DSI), are at an increased risk of negative health outcomes such as impaired communication and difficulties with mobility. It is unknown whether DSI is associated with potential quality of care issues. This study used a set of home care quality indicators (HCQIs) to examine potential quality issues in older clients (65+) with DSI. Further, it looked to explore how HCQI rates differed based on the geographic region of care and whether the client’s level of hearing and vision impairment was related to certain HCQIs. The HCQIs were generated from data collected using the Resident Assessment Instrument for Home Care and capture undesirable outcomes (e.g., falls, cognitive decline). Higher rates indicate a greater frequency of experiencing the issue. In this sample (n=352,656), the average age was 82.8 years (sd=7.9), the majority were female (63.2%), and 20.5% experienced DSI. Compared to those without DSI, clients with DSI had higher rates across 20 of the 22 HCQIs. The HCQI rates differed by geographic region, with specific regions consistently performing worse than others. Finally, the level of hearing and vision impairment was related to certain HCQIs more than others, for example hearing impairment appeared to be more related to the quality indicator measuring communication difficulty. Overall, the hope is that this information can help to identify some of the potential issues around quality and in turn, assist in continually improving the services being provided to these clients

Development of the children's eating behaviour questionnaire

Individual differences in several aspects of eating style have been implicated in the development of weight problems in children and adults, but there are presently no reliable and valid scales that assess a range of dimensions of eating style. This paper describes the development and preliminary validation of a parent-rated instrument to assess eight dimensions of eating style in children; the Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ). Constructs for inclusion were derived both from the existing literature on eating behaviour in children and adults, and from interviews with parents. They included reponsiveness to food, enjoyment of food, satiety responsiveness, slowness in eating, fussiness, emotional overeating, emotional undereating, and desire for drinks. A. large pool of items covering each of these: constructs was developed. The number of items was then successively culled through analysis of responses from three samples of families of young children (N = 131; N = 187, N = 218), to produce a 35-item instrument with eight scales which were internally valid and had good test-retest reliability. Investigation of variations by gender and age revealed only minimal gender differences in any aspect of eating style. Satiety responsiveness and slowness in eating diminished from age 3 to 8. Enjoyment of food and food responsiveness increased over this age range. The CEBQ should provide a useful measure of eating style for research into the early precursors of obesity or eating disorders. This is especially important in relation to the growing evidence for the heritability of obesity, where good measurement of the associated behavioural phenotype will be crucial in investigating the contribution of inherited variations in eating behaviour to the process of weight gain

Protocol for the effective feedback to improve primary care prescribing safety (EFIPPS) study : a cluster randomised controlled trial using ePrescribing data

High-risk prescribing in primary care is common and causes considerable harm. Feedback interventions to improve care are attractive because they are relatively cheap to widely implement. There is good evidence that feedback has small to moderate effects, but the most recent Cochrane review called for more high-quality, large trials that explicitly test different forms of feedback. The study is a three-arm cluster-randomised trial with general practices being randomised and outcomes measured at patient level. 262 practices in three Scottish Health Board areas have been randomised (94% of all possible practices). The two active arms receive different forms of prescribing safety data feedback, with rates of high-risk prescribing compared with a ‘usual care’ arm. Sample size estimation used baseline data from participating practices. With 85 practices randomised to each arm, then there is 93% power to detect a 25% difference in the percentage of high-risk prescribing (from 6.1% to 4.5%) between the usual care arm and each intervention arm. The primary outcome is a composite of six high-risk prescribing measures (antipsychotic prescribing to people aged ≥75 years; non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) prescribing to people aged ≥75 without gastroprotection; NSAID prescribing to people prescribed aspirin/clopidogrel without gastroprotection; NSAID prescribing to people prescribed an ACE inhibitor/angiotensin receptor blocker and a diuretic; NSAID prescription to people prescribed an oral anticoagulant without gastroprotection; aspirin/clopidogrel prescription to people prescribed an oral anticoagulant without gastroprotection). The primary analysis will use multilevel modelling to account for repeated measurement of outcomes in patients clustered within practices. The study was reviewed and approved by the NHS Tayside Committee on Medical Research Ethics B (11/ES/0001). The study will be disseminated via a final report to the funder with a publicly available research summary, and peer reviewed publications

Modelling the atomic structure of very high-density amorphous ice

The structure of very high-density amorphous (VHDA) ice has been modelled by positionally disordering three crystalline phases, namely ice IV, VI and XII. These phases were chosen because only they are stable or metastable in the region of the ice phase diagram where VHDA ice is formed, and their densities are comparable to that of VHDA ice. An excellent fit to the medium range of the experimentally observed pair-correlation function g(r) of VHDA ice was obtained by introducing disorder into the positions of the H2O molecules, as well as small amounts of molecular rotational disorder, disorder in the O--H bond lengths and disorder in the H--O--H bond angles. The low-k behaviour of the experimental structure factor, S(k), is also very well reproduced by this disordered-crystal model. The fraction of each phase present in the best-fit disordered model is very close to that observed in the probable crystallization products of VHDA ice. In particular, only negligible amounts of ice IV are predicted, in accordance with experimental observation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, v2: changes made in response to referees' comments, the justification for using certain ice phases is improved, and ice IV is now disordered as wel

Effective Feedback to Improve Primary Care Prescribing Safety (EFIPPS) a pragmatic three-arm cluster randomised trial:designing the intervention (ClinicalTrials.gov registration NCT01602705)

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Psychology of Trial Judging

Trial court judges play a crucial role in the administration of justice for both criminal and civil matters. Although psychologists have studied juries for many decades, they have paid relatively little attention to judges. Recent writings, however, suggest that there is increasing interest in the psychology of judicial decision making. In this article, I review several selected areas of judicial behavior in which decisions appear to be influenced by psychological dispositions, but I caution that a mature psychology of judging field will need to consider the influence of the bureaucratic court setting in which judges are embedded, judges’ legal training, and the constraints of legal precedent

Social report framing: Evidence from a major Italian bank

This study aims to analyse the development of a social report in a major Italian bank from its formation in 2007 to 2012.The Italian banking sector plays an important role in the Italian economy.Several Italian frameworks for social reports have been published and used by Italian companies.However, an important framework for social reports in Italy is the GRI.The paper aims to answer the following research questions: 1) what international guidelines have been used by the Bank in its social reports, during the period considered? 2) What have been the structural changes in the social report over time? The aim of these questions is to analyse the structure of the Bank’s six social reports.The paper relies on documentary analysis, applied to six social reports. It is based on G3 Guidelines and Performance Indicators (PIs).The paper finds that in the six-year period several changes in social reports are highlighted.We conclude that the Bank has engaged in a process of continuous improvement in the information content of the social report, including recently indicating that a PI is only partially disclosed if not in accordance with the guidelines