An evaluation of the Sycamore Tree programme: based on an analysis of Crime Pics II data

Sheffield Hallam University, in conjunction with Manchester Metropolitan University, were commissioned to undertake an evaluation of the Sycamore Tree programme by Prison Fellowship England and Wales, who have been delivering the programme across a wide range of prisons throughout England and Wales over a number of years. This current evaluation builds on a previous report published by Sheffield Hallam University in 2005 which undertook a similar analysis and identified a positive impact on prisoners who had successfully completed the programme

Political animals

In the last few years the animal rights movement has grown out of all recognition. It's now an important political force that challenges our definition of the political

Measuring Confidentiality Risks in Census Data

Two trends have been on a collision course over the recent past. The first is the increasing demand by researchers for greater detail and flexibility in outputs from the decennial Census of Population. The second is the need felt by the Census Offices to demonstrate more clearly that Census data have been explicitly protected from the risk of disclosure of information about individuals. To reconcile these competing trends the authors propose a statistical measure of risks of disclosure implicit in the release of aggregate census data. The ideas of risk measurement are first developed for microdata where there is prior experience and then modified to measure risk in tables of counts. To make sure that the theoretical ideas are fully expounded, the authors develop small worked example. The risk measure purposed here is currently being tested out with synthetic and a real Census microdata. It is hoped that this approach will both refocus the census confidentiality debate and contribute to the safe use of user defined flexible census output geographies

Measuring Confidentiality Risks in Census Data

Two trends have been on a collision course over the recent past. The first is the increasing demand by researchers for greater detail and flexibility in outputs from the decennial Census of Population. The second is the need felt by the Census Offices to demonstrate more clearly that Census data have been explicitly protected from the risk of disclosure of information about individuals. To reconcile these competing trends the authors propose a statistical measure of risks of disclosure implicit in the release of aggregate census data. The ideas of risk measurement are first developed for microdata where there is prior experience and then modified to measure risk in tables of counts. To make sure that the theoretical ideas are fully expounded, the authors develop small worked example. The risk measure purposed here is currently being tested out with synthetic and a real Census microdata. It is hoped that this approach will both refocus the census confidentiality debate and contribute to the safe use of user defined flexible census output geographies

The color of sea level: importance of spatial variations in spectral shape for assessing the significance of trends

We investigate spatial variations in the shape of the spectrum of sea level variability, based on a homogeneously-sampled 12-year gridded altimeter dataset. We present a method of plotting spectral information as color, focusing on periods between 2 and 24 weeks, which shows that significant spatial variations in the spectral shape exist, and contain useful dynamical information. Using the Bayesian Information Criterion, we determine that, typically, a 5th order autoregressive model is needed to capture the structure in the spectrum. Using this model, we show that statistical errors in fitted local trends range between less than 1 and more than 5 times what would be calculated assuming “white” noise, and the time needed to detect a 1 mm/yr trend ranges between about 5 years and many decades. For global-mean sea level, the statistical error reduces to 0.1 mm/yr over 12 years, with only 2 years needed to detect a 1 mm/yr trend. We find significant regional differences in trend from the global mean. The patterns of these regional differences are indicative of a sea level trend dominated by dynamical ocean processes, over this perio