INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY OF GOVERNMENT'S RELIANCE UPON OUTSIDE ORGANIZATIONS TO PROVIDE ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT SERVICES

The federal government spends vast sums of money for management and analysis services. The authors contend that the selection process to determine the winners of the awards of contracts to perform these services too often disregards cost competitiveness as a factor in the award. The relative importance of technical proficiency and cost are examined and a model is proposed whereby a high level of technical expertise can be obtained at a more reasonable cost.     

Characteristics of parents of adolescent incest perpetrators: Preliminary findings

Twenty-seven parents of adolescent incest perpetrators were interviewed regarding demographic characteristics, prior victimization and abuse, and attitudes about their sons engaging in incestuous behavior. Results indicated that these parents: (a) under-reported physical and sexual abuse of their sons, (b) had a high incidence of being abused themselves, and (c) demonstrate a high level of denial regarding their sons' incestuous behaviors as reflected by the finding that only 50% of the parents totally admitted to their son's incestuous behavior(s).     

Merging content analysis and the policy sciences: A system to discern policy-specific trends from news media reports

In this article we set out to bridge a surprising methodological gap between two time-honored research traditions – news media content analysis and the policy sciences analytic framework. Lasswell, a recognized pioneer of both the method and the framework, discussed the mutual benefits of each decades ago. But few researchers, if any, have formally linked the two. To that end, in this article we (1) make the case for using news media content analysis to inform research studies using the policy sciences analytic framework; (2) introduce an original content analysis categorical system for that purpose; (3) demonstrate that system with a study of 90 national news articles about the stratospheric ozone hole; and (4) compare our system to others used to examine news content. We report that our system, used by human coders, is well geared to describing and mapping trends in the social process surrounding the development of the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty during the intelligence gathering and promotion phases encompassed by our data sample. We argue that other content analysis systems fall short – in structure and purpose – of meeting the promise ours holds to the policy scientist.     

Quality of work environment (QWE): Effects on office workers

Abstract

This article focuses on the physical environment of work as an important, and overlooked, component of working conditions. Quality of Work Environment (QWE) is viewed as one facet of the Quality of Worklife (QWL) movement. Attention is thus paid not only to direct health effects of adverse environmental conditions, but also to how the physical conditions of work contribute to a sense of competence and to job satisfaction and performance. Based on empirical research and theory, a set of general criteria for improving the quality of the work environment are proposed.