Which Ranking? The Impact of a 'Value-Added' Measure of Secondary School Performance

This article analyses the impact of a value-added performance indicator (PI) on the rankings of secondary schools in the English league tables. School rankings are seen to be very sensitive to the type of PI employed, and the new value-added PI is likely to result in significant movements up and down the rankings. There is still scope for schools to try and game the system in order to improve their league table position. Value-added PIs reduce the incentives for schools to select their pupils, but the version currently employed in England may create an incentive for schools to distort effort away from those pupils at the top end of the distribution. The value-added PI is shown to provide a more accurate measure of school performance. However, in order for parents to be effective drivers for improvement in the education market, it may also be necessary for the government to measure the impact of differential value-added across different student types.     

Harm-advocating online content and subjective well-being: a cross-national study of new risks faced by youth

Harm-advocating online content includes pro-eating disorder, pro-self-harm, pro-suicide, and the positive portrayal of the deaths of real people (snuff or death sites). This material is often user-generated and easily accessible for an average online user, therefore offering a potential source of risk for many Internet users. This cross-sectional study examined the association between exposure to harm-advocating online content and users’ subjective well-being (SWB) among American (n = 1032) and Finnish (n = 555) young people aged 15–30. Exposure to different types of online harm-advocating content was prevalent in both countries. Lower SWB was associated with exposure to this material even when controlling for social networking site (SNS) activity and online and offline victimization. In the US sample, seeing death sites was not associated with SWB, but seeing other harm-advocating sites was. In both countries, those with high SNS activity were more likely to be exposed to online harm-advocating material. These results from two advanced information societies underline the importance of recognizing the existence of harmful online communities. These communities are grounded on social interaction that might involve risks for the well-being of adolescents and young adults.     

Predictors of the perceived risk of climate change and preferred resource levels for climate change management programs

In a 2013 US national public opinion survey, data were collected from 1321 adult respondents for five psychometric variables – Dread, Scientists’ Level of Understanding, Public’s Level of Understanding, Number Affected, and Likelihood – for six threats (sea-level rise, increased flooding, and four others) associated with climate change. Respondents also rated perceived risk and indicated the resource level that they believed should be invested in management programs for each threat. Responses did not vary significantly across the six threats, so they were combined. The survey collected standard demographic information, as well as measuring climate change knowledge and environmental values (New Ecological Paradigm, NEP). Psychometric variables predicted perceived risk extremely well (R = .890, p < .001); all five psychometric variables were significant predictors. The results were generally consistent with previous research except that Scientists’ Level of Understanding was a positive, rather than negative, predictor of perceived risk. Jointly the demographic variables, knowledge, and environmental values significantly predicted perceived risk (R = .504, p < .001). Consistent with previous research, significant positive predictors were age, Democratic Party Identification, and NEP score; significant negative predictors were male gender and White ethnicity. When demographic variables, knowledge, and environmental values were added to psychometric ones, only the psychometric variables were statistically significant predictors. Perceived risk strongly predicted resource level (r = .772, p < .001). Adding demographic, knowledge, and environmental value variables to perceived risk as predictors of resource level did not appreciably increase overall predictive ability (r = .790, p < .001), although White ethnicity emerged as a significant negative predictor and religiosity, Democratic Party Identification, Liberal Political Ideology, and NEP score were significant positive predictors. The results demonstrate that risk perceptions of climate change and policy preferences among climate change management options are highly predictable as a function of demographic, knowledge, environmental values, and psychometric variables. Among these, psychometric variables were found to be the strongest predictors.     

Being active when judging risks: bodily states interfere with accurate risk analysis

Research on embodiment shows that bodily states influence affect and cognition, but embodiment theories have hardly been applied to risk research. Understanding how the bodily state of being physically active interferes with accurate risk judgments is especially important in risky activities, such as risk sports or even biking in the city. The present investigation consisted of two field studies (Study 1, N = 45; Study 2, N = 110) and one experimental study (Study 3, N = 44) examining the influence of physical activity on risk judgments. In Study 1, backcountry skiers judged risks of backcountry skiing while on tour and in Study 2 indoor climbers judged climbing risks. In Study 3, participants were riding on a stationary bicycle in the laboratory and judged risks related and unrelated to that activity. It was found that physical activity can decrease the perceived likelihood of risks, both related and unrelated to the activity, and that this effect is moderated by experience.     

‘Bankruptcy tourism’ under the EC regulation on insolvency proceedings: A view from England and Wales

This article provides an account of the emergent phenomenon of ‘bankruptcy tourism’—forum shopping by debtors for favourable personal insolvency law—within the EU and with particular reference to England and Wales. After outlining the structural features of the European legal framework that make forum shopping for personal insolvency law possible, including the EC Regulation on Insolvency Proceedings and explaining why England and Wales in particular has proved to be an attractive ‘tourist’ destination, the article charts how the official receivers and the courts in England and Wales have sought to manage the influx of foreign bankruptcies in terms of legal principle and process drawing on two reported cases, Eichler and Mitterfellner. It will be seen that the institutional response in England and Wales has been twofold. First, the ‘problem’ of forum shopping debtors has been framed as a problem of policing the line between genuine and fictional relocations. Secondly, there are signs that the procedural onus on debtors to evidence their claim to English jurisdiction before a bankruptcy order is made has been increased, a move that can be interpreted as a form of institutional resistance designed to raise the barrier to entry. Having sought to illuminate the problems, costs and inconvenience associated with forum shopping from a practitioner standpoint, we explore the ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ forum shopping question and consider the scope for reform of the EC Regulation. Adopting a creditor perspective, we conclude provisionally that the Regulation could usefully be reformed to limit the scope for insolvent debtors to switch their COMI in anticipation of filing for bankruptcy. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhancing claim classification with feature extraction from anomaly-detection-derived routine and peculiarity profiles

Usage-based insurance is becoming the new standard in vehicle insurance; it is therefore relevant to find efficient ways of using insureds' driving data. Applying anomaly detection (AD) to vehicles' trip summaries, we develop a method allowing to derive a “routine” and a “peculiarity” anomaly profile for each vehicle. To this end, AD algorithms are used to compute a routine and a peculiarity anomaly score for each trip a vehicle makes. The former measures the anomaly degree of the trip compared with the other trips made by the concerned vehicle, while the latter measures its anomaly degree compared with trips made by any vehicle. The resulting anomaly scores vectors are used as routine and peculiarity profiles. Features are then extracted from these profiles, for which we investigate the predictive power in the claim classification framework. Using real data, we find that features extracted from the vehicles' peculiarity profile improve the classification.     

Gender Convergence in Human Survival and the Postponement of Death

It has been a long-accepted demographic maxim that females outlive males. Using data for England and Wales, we show that life expectancy at age 30 is converging, and continuation of this long-term trend suggests life expectancy could reach parity in 2030, resulting in considerable economic and social ramifications. The degree of parity in life expectancy is examined by comparing the historical record in four countries that show that convergence is not a new phenomenon. Contributory factors are considered including changes in male smoking habits and male employment patterns. A model is presented that considers gender differences in longevity using novel methods for analyzing life tables. It determines the ages from which death is being postponed, to the ages at which people now die, the relative speed at which these changes are taking place between genders, and how the changes observed are affecting survival prospects at different ages up to 2030. It finds that as life expectancy continues to rise there is accompanying convergence in modal age of death of between 92 and 93 years.     

Competition in Electricity Supply: Will ‘1998’ Be Worth It?

Starting in 1998, the electricity market in England and Wales will be opened up to full competition, and all consumers will be allowed to choose their electricity supplier. This promises to result in lower prices, but there will be additional transactions costs exceeding £100 million a year for the first five years. Relative to a counterfactual without competition, there are likely to be large transfers from electricity companies (and the coal industry) to consumers, but the companies lose more than consumers gain. This conclusion might be reversed if competitive pressure leads to significant additional cost savings in the future. JEL classification: L94     

The Mobility of English School Children*

In this paper, we examine links between pupil mobility and pupil and school characteristics at all levels of compulsory schooling in England. We derive measures of mobility from two academic years of the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) data, a unique national administrative pupil‐level longitudinal data source. Our findings suggest that mobile pupils are more socially disadvantaged than non‐mobile pupils and are significantly less likely to have a good prior education record. Moreover, we find that pupils are less likely to move if the school they attend has good average performance levels. Finally, when children move school, they are more likely to end up in a school with better Key Stage performance than the one they left, but this improvement is significantly more marked for children from better‐off backgrounds.     

The restructuring and privatisation of the electricity distribution and supply businesses in England and Wales: a social cost‐benefit analysis

In December 1990, the 12 regional electricity companies — responsible for the distribution and supply of electricity in England and Wales — were privatised. For the first few years following privatisation, real prices, profits and costs in the industry rose. Following two Price Control Reviews, prices have now fallen sharply and there have been substantial reductions in costs and more recently in profits. This paper attempts to conduct a social cost–benefit analysis of the privatisation by examining actual and predicted falls in costs over the period to 2005. We conclude that the privatisation did yield significant net benefits but that these were unevenly distributed across time and groups in society. Relative to our preferred counterfactual, consumers experience slightly lower prices and the government gains £5 billion in sale proceeds and net taxes. However, consumers begin to gain only from 2000.     

How to improve people's interpretation of probabilities of precipitation

Most research into uncertainty focuses on how people estimate probability magnitude. By contrast, this paper focuses on how people interpret the concept of probability and why they often misinterpret it. In a weather forecast context, we hypothesised that the absence of an explicit reference class and the polysemy of the percentage format are causing incorrect probability interpretations, and test two interventions to help people make better probability interpretation. In two studies (N = 1337), we demonstrate that most people from the UK and the US do not interpret probabilities of precipitation correctly. The explicit mention of the reference class helped people to interpret probabilities of precipitation better when the target area was explicit; but this was not the case when it was not specified. Furthermore, the polysemy of the percentage format is not likely to cause these misinterpretations, since a non-polysemous format (e.g. verbal probability) did not facilitate a correct probability interpretation in our studies. A Bayes factor analysis supported both of these conclusions. We discuss theoretical and applied implications of our findings.     

Talking aggressively about GMOs? Examining the effect of aggressive risk communication with communicator’s facial expression and gender

Abstract

Two experiments (N = 229 and N = 268) assessed the effect of aggressive risk communication about GMOs by a scientist on respondents’ perceptions of message quality and writer (the scientist communicator) likability. We also considered two factors from the communicator that may influence how individuals process aggressive messages – facial expression (study 1) and the gender (study 2). Both studies showed that aggressive communication has a negative effect on both perceived message quality and writer likability, which is explained by the level of negative expectancy violation individuals perceived. Moreover, study 1 showed that smiling appeared to be a negative influence on the outcomes and study 2 showed that gender did not influence how people perceive aggressive messages. The findings provided both scholarly and practical implications for science and risk communication.     

Revisiting local responses to mass violence

This study examines the extent to which individual and sociological factors relate to worry about mass violence, which, in this study, is investigated as worry about the recurrence of school shootings. First, it is expected that socio-demographic and vicarious event-related factors explain individual variation in worry about mass violence. Second, responses to a localized event may associate with negative perceptions of community solidarity. In addition, individual responses regarding school shootings cannot easily be separated from other forms of insecurity, such as concerns about societal disintegration (e.g. eroding moral values) and popular discussions about crime (e.g. terrorism). Two independent postal surveys were collected from the small Finnish community of Jokela approximately 6 (N = 330) and 18 (N = 278) months after the rampage school shootings in the local high school. Independent samples t tests and linear regression are used as analyses methods. Results from regression analyses of the six-month post-event responses indicate that knowing a victim of a school shooting event relates to increased worry about mass violence. Decreased perceptions of social solidarity are also associating with increased worry after controlling for other individual and sociological factors. After 18 months, both knowing a victim and having school-aged children within one’s household explain even more of the variation in worry, while perceptions of solidarity is no longer a statistically significant predictor. In addition, at both 6 and 18 months, the higher the perceptions of risks to Finnish society from social change and from crime, the higher the worry about mass violence at schools. Surprisingly, the positive association between self-reported subjective anxiety and worry about mass violence does not reach a statistical significance.     

The siting of a research centre on clean coal combustion and CO2 capture in Spain: Some notes on the relationship between trust and lack of public information

This paper aims to gain a better understanding of the role played by trust in the context of scarcity of public information, vis‐à‐vis the installation of a Centre for Investigation in Advanced Technologies (Centro de Investigación de Tecnologías Avanzadas, CITA) to be located in a coal‐rich region of Spain. Data from semi‐structured interviews (n = 15), a questionnaire survey (n = 400) and focus group sessions (2) are drawn together to reveal how the local community perceives the proposed CITA scheme, and how this relates to the level of trust placed in the project promoters. Results illustrate how a lay community gives meaning to an unknown technological project, trying to place it within its appropriate economic, social and political context, and relating it to prior knowledge and experiences. Results also show that, in contrast to certain risk communication theories, the public is able to place trust in a technological activity and their promoters despite a general lack of knowledge on either.     

Using community-based,ethnographic methods to examine risk perceptions and actions of low-income,first-time mothers in a post-spill environment

Following the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill, area pregnant women were thought to be at-risk for poor health outcomes from the stress of managing health actions in this post-disaster environment. Research directed by an ongoing community–academic partnership sought to explore the specific role of culture in environmental risk protection actions among low-income pregnant women. As a part of the first-phase of a mixed-methods cultural study, community health workers (CHWs) used freelisting methods to survey low-income, first-time mother (n = 20) for the threats in the environment and relevant protective actions. Then, a separate pile sort activity (n = 31) was used to further investigate these cultural topics. Results elicited a diverse range of threats, protective actions, and sources of support across socio-demographic groups. Results also showed a culturally tailored conceptualization of threats in the environment. Exploring beliefs among a diverse population helps to uncover cultural differences in a population. Results will aid in developing culturally tailored policies and interventions, and increase the relevance of such interventions to address community concerns. Moreover, incorporating CHWs into the research process enhanced researcher literacy, and fostered mutual trust between the community and researchers.     

Designing electricity auctions

Motivated by the new auction format in the England and Wales electricity market, as well as the recent debate in California, we characterize bidding behavior and market outcomes in uniform and discriminatory electricity auctions. Uniform auctions result in higher average prices than discriminatory auctions, but the ranking in terms of productive efficiency is ambiguous. The comparative effects of other market design features, such as the number of steps in suppliers' bid functions, the duration of bids, and the elasticity of demand are analyzed. We also consider the relationship between market structure and market performance in the two auction formats.     

Time for interactive control systems in the public sector? The case of the Every Child Matters policy change in England

The present study employs the Simons, 1990, Simons, 1995 to analyse a shift in the use of control systems by government in the policy area of children and young people in England. At a time when the public is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the government's control over the work of the agencies in this policy area, high-profile cases of crises involving children (e.g. Department of Health, 1991, Laming, 2003) have raised doubts about the effectiveness of the conventional systems of control in place to keep these organisations accountable. Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the traditional type of control systems in government, meant to strengthen public accountability, consistently fail to promote high standards of care.This paper utilises a middle range thinking methodology (Broadbent and Laughlin, 1998) to describe and interpret changes in the policy area of children and young people in England highlighting implications for inter-organisational control. Through the lens of the Simons's levers of control (LOC) framework (1995), it advances the argument that the government is complementing their traditional diagnostic control systems with more interactive ones, principally in an attempt to manage more effectively the risk and uncertainty increasingly present in their environment. An in-depth study of a Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) in ‘Brempton’, North West England, balanced with case evidence from policy documents, extends existing research in the area of control of inter-organisational relationships in the public sector.     

ASSESSING COMPETITION AMONG LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN ENGLAND AND WALES

The government has directed a series of initiatives at local authorities in England and Wales with a view to reducing the volume of current expenditure. In particular, in 1981 the government recommended that local authorities in England and Wales should publish various indicators of activity in their annual reports. The objective was to stimulate competition between authorities, and thereby both influence their spending plans and improve efficiency. This paper examines the trends in the published data over a five-year period to determine whether there has been any detectable increase in competition in local authorities. The results are negative.     

Financing Local Police Spending in England and Wales: Fiscal Federalism in Practice

Since 1995, police forces in England and Wales have been able to raise revenues locally to supplement grants from central government. We analyse the variation across police force areas in locally raised police revenues over the 2000s, and we find that three‐quarters of the temporal and spatial variation in local revenues per head can be explained by differences in incomes, prices and local preferences. A particularly robust parameter is the effective local community tax price associated with raising revenue. We discuss the police funding model in the wider context of fiscal federalism, and we point to alternative funding structures that could be adopted.     

The influence of mood on the willingness to take financial risks

The purpose of this study was to determine whether support could be found for either the Affect Infusion Model or the Mood Maintenance Hypothesis regarding how mood influences financial risk tolerance. An ordinary least‐squares regression model was used to determine if people who exhibited a happy mood at the time they completed a survey scored differently than those who were not happy. In a sample (n = 460) of employed mid‐western respondents between the ages of 18 and 75 years, being in a happy mood was positively associated with having a higher level of financial risk tolerance, holding biopsychosocial and environmental factors constant. Support for the Affect Infusion Model was obtained.