The limitations of speech control: perceptions of provision of speech-driven environmental controls

This study set out to collect data from assistive technology professionals about their provision of speech-driven environmental control systems. This study is part of a larger study looking at developing a new speech-driven environmental control system

Re-visiting the Community Development Projects of the 1970s in the UK

Researchers in Tyneside and Coventry have been re-visiting the Community Development Project (CDP) of the 1970s as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded project – Imagine: Connecting Communities through Research (2013-17). The Community Development Project (CDP), a Home Office-funded experimental, anti-poverty initiative of the 1970s, was located in 12 areas in the UK. Three of these areas are the focus of the Imagine study: Benwell (Newcastle-upon-Tyne), North Shields and Hillfields (Coventry). The programme of research has been co-ordinated by Durham University’s Centre for Social Justice and Community Action in partnership with Warwick University, and 15 community partner organisations

Social Media in the SME Business to Business Environment and Toolkit

This report responds to the growing appetite for businesses to gain a better understanding of social media marketing and the associated benefits. Over the last twelve months, we have spent time exploring the concept of social media marketing and the impact it can have on B2B campaigns. Academics from Newcastle Business School have spent time talking to SMEs and their marketing teams to help identify and successfully navigate some of the most common challenges surrounding B2B social media marketing. As a consequence of this study, we present a framework of integrated marketing communications (IMC), incorporating social media. This framework underpins the B2B Social Media Toolkit, which is the main outcome of this report. The research findings have been presented using the Social Media Honeycomb developed by Kietzmann et al. (2011). This has allowed us to distil our findings into seven distinct themes, which are presented on the right. The B2B social media toolkit is a practical and easy to follow guide for anyone wanting to improve the effectiveness of their social media activity or a good starting point for any business that has yet to incorporate social media into their wider marketing plan

Modeling Ranking, Time Trade-Off and Visual Analogue Scale Values for EQ-5D Health States

Abstract BACKGROUND: There is rising interest in eliciting health state valuations using rankings. Due to their relative simplicity, ordinal measurement methods may offer an attractive practical alternative to cardinal methods, such as time trade-off (TTO) and visual analog scale (VAS). In this article, we explore alternative models for estimating cardinal health state values from rank responses in a unique multicountry database. We highlight an estimation challenge pertaining to health states just below perfect health (the "nonoptimal gap") and propose an analytic solution to ameliorate this problem. METHODS: Using a standardized protocol developed by the EuroQol Group, rank, VAS, and TTO responses were collected for 43 health states in 8 countries: Slovenia, Argentina, Denmark, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States, yielding a sample of 179,431 state responses from 11,483 subjects. States were described using the EQ-5D system, which allows for 3 different possible levels on 5 different dimensions of health. We estimated conditional logit and probit regression models for rank responses. The regressions included 17 health state attribute variables reflecting specific levels on each dimension and counts of different levels across dimensions. This flexible specification accommodates previously published valuation models, such as models applied in the United Kingdom and United States. In addition to fitting standard conditional logit and probit models, which assume equal variance across health states (homoscedasticity), we examined a heteroscedastic probit model that assumes no variance for the 2 points anchoring the scale ("optimal health" and "dead") and relaxes the equal-variance assumption for all other states. Rank-based predictions for the 243 unique states defined by the EQ-5D system were compared with predictions from conventional linear models fitted to TTO and VAS responses. RESULTS: By construction, the TTO and VAS models assume no variance around the anchoring states of optimal health and dead. Mimicking this assumption in the probit rank models helps dissolve the nonoptimal gap. For all other states, variances in TTO and VAS were negatively associated with mean values, which contradict the assumption of homoscedasticity. Estimated health state values from the heteroscedastic probit model for the ranking data were highly correlated with predictions from both TTO and VAS models for the 243 EQ-5D states. Between VAS and rank-based estimates, Lin's rho, a measure of agreement, was over 0.98 with a mean absolute difference of 0.028. Corresponding measures of agreement between rank and TTO estimates were 0.96 and 0.12, which is similar to the agreement between VAS and TTO. CONCLUSIONS: Rank-based valuation techniques, which offer advantages of flexibility, generalizability, and ease of administration, may be attractive substitutes for TTO and VAS in the measurement of societal values for health outcomes

Towards intensive parenting? Changes in the composition and determinants of mothers' and fathers' time with children 1992-2006

Contemporary expectations of good parenting hold that focused, intensive parental attention is essential to children's development. Parental input is viewed as a key determinant in children's social, psychological and educational outcomes, with the early years particularly crucial. However, increased rates of maternal employment mean that more parents are juggling work and family commitments and have less non-work time available to devote to children. Yet studies find that parental childcare time has increased over recent decades. In this paper, we explore the detail of this trend using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS), 1992 and 2006. To investigate whether discourses on intensive parenting are reflected in behaviour, we examine a greater range of parent-child activities than has been undertaken to date, looking at trends in active childcare time (disaggregated into talk-based, physical and accompanying care activities); time in childcare as a secondary activity; time spent in the company of children in leisure activities; and time spent in the company of children in total. We also investigate whether the influence of factors known to predict parental time with children (gender, education, employment status and the age of children) have changed over time. We contextualize our analyses within social and economic trends in Australia and find a compositional change in parental time, with more active childcare occurring within less overall time, which suggests more intensive, child-centred parenting. Fathers' parent-child time, particularly in physical care, increased more than mothers' (from a much lower base), and tertiary education no longer predicts significantly higher childcare time. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

From vocational training to education: the development of a no-frontiers education policy for Europe?

This article focuses on developments towards an EU educational policy. Education was not included as one of the Community competencies in the Treaty of Rome. The first half of the article analyses the way that the European Court of Justice and the Commission of the European Communities between them managed to develop a series of substantial Community programmes out of Article 128 on vocational training. The second half of the article discusses educational developments in the community following the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty of Amsterdam. Whilst the legal competence of the community now includes education, the author's argument is that the inclusion of an educational competence will not result in further developments to mirror those in the years before the Treaty on Europe</p

Supporting Fathers in Multi-Ethnic Societies: Insights from British Asian Fathers

AbstractThere is concern that current UK policy and intervention aimed at supporting fathers remains primarily informed by dominant White middle-class values and experiences, and therefore fails to respond adequately to the needs of Britain's diverse fathers. This paper contributes to understanding of ethnic diversity in fathering contexts, practices and experiences, by reporting findings from a qualitative study of British Asian fathers, involving in-depth interviews with fifty-nine fathers and thirty-three mothers from Bangladeshi Muslim, Pakistani Muslim, Gujarati Hindu and Punjabi Sikh background, and over eight additional respondents engaged through Key Informant interviews, ethnographic interviews and group discussions. The paper highlights four areas that require greater recognition by policy-makers and practitioners to appropriately meet the needs of fathers from diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. These are: recognising that fathers and mothers do not necessarily constitute an autonomous unit; appreciating diversity in fathers’ understandings of desirable child outcomes; addressing additional obstacles to achieving similar outcomes for children; and understanding that the boundaries and content of fathering are not universally recognised. Policies that are less normative and more responsive to diversity are essential to ensure that all fathers can be effectively supported.</jats:p

The Distribution of High and Low Redshift Type Ia Supernovae

The distribution of high redshift Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) with respect to projected distance from the center of the host galaxy is studied and compared to the distribution of local SNe. The distribution of high-z SNe Ia is found to be similar to the local sample of SNe Ia discovered with CCDs, but different than the sample discovered photographically. This is shown to be due to the Shaw effect. These results have implications for the use of SNe Ia to determine cosmological parameters if the local sample of supernovae used to calibrate the light curve decline relationships is drawn from a sample discovered photographically. A K-S test shows that the probability that the high redshift SNe of the Supernova Cosmology Project are drawn from the same distribution as the low redshift calibrators of Riess et al. is 0.1%. This is a potential problem because photographically discovered SNe are preferentially discovered farther away from the galaxy nucleus, where SNe show a lower scatter in absolute magnitude, and are on average 0.3 magnitudes fainter than SNe located closer to the center of their host galaxy. This raises questions about whether or not the calibration SNe sample the full range of parameters potentially present in high redshift SNe Ia. The limited data available suggest that the calibration process is adequate; however, it would be preferable if high redshift SNe and the low redshift SNe used to calibrate them were drawn from the same sample, as subtle differences may be important. Data are also presented which suggest that the seeming anti-Malmquist trend noticed by Tammann et al.(1996, 1998) for SNe Ia in galaxies with Cepheid distances may be due to the location of the SNe in their host galaxies.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa