Pitfalls in Military Quantitative Intelligence Analysis: Incident Reporting in a Low Intensity Conflict

Incidents are the key data for several of the statistical reports and analyses created within the military intelligence community. This paper discusses factors that affect the utility of quantitative methods in military intelligence analysis when used in a low intensity conflict. The first half of the paper presents the general critique of the use of quantitative methods. The second half applies this critique to the case of incident reporting in Afghanistan.     

METHODS OF THE SECOND TYPE: COPING WITH THE WILDERNESS OF CONVENTIONAL POLICY ANALYSIS

Policy analysts, like allegorical homesteaders, face the seemingly unmanageable task of coping with the wilderness of ill-structured problems, while concurrently attending to well-structured problems, which can be addressed with conventional methods of policy analysis. What has appeared thus far as an unmanageable task may become manageable once analysts acknowledge the principle of methodological congruence: The appropriateness of a particular type of method is a function of its congruence with the type of problem under investigation.
To be sure, conventional methods of the first type are appropriate and useful for solving first-order problems, which are relatively well-structured. Contexts of practice, however, are pervaded by second-order problems which, variously described as squishy, messy, or ill-structured, are the class of all first-order problems. Just as methods of the first type are congruent with the simple analytic demands of first-order problems, so are methods of the second type congruent with the complex analytic demands of second-order problems. When policy analysts fail to observe this principle of methodological congruence they are likely to solve the wrong problem.
Methods of the second type are not limited to general heuristics, but include specific and readily comprehensible procedures for estimating the boundaries and structure of ill-structured problems. Since these estimation procedures appear to satisfy requirements of inductive estimates in general, policy analysts can assess their own performance in providing approximate answers to the right question, thus coping with the enemies who lurk in the wilderness of conventional policy analysis.     

Rational Choice and Community Power Structures1

The community power debate concluded with each side believing they had won. Political theorists have generalized power, making empirical investigation very difficult; urban scholars have turned their attention to more manageable empirical problems. Rational choice advances the debate, exposing the errors of all sides and facilitating a new approach which transcends structural versus individualist methods. By separating various aspects of power in urban contexts, complementary techniques such as network analysis in a bargaining framework, semi-structured interviewing and the use of text databases permits a comprehensive investigation of agenda-setting and the mobilization of bias. The paper demonstrates the utility of this approach by comparing it to 'regime theory', the latest paradigm of urban research.     

“Squishy” problems and quantitative methods

The edited text of a talk on potential hazards in the application of quantitative methods to “squishy” problems without well-defined structure, of the type frequently encountered in government policy and decisionmaking. Squishy problems are defined, and a three-level conceptual model of analysis which displays the relative roles of logical inference and qualitative human judgment is described. Two ways in which people use models of all types, as a surrogate for the substantive problem (e.g., Newtonian mechanics as a surrogate for “real” mechanics), and as a perspective on the problem (e.g., two-dimensional perspective drawing) are described and contrasted, and some of the implications of the difference for the analysis of squishy problems are discussed.     

Understanding Business Improvement Districts: A New Governance Framework

What is the current state of research on business improvement districts (BIDs)? What is an appropriate framework for analysis? What are key questions for advancing future BID research? BIDs can be understood best within a network governance framework. The research shows, first, a blurring of the line between the public and private spheres as a result of BIDs; second, BIDs are increasingly important actors in urban governance; third, BIDs engage in collaborative, conflictual, and co‐optative relations with local and state governments; and fourth, difficult accountability and management problems are created by their interdependent relationships with local governments. Future research needs to focus on understanding the role of BIDs in urban governance and assessing their impacts on metropolitan areas, as well as their inherently complicated public accountability and management challenges.     

电子政务、市民特征与用户信息行为——基于天津市市民调查的实证研究

电子政务如何更好地满足不同用户的需求,业已成为当前中国电子政务研究的重点方向。在理论上,本研究首先将中国电子政务的所有服务分为三大类:"电子学习""电子行政"和"电子参与",然后对用户的性别、年龄、教育背景、职业等个人特征与其信息行为偏好之间的相关关系提出了一系列理论假设;在实证上,于2006年进行了针对天津市城市居民政府网站使用情况的问卷调查,对中国电子政务的用户特征及其信息行为偏好之间一系列理论假设进行了检验。实证研究表明,用户对政府网站服务功能的选择性使用所呈现的差异,是由用户身份特征的差异性和政府网站建设的局限性两个方面决定的。根据研究结论,提出了一系列提高政府网站的使用率、减少网络用户为获得政府信息和服务所需的时间和精力的投入、提高登录政府网站用户的满意度等方面的政策建议。     

Policy analytic implications for a theory of prediction and decision

Decision theory developed to prescribe the consistent choice behavior under uncertainty of an ideal individual. The policy analysis context of organizational decision-making, however, necessitates certain modifications to the fundamental decision theory in order to deal with the problems of group consensus, ill-defined objectives and disparate information sources. The argument is presented that more attention must be given to the explicit formulation of judgment and that, in particular, there has to be an integration of the methodology of forecasting into the decision-analytic framework. A consequence of adopting a decision-theoretic approach to forecasting is the apparent need to develop ways of synthesizing the set of available predictive methods in order to satisfy the subjectivist principle of total evidence utilization. The synthetic approach to forecasting is in contrast to the conventional selective method. A brief review of some operational methods of pursuing the synthetic approach is given.     

Disabled Istanbulites’ everyday life experiences as ‘urban citizens’: accessibility and participation in decision-making

This article assesses whether the everyday experiences of disabled Istanbulites can be considered from an urban citizenship perspective. To this end, Lefebvre’s notion of the ‘right to the city’ and its relationship with the literature on urban citizenship and Disability Studies is discussed, and two broad categories of analysis are presented to elaborate the issue in the case of Istanbul. These are, namely accessibility – to space, but also to education, health, and employment – and participation in decision-making. Interviews show that the limited rights-based discourses, which guided the institutional transformation of the greater and district municipalities in the early 2000s, have had almost no impact on the everyday experience of disabled Istanbulites. Istanbul remains a largely disabling city with major problems of accessibility and no room in decision-making processes for disabled people. Unfortunately, current developments do not point to the possibility of a more powerful practice of urban citizenship.     

Belief system constraint and policy voting: A test of the unidimensional consistency model

In this paper, the concepts, methods, and findings underlying disputes between traditionalist and revisionist schools of mass-belief-system research are examined. It is argued here that revisionist critiques merit important modifications and qualifications in traditionalist concepts and methods, but not wholesale revisions.The quantitative section seeks to demonstrate the continuing usefulness of the traditional approach for understanding public opinion and voting behavior. First, groups of individuals whose belief systems display a unidimensional or near-unidimensional structure are isolated from the general electorates of 1972 and 1976 using an individual level measure of belief consistency advanced by Barton and Parsons. Next a method of discerning voter projection of candidate issue stands developed by Bruner is used to compare the issue voting competence of consistent and inconsistent voters. Voters whose issue perferences are consistent with the liberal-conservative continuum are found to project less than their counterparts in both data sets examined.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1979 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.     

Contextualising the Teaching of Statistics in Political Science

The teaching of quantitative research methods is an integral part of most postgraduate programmes in politics, but less common at undergraduate level. This article explores the extent to which research methods in general, and quantitative research methods in particular, form part of the curricula of Politics departments in the UK. We then discuss an approach for motivating interest in a subject that tends to be unpopular with many students. We recommend an approach that utilises the links between the general quantification of politics with the quantitative study of political phenomena, as well as a combination of basic research methods for all and more advanced student-focused training for some.     

城市化进程中的反贫困:制度创新与法律保障

面对日益严峻的城市贫困问题,国家初步建立了涵括基本养老保险制度、城市居民最低生活保障制度等在内的城市反贫困制度法律体系。但是这一制度法律体系还不够系统完善,还存在城市反贫困主体单一、社会参与有限的问题,尚未建立系统完备、保障全面的社会保障制度和全国统一的城市反贫困法律体系。城市化进程中的主体贫困、制度贫困和法律贫困是致使产生城市贫困问题的重要原因。这就需要建立政府主导、社会共同参与的城市反贫困工作管理机制,解决反贫困制度建设滞后和立法不规范的问题,科学规划、统筹规范反贫困工作,形成以宪法为基本依据、以《反贫困法》为核心、以《社会保障法》等相关社会保障法律法规为支撑的反贫困法律体系,强化城市反贫困权利救济和责任追究制度,不断提升城市反贫困制度化、法治化进程。     

Thinking about Ideology and Method: a Comment on Schull

This article addresses some theoretical problems which arise in a recent article by Joseph Schull on ideology and Soviet-type societies. I argue that the conceptualizations of Marxism-Leninism, ideology, and discourse offered by Schull are unlikely to enhance the study of Soviet ideological practices significantly because Schull's approach is both too essentialist and too general. Schull treats these concepts as unities reducible through proper definition. I argue that they are better understood as problematics which, in the first two cases, encompass a wide variety of forms and practices; and, in the third, a variety of methods and approaches. Since the study of Marxism-Leninism or ideology, like anything else, is driven by questions, problems, hypotheses, etc., I suggest that it is unhelpful to engage in a priori generalizations about method.     

Cities,Tax Revenues,and a State's Fiscal Future: The Value of Major Urban Centers

Competition among core cities or urban centers and suburban and rural areas besets numerous states. The competition often occurs amid a political environment in which suburban and rural areas enjoy a political majority in the state legislature, a majority that directs state investments to their areas. With Ohio as a case study, the issues that have created the urban–suburban–rural trichotomy are reviewed and an analysis of the tax returns, by area, to state investments is presented. The findings illustrate that urban centers produce more tax dollars per dollar of state investment than other areas, implying that state underinvestment in urban areas harms overall state tax revenues.     

Green Devaluation: Disruption,Divestment, and Decommodification for a Green Economy

This paper argues that taking up questions of value can help political ecologists and economists develop a more powerful analysis of the green economy, as it introduces new urban, industrial, and technological dimensions into a self-identified green capitalism. More specifically, I maintain that processes of green devaluation, decommodification, and techno-industrial replacement are as important in understanding green economic development as new value enclosure and green growth. Twenty-first-century green economic politics have been marked by Schumpeterian ambitions and zero-sum intra-capitalist struggles, alongside a more general hardening of anti-fossil fuel industry politics from both grassroots climate justice activists and, increasingly, mainstream investors. I explore three interrelated initiatives—disruptive innovation in Silicon Valley cleantech, the U.S. fossil fuel divestment movement, and the global financial industry’s stranded assets organizing—as windows into these struggles. Themes of devaluation, obsolescence (both technological and “moral”), and (more or less absolute) decommodification carry through this discussion as activists struggle to translate quantitative advances against fossil fuels into a more profound qualitative break. Understanding these fights is essential to developing more effective engaged scholarship on climate change and a just energy transition.     

The quantitative methods component in social sciences curricula in view of journal content

What level of quantitative methods (or applied statistical analysis) should graduate students in the social sciences be prepared to master, if they are to be competitive in the job market? In the age of information technology, more data, in survey or other form, about any imaginable topic exist than ever before. Empirical analysis on the basis of more advanced quantitative methods becomes more common. This study takes the perspective that graduate students in the social sciences must be prepared to read a literature that makes extensive use of quantitative methods. To quantify this dimension of the literature, top journals in economics, political science, public administration, and sociology are examined for their quantitative complexity.     

Patterns and determinants of public shelter utilization among homeless adults in New York City and Philadelphia

Administrative data on public shelter utilization among homeless adults from New York City (1987–1994) and Philadelphia (1991–1994) are analyzed to identify the relative proportion of shelter users by length of stay and rate of readmission, and to identify the characteristics that predict an exit from shelter. Survival analyses reveal that half of adult shelter users will stay fewer than 45 days over a two-year period (combined stays), and that approximately one half of men and one third of women will experience a readmission within two years of the first admission. Results also document the size and relative resource consumption of a long-term sheltered population, finding that 18.2 percent of New York shelter users stay 180 days or more in their first year, consuming 53.4 percent of the system days for first-time shelter users. Discrete-time logistic hazard regression analyses reveal that, in general, being older, of black race, having a substance abuse or mental health problem, or having a physical disability, significantly reduces the likelihood of exiting shelter. In both cities, people entering shelter in later years are staying longer, although individuals have shorter episodes on subsequent admissions. The implications of this study for the analysis and management of emergency shelter system utilization are discussed.     

社区公共物品与社区治理--论城市社区"四轮驱动、一辕协调"的治理结构

城市社区日益成为社会公共物品供给与消费的基本单元.然而,在既有的政府垄断性供给体系下,社区普遍存在公共物品供给短缺.改革传统的管理与服务方式,建立新的公共物品供给体系,满足社区不断增长的需求,已成为城市社区建设的中心任务.在众多的创新实践中,"社区治理"不失为一种可行的思路.本文遵循社区治理的理念,尝试将其深化并落实到体制层面,提出"四轮驱动、一辕协调"的社区治理结构与运作模式,并建议首先在"危改回迁社区"中试点.     

Some realities about sprawl and urban decline

Abstract

Many urban analysts believe suburban sprawl has become an important issue because it helps generate two types of problems: growth‐related difficulties like rising traffic congestion, and high concentrations of poor minority households in core‐area neighborhoods. However, a careful regression analysis of measures of both sprawl and urban decline shows no statistically significant relation between these two conditions.

The basic nature of the American urban development process would cause core‐area poverty concentrations even if sprawl were replaced by more compact growth forms. But sprawl does aggravate growth‐related problems. Those problems could be attacked through either alternative overall growth strategies—such as high‐density, tightly bounded growth—or specific anti‐sprawl tactics, such as regional tax‐base sharing and regional coordination of land uses. But no feasible policies are likely either to alleviate traffic congestion much or cause most American regions to abandon sprawl.     

An overview of the National Survey of SSI Children and Families and related products

The National Survey of SSI Children and Families (NSCF) is the first nationally representative survey since 1978 of noninstitutionalized children and young adults who currently receive or formerly received Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Over 8,500 interviews were completed between July 2001 and June 2002. The primary objective of the NSCF is to provide data to support research and policy evaluation on the current cross section of children (ages 0 to 17) and young adults (ages 18 to 23) receiving SSI. Following that objective, the survey was designed to answer questions such as those presented below. What are the general characteristics of children and young adults receiving SSI and their families? What are the patterns of access to and utilization of health care among children and young adults receiving SSI? What services are utilized by children and young adults receiving SSI? What are the unmet health care and service needs of children and young adults receiving SSI? What costs are associated with caring for a disabled child? What is the impact on the family of having a disabled child? What is the status of young adults with disabilities as they make the transition to adulthood? How well are they prepared for that transition? In addition, the NSCF questionnaire and sample were designed to be comprehensive enough and large enough to address numerous additional policy issues as they emerge. The NSCF fills a gap in the data available to policy analysts by addressing a wide range of topics that cannot be addressed with SSI administrative data and by providing a large sample in contrast to major national survey databases that cover this target population fairly sparsely. A companion article to this overview describes general characteristics of SSI beneficiary children and their families (see Rupp and others 2005/2006, pages 21-48 of this issue). Other topics being examined include disability-related expenditures for SSI children and young adults and labor force participation of the parents of SSI children. The NSCF data files are accompanied by a detailed User's Manual, which includes a detailed codebook and information about the NSCF sample design, questionnaire design and content, data collection procedures, variable construction, editing, and variance estimation procedures. In order to facilitate research, the Social Security Administration published the NSCF Public-Use File and survey documentation on its Web site. These products are available at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/disabilityresearch/nscf.htm. The NSCF is an outstanding tool for conducting research and policy analysis regarding children and young adults receiving SSI.