Does data matter? Statewide longitudinal data systems and student performance in the U.S.

Although many industries have benefited from advances in data-driven technology, education is making small steps in capitalizing on the huge potential of data systems. Since 2005, the U.S. Federal Government has been making large grants to help states build statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS) with the goal of improving programme and teacher evaluation and engage in data-driven decision-making. We analyse whether the introduction of SLDSs improved student performance, measured using test scores for math and reading tests for 4th and 8th graders, as well as high school graduation rates. We find no effects of SLDSs on student performance up to 10 years from implementation. However, we find suggestive evidence that these systems may have long-run effects, emphasizing the long-run nature of educational data collection and policy analysis.     

Older consumers’ perceptions of functional foods and non‐edible health‐enhancing innovations

Increasing interest in health and well‐being is likely to drive a growth in demand for products that have positive effects on health. Consumers’ acceptance of and willingness to buy functional foods has been widely studied, but there has not been research on consumers’ attitudes towards innovative non‐edible products with health effects. This study examines how older consumers perceive functional foods and novel non‐edible health‐enhancing products, how willing they are to purchase such products, and how health orientation influences their views. As an example of a ‘radical’ innovation, consumers’ acceptance of rubbing their hands in a specific soil‐based mixture to modulate the immune system is explored. The research material, 13 thematic interviews, was collected in Lahti region, Finland, in 2015. The study indicates that the older consumers’ market is not homogeneous. Based on a qualitative, in‐depth approach, the study distinguishes four consumer segments with different lay understandings of health and attitudes towards health‐enhancing products, which influence people's willingness to purchase such products. The segments are health‐seeking consumers, cautious consumers, critical consumers and natural health consumers. Various motives and barriers for using products with health claims are also identified. The case of rubbing hands in organic soil‐based mixture indicates the difficulty of predicting which consumer segment will first adopt this kind of ‘radical’ innovation. The results highlight that the credence qualities of a novel product must be communicated and advertised before entering the market while also taking into account the sensory properties of the product. ‘Radical innovations’ must be in a form that consumers can easily accept.     

以科技创新为动力 提升民族阀门工业水平

凯喜姆阀门有限公司成立于1983年,是集科研、制造、销售服务于一体的现代化专业阀门制造公司.经过20余年的发展,公司已经成为在阀门行业中名列前茅的重点企业.     

Canadian Health Reform: A Gender Analysis

We analyze the gender impact of the current Canadian system of first-dollar health insurance by examining the use of physicians' services and acute-care hospital services in the Canadian province of Manitoba from April 1, 1997, to March 31, 1999. First, we describe the use by age and sex of healthcare resources offered with universal access at no cost to individuals. Second, we argue that women have a particular interest in maintaining single-payer insurance, because women are moderately high users of healthcare resources, while men tend to be low or catastrophic users who would be shielded from the full force of market-oriented reforms. Third, we attempt to refocus the debate about the gender implications of market-oriented health reform by noting that medicare transfers resources to women of reproductive age from the rest of society, a form of social wage paid as in-kind compensation to women for nonpaid reproductive labor.     

The importance of employment status in determining exit rates from nursing

To mitigate nurse shortages, health care decision makers tend to employ retention strategies that assume nurses employed in full-time, part-time, or casual positions and working in different sectors have similar preferences for work. However, this assumption has not been validated in the literature. The relationship between a nurse's propensity to exit the nurse profession in Ontario and employment status was explored by building an extended Cox Proportional Hazards Regression Model using a counting process technique. The differential exit patterns between part-time and casual nurses suggest that the common practice of treating part-time and casual nurses as equivalent is misleading. Health care decision makers should consider nurse retention strategies specifically targeting casual nurses because this segment of the profession is at the greatest risk of leaving. Nurse executives and nurse managers should investigate the different work preferences of part-time and casual nurses to devise tailored rather than "one-size fits all" nurse retention strategies to retain casual nurses.