Australian implementation and evaluation of active support

Background The implementation and evaluation of Active Support in Australia is reported, the first such formal evaluation outside the UK.

Method Residents and staff of five group homes participated. Active Support was introduced by training staff in one home at a time. Effectiveness was assessed using direct observation of resident engagement in activity and of staff help, as well as written assessments of resident outcomes.

Results Staff help and resident engagement increased in four of five group homes. There was significantly greater participation in a wider variety of domestic activities, as well as more frequent and varied community participation. Change in resident engagement was positively related to change in staff help, but not related to residents' level of adaptive behaviour.

Conclusions Most of our findings were consistent with earlier UK studies. There was evidence of the successful transfer of Active Support training skills to an Australian training team. Nonsignificant trends towards reduced depression and increased adaptive behaviour warrant further investigation.

The evolution of the temporary protection visa regime in Australia

While the Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) regime was formally introduced in October 1999 by the Howard Government, the concept of temporary protection was not totally alien to the Australian humanitarian landscape. Earlier examples reflected a standard use of temporary protection as a complementary or interim protection mechanism, offering short-term group-based protection where individual assessment under the 1951 Convention was both impractical and untimely. This paper focuses on the wider and more controversial changes in the use of temporary protection mechanisms that were to follow with the introduction of the TPV in 1999, which offered substitute protection for individually assessed Convention refugees who had arrived onshore without valid travel documents. It examines the history and evolution of the TPV policy regime from 1999 to the announcement of its abolition in 2008, arguing that the introduction and subsequent development of the policy may be understood as a product of a conservative, exclusionist political climate in Australia, following the unprecedented impact of the populist One Nation party in 1998, and later, the impact of September 11th. It also examines later amendments to the regime as a response to growing domestic disquiet about the impacts of the policy, and the abolition of the TPV policy under a new Australian government elected in late 2007.

The utility of the personal wellbeing index intellectual disability scale in an Australian sample

Background Subjective wellbeing (SWB) in people with intellectual disabilities has been the focus of increased interest in the identification of support needs and as an outcome measure for interventions and service delivery evaluations. It is therefore important to conduct further research in this area, and to develop appropriate scales to measure SWB.

Methods A new scale, the Personal Wellbeing Index-Intellectual Disability (PWI-ID) was administered to 114 adults with mild (n = 82) or moderate (n = 32) level ID in Victoria, Australia.

Results The PWI-ID demonstrated good reliability and validity. A comparison of the findings with previous research indicates that participants' SWB levels are within the normative range, and are similar to those reported by the general population.

Conclusions The results support the notion that individuals with ID do not experience life quality lower than normal, which can be explained theoretically by the Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis. The use of the PWI-ID may ultimately assist in ensuring that the needs of people with ID are being met and inform the planning and delivery of congruent resources and services.

Examining the asymmetric behaviour of macroeconomic aggregates in Asian economies

The goal of this paper is to test for asymmetric behaviour of macroeconomic aggregates for three Asian economies; namely, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Korea. Whether macroeconomic aggregates can be characterised as asymmetric has important implications for policy-making and econometric modelling including forecasting. We examine two forms of asymmetries; specifically deepness, which arises when a detrended time series contains an asymmetric distribution, and steepness, which arises when the first difference of a series contains an asymmetric distribution. Overall, our findings suggest that for all three countries, the bulk of the series display asymmetry behaviour.

Do permanent shocks explain income levels? a common cycle-common trend analysis of regional income levels for China

In this paper, we analyse per capita income levels of China's three main regions: the western region, the eastern region and the central region using common cycle and common trend tests. Our main contribution is that we impose the common cycle and common trend restrictions in decomposing shocks into permanent and transitory components. We find that: (i) there is evidence for two cointegrating relationships and one common cycle; and (ii) the variance decomposition analysis of shocks provides evidence that over short horizons, permanent shocks play a large role in explaining variations in regional per capita incomes.

Active support, participation and depression

Background
Staff training in Active Support is designed to enable direct support staff to increase the engagement and participation of people with intellectual disabilities in a range of daily activities.

Method
Residents (n = 41) and staff of nine group homes participated. The effectiveness of Active Support was evaluated with a pre-test:post-test design, using a number of standardized assessments and other questionnaires, with group home staff as informants. These assessments were conducted before Active Support training and an average of 6.5 months later.

Results
Following implementation of Active Support residents experienced significant increases in domestic participation and adaptive behaviour. There were significant decreases in internalized challenging behaviour, overall challenging behaviour and depression. There was no significant pre–post change in other forms of challenging behaviour.

Conclusions
Our findings confirm and extend previous Active Support research showing that implementation of Active Support is followed by increased resident participation in activities. The significant improvements in adaptive behaviour, challenging behaviour and depression are of particular interest as the present study is among the first to report such effects. The study’s limitations are discussed.

Unions and profits : a meta-regression analysis

The effect of unions on profits continues to be an unresolved theoretical and empirical issue. In this paper, clustered data analysis and hierarchical linear meta-regression models are applied to the population of forty-five econometric studies that report 532 estimates of the direct effect of unions on profits. Unions have a significant negative effect on profits in the United States, and this effect is larger when market-based measures of profits are used. Separate meta-regression analyses are used to identify the effects of market power and long-lived assets on profits, as well as the sources of union-profit effects. The accumulated evidence rejects market power as a source of union-profit effects. While the case is not yet proven, there is some evidence in support of the appropriation of quasi-rent hypothesis. There is a clear need for further American and non-American primary research in this area.

Industry differences in the neoliberal transformation of Australian industrial relations

This article argues that our theoretical understanding of neoliberalism and empirical understanding of the transformation of industrial relations in Australia since the early 1990s can be improved by disaggregating analysis from national to industry level, and by focusing on the dual neoliberal objectives of decollectivisation and individualisation.

Bureaucratic, corporate/market and network governance : shifting spaces for gender equity in education

Education as a field of policy, research and practice has been reconfigured over four decades by economic, social and cultural globalization in conjuncture with neoliberal policies premised upon markets and new managerialism. One effect has been shifting boundaries between, and understandings of what constitutes the public and the private with regard to the role of the state vis-á-vis the formation of gendered subjectivities and civil society and the gendering of public– private relations in and between family and work. Drawing on feminist readings of Bourdieu and critical policy sociology, I consider the implications of a move from bureaucratic educational governance framed by state welfarism to corporate or market governance framed by the post-welfare state, and consider whether particular constructions of globalization and corporate/market governance lead to network governance. Network governance, it is argued, is premised on new forms of sociality and institutional reconfigurations of knowledge-based economies and a spatialized state that coordinates rather than regulates multiple public– private providers. The question is how each mode of governance frames various possibilities and problems for gender equity in education.

The application of a fuzzy rule based system in an exposition of the antecedents of sedge warbler song flight

The utilization of a fuzzy aspect within data analysis attempts to move from a quantitative to a more qualitative investigative environment. As such, this may allow the more non-quantitative researchers results they can use, based on sets of linguistic terms. In this paper an inductive fuzzy decision tree approach is utilized to construct a fuzzy-rule-based system for the first time in a biological setting. The specific biological problem considered attempts to identify the antecedents (conditions in the fuzzy decision rules) which characterize the length of song flight of the male sedge warbler when attempting to attract a mate. Hence, for a non-quantitative investigator the resultant set of fuzzy rules allows an insight into the linguistic interpretation on the relationship between associated characteristics and the respective song flight duration.

An integrated model of subnational regional and urban economic development : framework of analysis

The mechanism of subnational regional and urban economic development has been studied extensively by economists, geographers, town planners and other academics. The existing widely varying theories of regional economic development are insufficient on their own in explaining how a region can develop and prosper. Each theory has evaluated a few facets of regional economic development. Research from these different perspectives is narrow and prevents any cross-fertilization of research from these diverse theories. Recognition of multiple factors affecting the development process has led the author to create an integrated model of regional and urban economic development. The essay first sets out to describe and explain this integrated model. Each of the components of this new model draws heavily upon seminal work in the field. This model proposes three rings. Each ring is at a different level of abstraction. The determinants of development described in each ring can influence each and every other determinant of development shown in the three-ring structure. This model recognizes that development in any centre, be it regional or urban, nascent or established, is a composite end result of the complex interplay of all the determinants. The essay then goes on to show how this model can provide a broad holistic approach to regional economic development that can assist researchers in their attempts to understand and link its various theories.

An epistemically distant God? a critique of John Hick's response to the problem of divine hiddenness

God is thought of as hidden in at least two ways. Firstly, God's reasons for permitting evil, particularly instances of horrendous evil, are often thought to be inscrutable or beyond our ken. Secondly, and perhaps more problematically, God's very existence and love or concern for us is often thought to be hidden from us (or, at least, from many of us on many occasions). But if we assume, as seems most plausible, that God's reasons for permitting evil will (in many, if not most, instances) be impossible for us to comprehend, would we not expect a loving God to at least make his existence or love sufficiently clear to us so that we would know that there is some good, albeit inscrutable, reason why we (or others) are permitted to suffer? In this paper I examine John Hick's influential response to this question, a response predicated on the notion of 'epistemic distance': God must remain epistemically distant and hence hidden from us so as to preserve our free will. Commentators of Hick's work, however, disagree as to whether the kind of free will that is thought to be made possible by epistemic distance is the freedom to believe that God exists, or the freedom to choose between good and evil, or the freedom to enter into a personal relationship with God. I argue that it is only the last of these three varieties of free will that Hick has in mind. But this kind of freedom, I go on to argue, does not necessitate an epistemically distant God, and so the problem of divine hiddenness remains unsolved.

Are output fluctuations transitory? New evidence from twenty four Chinese provinces

The fact that an occurrence of a unit root in real output is inconsistent with the notion that business cycles are stationary fluctuations around a deterministic trend makes this an important topic for empirical investigation. We examine this issue for 24 Chinese provinces using the recently developed Lagrange multiplier panel unit root test which allows for a structural break. Our main finding is that real gross domestic product (GDP) and real GDP per capita for Chinese provinces are stationary fluctuations around a deterministic trend.