Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The National Evaluation Of Sure Start Local Programmes In England, Angela Anning, Mog Ball, Jacqueline Barnes, Jay Belsky, Beverley Botting, Martin Frost, Zarrina Kurtz, Alastair H. Leyland, Pamela Meadows, Edward Melhuish, Jane Tunstill

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In the latter part of the 20th century evidence was accumulating about the effectiveness of various intervention programmes for young children in disadvantaged families. Some small-scale interventions were evaluated by randomised control trials as in the case of the Abecedarian project (Ramey et al., 2000), the High/ Scope Perry Preschool Project (Schweinhart, Barnes, & Weikart, 1993) and evaluations of home visiting (e.g. Olds, 1997). Others were evaluated by quasi-experimental methods as with the large-scale Head Start project (e.g. Barnett, 1995; Kresh, 1998). Despite some weaknesses in the evidence for large-scale interventions, the accumulating evidence of the benefits of early intervention …

Towards Understanding Sure Start Local Programmes: Summary Of Findings From The National Evaluation, Edward Melhuish, Jay Belsky, Alastair H. Leyland, Alice Mcleod, Jacky Saul, Alyson Ashton, Angela Anning, Zarrina Kurtz, Jane Tunstill, Mog Ball, Pamela Meadows, Jacqueline Barnes, Martin Frost, Beverley Botting

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Sure Start is the Government's programme to support children, families and communities through the integration of early education, childcare, health and family support. Sure Start local programmes are one element of this, based in areas of disadvantage, whose aim is to improve the health and well being of young children under 4 and their families, so that children have a greater opportunity to flourish when they start school. The National Evaluation of Sure Start local programmes has now been in place for 3 years, during which a large amount of information has been collected and reported. This summary draws together …

The Impact Of Sure Start Local Programmes On Child Development And Family Functioning: A Report On Preliminary Findings, Edward Melhuish, Jay Belsky, Alastair H. Leyland, Angela Anning, Zarrina Kurtz, Jane Tunstill, Mog Ball, Pamela Meadows, Jacqueline Barnes, Martin Frost, Beverley Botting

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

A principal goal of Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) is to enhance the functioning of children and families by improving services provided in the local programme areas. As a first step in assessing the impact of SSLPs on child and family functioning, the Impact module of the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS) is studying 9- and 36-month old children and their families in 150 SSLP areas and in 50 comparison communities (i.e. areas designated to become SSLP later). In 2003, home visits were carried out in more than 8000 families in the first 75 SSLP areas and 3000 families …

Case Studies Of Early Years Settings, Louise Quinn, Karen Hanna, Edward Melhuish, Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Brenda Taggart, Kathy Sylva, Pam Sammons, Gillian Donnelly

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This longitudinal study assesses the attainment and development of children followed from the age of 3 until the end of Key Stage 1. Over 700 children were recruited to the study during 1998 and 1999 from 80 pre-school centres in Northern Ireland. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used to explore the effects of pre-school experience on children's cognitive attainment and social/behavioural development at entry to school and any continuing effects on such outcomes up to 8 years of age. In addition to the effects of pre-school experience, the study investigates the contribution to children's development of individual and family …

A Literature Review Of The Impact Of Early Years Provision On Young Children, With Emphasis Given To Children From Disadvantaged Backgrounds, Edward Melhuish

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This report reviews international research on the impact of early years provision upon young children. Emphasis is given to work related to disadvantaged children. The issues of timing, duration, type, quality and quantity of early years provision are considered in terms of developmental effects upon children and when possible parents. An evaluative summary of the literature on cost benefit analyses of early years provision is also included. Conclusions tempered by the relative rigour and extensiveness of the evidence are produced. Early research was primarily concerned with whether children attending institutions developed differently from those not attending such centres. Later work …

Path Integration Deficits During Linear Locomotion After Human Medial Temporal Lobectomy, John W. Philbeck, Marlene Behrmann, Lucien Levy, Samuel J. Potolicchio, Anthony J. Caputy

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Animal navigation studies have implicated structures in and around the hippocampal formation as crucial in performing path integration (a method of determining one's position by monitoring internally generated self-motion signals). Less is known about the role of these structures for human path integration. We tested path integration in patients who had undergone left or right medial temporal lobectomy as therapy for epilepsy. This procedure removed approximately 50% of the anterior portion of the hippocampus, as well as the amygdala and lateral temporal lobe. Participants attempted to walk without vision to a previously viewed target 2-6 m distant. Patients with right, …

Accelerating Self-Motion Displays Produce The Most Compelling Vection, Stephen Palmisano, F Pekin, Simone Favelle

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Abstract presented at the 27th European Conference on Visual Perception, 22-26 August 2004, Budapest, Hungary

Resistant Starch Consumption Promotes Lipid Oxidation, Janine A. Higgins, Dana R. Higbee, William T. Donahoo, Ian Brown, Melanie L. Bell, Daniel H. Bessesen

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

12 subjects consumed meals containing 0%, 2.7%, 5.4%, and 10.7% RS (as a percentage of total carbohydrate). Blood samples were taken and analyzed for glucose, insulin, triacylglycerol (TAG) and free fatty acid (FFA) concentrations. Respiratory quotient was measured hourly. The 0%, 5.4%, and 10.7% meals contained 50 μCi [1-¹⁴C]-triolein with breath samples collected hourly following the meal, and gluteal fat biopsies obtained at 0 and 24 h. RS, regardless of dose, had no effect on fasting or postprandial insulin, glucose, FFA or TAG concentration, nor on meal fat storage. However, data from indirect calorimetry and oxidation of [1- …

Issues In Assessing The Validity Of Nutrient Data Obtained From A Food-Frequency Questionnaire: Folate And Vitamin B12 Examples, Victoria Flood, Wayne T. Smith, Karen L. Webb, Paul Mitchell

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Objective: To compare methods used to assess the validity of nutrient intake data obtained from a food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ), using folate and vitamin B₁₂ as nutrient examples.

Design: Cross-sectional sample from a population cohort.

Setting: Two postcode areas west of Sydney, Australia.

Subjects: In total, 2895 people aged 49 years and older provided dietary data using a semi-quantitative FFQ (79% of 3654 subjects examined). The validity of the FFQ was assessed against three 4-day weighed food records (WFRs) completed by 78 people (mean age 70 years).

Results: Folate and vitamin B₁₂ validity data were assessed using different methods. …

Consumption Of Foods By Young Children With Diagnosed Campylobacter Infection - A Pilot Case-Control Study, Scott Cameron, Karin Ried, Anthony Worsley, David Topping

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Objective: To determine whether parentally reported habitual intake of specific foods differed between children with diagnosed Campylobacter jejuni infection and children of a comparison group without diagnosed infection.

Design, setting and subjects: Information was collected from the parents or primary caregivers of South Australian children aged 1–5 years with diagnosed C. jejuni (cases, n=172) and an age- and gender-matched group of uninfected children (controls, n=173). Frequency of consumption of 106 food and drink items was determined for the preceding two months by food-frequency questionnaire. Four children in the control group had recorded diarrhoeal episodes during the assessment period …

The Relationship Between Education And Food Consumption In The 1995 Australian National Nutrition Survey, Anthony Worsley, Roswitha Blasche, Kylie Ball, David Crawford

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Objective: To assess the relationship between education and the intake of a variety of individual foods, as well as groups of foods, for Australian men and women in different age groups.

Design: Cross-sectional national survey of free-living men and women.

Subjects: A sample of 2501 men and 2739 women aged 18 years and over who completed the National Nutrition Survey (NNS) 1995.

Methods: Information about the frequency of consumption of 88 food items was obtained using a food-frequency questionnaire in a nation-wide nutrition survey. Irregular and regular consumers of foods were identified according to whether they consumed individual foods less …

What Is The Role Of Theory In Health Behavior Change Interventions?, Simone A. French, Anthony Worsley

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Editorial

Mapping The Catholic Social Services, Peter J. Camilleri, Gail Winkworth

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Faith based agencies are the major providers of social services in Australia (Lyons, 2001: 34-35). The Industries Commission into Charitable Institutions in 1995 was the first major review of the role of charities (most of which are faith-based) within the Australian social welfare system. The role of charities has always been of central importance to the social welfare system. In 1995 according to the Industry Commissions Report on Charitable Services, around 11,000 community social welfare organisations received government funding in Australia. The same report recognised that there were an unknown number of other organisations, which relied entirely on volunteers and …

Keeping The Faith: The Impact Of Human Services Restructuring On Catholic Social Welfare Services, Gail Winkworth, Peter J. Camilleri

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Church related agencies are major providers of community services in Australia (Lyons, 2001:34-35). While the history of church related welfare service provision is not well known in Australia it is asserted that many have a long tradition of outreach and service provision to marginalised groups regardless of the government social policy of the day (ACSWC, 2000; Mendes, 2003). This paper examines the current environment of human services restructuring and the impact of the shift to contractualism on one church related provider: Catholic social welfare provision in Australia. It explores the significance of the church's social teachings and history on concerns …

The Effective Provision Of Pre-School Education (Eppe) Project: Findings From Pre-School To End Of Key Stage 1, Kathy Sylva, Edward Melhuish, Pam Sammons, Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Brenda Taggart

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This research brief describes the effects of education in the pre-school period (ages 3 and 4) as measured at primary school entry (rising 5) and in Years 1 and 2 (ages 6 and 7).

Code Compression Based On Operand-Factorization For Vliw Processors, Montserrat Ros, Peter Sutton

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Code compression techniques have been devised as a way of battling large code. Code compression algorithms usually require specific techniques to maintain the integrity of the program and ensure its functionality. RISC processors have been the main focus for code compression techniques but VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) processors are now being considered in this area.

A Hamming Distance Based Vliw/Epic Code Compression Technique, Montserrat Ros, Peter Sutton

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper presents and reports on a VLIW code compression technique based on vector Hamming distances [19]. It investigates the appropriate selection of dictionary vectors such that all program vectors are at most a specified maximum Hamming distance from a dictionary vector. Bit toggling information is used to restore the original vector. A dictionary vector selection method which considered both vector frequency as well as maximum coverage achieved better results than just considering vector frequency or vector coverage independently. This method was found to outperform standard dictionary compression on TI TMS320C6x program code by an average of 8%, giving compression …

A Unified Open Systems Model For Explaining Organisational Change, Doy Sundarasaradula, H. Hasan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper presents an approach to developing a unified conceptual model to describe and explain change in organisations, viewed as complex systems. The authors propose a model that brings together the traditional open systems model (based on principles of homeostasis, steady state, and cybernetics) and the dissipative systems model (based on thermodynamic non-equilibrium principles) to explain distinctively different phases of change. Gradual and incremental change can be explained by using the traditional open systems model, whereas dramatic and discontinuous change can be explained by the adoption of the dissipative systems model. These two phases of change occur naturally, depending on …

Interactions Among China-Related Stocks: Evidence From A Causality Test With A New Procedure, Gary Gang Tian, Guang Hua Wan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of this study is to investigate a causal relationship among five different indices of shares issued by Chinese firms, A-, B- and H-shares listed in China and Hong Kong. This paper re-examines the interactions among these China-related stocks using daily time series data by constructing a vector autoregresion (VAR) model. A new Granger no-causality testing procedure developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) was applied to test the causality link among these five stock indices. The results emerging from our research indicate that there are "closed" relations within A-share (as well as within B-share) between Shanghai and Shenzhen markets …

Delivering The Right Tourist Service To The Right People - A Comparison Of Segmentation Approaches, Sara Dolnicar, Friedrich Leisch

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Market segmentation has developed to become a generally accepted and widely applied concept in strategic marketing. However, the gap between academic research aiming at increased sophistication of the methodology and managerial use has steadily increased. This paper takes the perspective of a destination manager and compares two segmentation approaches. One typically used in destination management (a priori geographical segmentation) and another one that is common in academic literature (a posteriori behavioural segmentation). The comparison emphasizes managerial usefulness (implying maximization of match between the tourists’ vacation needs and the destinations’ offer) and is illustrated with an empirical guest survey data set …

Applying City Perception Analysis (Cpa) For Destination Positioning Decisions, Sara Dolnicar, K. Grabler

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Typically, the image of a destination is studied by questioning a sample of tourists about their perceptions using a list of attributes and then condensing the data into average values for each individual destination. The city perception analysis (CPA) presented in this article, which is based on the perceptions-based market segmentation concept (PBMS, Dolnicar, Grabler & Mazanec, 1999; Mazanec & Strasser, 2000; Buchta, Dolnicar, & Reutterer, 2000), approaches the positioning task from a completely different perspective. The fundamental assumption is that different consumers harbor different perceptions of various destinations in their minds. Therefore, averaging the perceptions and ignoring inter-individual differences …

Profiling The One- And Two-Star Hotel Guest For Targeted Segmentation Action: A Descriptive Investigation Of Risk Perceptions, Expectations, Disappointments And Information Processing Tendencies, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Identifying the target segment is the basis of developing efficient market segmentation strategies and efficient market segmentation is vital in an industry that is becoming increasingly competitive, as in the case of international tourism. In Austria, hotels in higher star grading categories have addressed this need through systematic market research designed to identify the needs of their consumers. Not so the hotels in the one- and two-star category: these typically do not segment the market and tend to assume that increasing their star grading will lead to increased market demand instead of investigating the specific needs of tourists who very …

Why Customers Stay? Reasons And Consequences Of Inertia In Financial Services, Venkata K. Yanamandram, L. White

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This research investigates inertia in a financial services context, with particular focus on the reasons for consumers’ dissatisfaction and inert behaviour, and studies the customers’ complaining behaviours and past and future inertia. The study utilised a two part methodology, including both qualitative and quantitative research. Twenty indepth interviews provided the preliminary data required for developing a questionnaire which was subsequently completed by 410 respondents. Determinants of dissatisfaction included the number and size of account fees, whilst determinants of inertia were the perception of similarity between financial institutions and the complexity, costs and time inherent in switching. Factors differentiating future inertia …

No Risk, No Fun: The Role Of Perceived Risk In Adventure Tourism, Tracey Dickson, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

There is a long tradition in tourism research to investigate the issue of perceived risk. The reason lies in the tourism industry’s aim to reduce the risk perceptions among tourist in order to increase sales. Perceived risk is thus seen as a hurdle to attracting tourists and the managerial aim is to reduce it. At the same time there is a sub-sector of tourism industry, adventure tourism that seems to work in precisely the opposite way: perceived risk is something attractive to the potential consumers, something they are actively searching for. The aim of this paper is to investigate past …

The Symptomatic Nature Of Past Destination Choice Among Surf Tourists, Sara Dolnicar, M. Fluker

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Surfing has developed to become a major industry, both within the leisure and the tourism sector. While surfers themselves can be viewed as a homogeneous segment characterised by their common interest for the sport, there clearly exists a wide variety of surfers with very different demographic characteristics, lifestyles or even motives for surfing. The aims of this paper are (1) to review past attempts to profile the surfer segment in general and to determine existence and describe the nature of surfer segments, and (2) to suggest a novel approach of segmenting the surfer market, by analysing the pattern of past …

Risk Perceptions, Expectations, Disappointments And Information Processing Tendencies Of One- And Two Star Hotel Guests – Is There A Market For Low Star Hotel Categories In Austria?, Sara Dolnicar

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Identifying the target segment is the basis of developing efficient market segmentation strategies and efficient market segmentation is vital in an industry that is becoming increasingly competitive, as in the case of international tourism. In Austria, hotels in higher star grading categories have addressed this need through systematic market research designed to identify the needs of their consumers. Not so the hotels in the one- and two-star category: these typically do not segment the market and tend to assume that increasing their star grading will lead to increased market demand instead of investigating the specific needs of tourists who very …

A Comparison Of The Weighted Average Cost Of Capital For Multinational Corporations: The Case Of The Automobile Industry Versus The Soft Drink Industry, C. B. Mcgowan, A. Tessema, H. W. Collier

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The object of this paper is to determine to what extent the cost of capital differs across comparisons in different countries. In this paper, wecompare and contract the cost of capital for five countries in the soft drink industry and seven companies in the automobile industry. We find that the weighted average cost of capital for the four largest companies in the soft drink industry are similar and the weighted cost of capital for seven companies in the automobile industry are less similar. Since the companies in this study are all large, multinational companies in a single industry, numerous confounding …

Flags Of Convenience: Shipping Industry Patriotism, Rowan Cahill

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Wollongong, 19 June 2002 - a Chinese seaman bled to death after his leg was severed from his hip whilst working aloft. It was after sunset, lighting was difficulty, and he was not attached to safety harnesses.

Excellent Libraries: A Quality Assurance Perspective, Felicity Mcgregor

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

[Extract] The proliferation of inspirational leadership and management publications available in libraries and bookshops suggests that there are many paths to excellence. Much of the literature is written with a business or corporate audience in mind; however, it is a source of ideas, theories and models that, potentially, can be applied in public or not-for-profit organizations. One theory which has enjoyed a long history of debate and discussion in management studies is quality management, variously referred to as TQM, Quality Assurance, Total Quality Control or one of many other alternatives. In this chapter the applicability and potential benefits, as well …

Coming Of Age: Developing A Genealogy Of Knowledge In The Las Field, Alisa Percy, Jeannette Stirling

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

Quality teaching and learning in higher education has become a mantra in the rhetoric of university policies, and, increasingly, assuring successful student learning is seen asthe core business of the modern university. Ironically, this comes at a time when academic staff are faced with unprecedented demands on their teaching repertoire while being expected to function with fewer resources. Not surprisingly then, many LAS staff find themselves, their knowledge and their skills central to ensuring the university's aspirations, yet in many ways still under threat of intellectual erasure. A contributing factor to this threat, it is argued, is the lack of …