Applaus is niet genoeg: anders waarderen en erkennen van zorgverleners

The politics and administration of institutional chang

Initial results from Phase 2 of the international urban energy balance model comparison

Urban land surface schemes have been developed to model the distinct features of the urban surface and the associated energy exchange processes. These models have been developed for a range of purposes and make different assumptions related to the inclusion and representation of the relevant processes. Here, the first results of Phase 2 from an international comparison project to evaluate 32 urban land surface schemes are presented. This is the first large-scale systematic evaluation of these models. In four stages, participants were given increasingly detailed information about an urban site for which urban fluxes were directly observed. At each stage, each group returned their models' calculated surface energy balance fluxes. Wide variations are evident in the performance of the models for individual fluxes. No individual model performs best for all fluxes. Providing additional information about the surface generally results in better performance. However, there is clear evidence that poor choice of parameter values can cause a large drop in performance for models that otherwise perform well. As many models do not perform well across all fluxes, there is need for caution in their application, and users should be aware of the implications for applications and decision making

Nonresponse Bias and Stimulus Effects in the Dutch National Election Study

Bias is a much-debated issue in survey research. Answer effects (respondents claim to have behaved differently than they did in reality), nonresponse bias (nonrespondents differ on important variables from the respondents) and stimulus effects (by participating in a previous wave of a study, respondents change their behavior or attitude) can seriously distort the results of survey research. By using data from the 1998 Dutch National Election Study the authors show that the results of election research can indeed be affected by bias. Not only are significant effects found in the distribution of political attitude and voting behavior variables as a result of both nonresponse bias and stimulus effects, it is also shown that relations between variables change as a result of bias

To Participate or Not to Participate: The Link Between Survey Participation, Electoral Participation, and Political Interest

Survey participation, electoral participation, and political interest have been given wide attention in the research literature, but no one so far has combined these three variables in one model. Taking the social isolation-hypothesis as our starting point, we developed a model with one factor, social involvement, as the common factor underlying these three types of participation. We reviewed the literature and concluded that we had to include a second underlying factor: attachment to society. Using a new data set, gathered on the occasion of the 1998 Dutch national elections and including validated voter turnout measures, we were able to test the model. After making some adaptions, we found a model with a satisfactory fit. The results show that, by including social involvement and attachment to society as mediating variables, we can reach much higher levels of explained variances of survey and electoral participation than we can with traditional models. The results also add to our understanding of the relationship between survey and electoral participation and political interest