Constituent Communication Through Telephone Town Halls: A Field Experiment Involving Members of Congress

Telephone town halls are an increasingly prevalent method for members of Congress (MCs) to communicate with constituents, even while garnering popular criticism for failing to facilitate engagement and accountability. Yet scholars have paid little attention to the events and their effects, and even less to how they might be improved. To remedy this problem, we report on a field experiment in which four MCs joined their constituents in telephone town halls. Overall, participation in an event improved constituents’ evaluations of the format in general, and of the MC in particular. Furthermore, we studied how these events might be improved by evaluating a reform—a single‐topic focus with predistributed briefing materials—designed to enhance deliberative interaction. This reform enhanced effects on opinions of the format without significantly altering effects on attitudes toward the MC. Our results suggest that telephone town halls hold promise for constituents, officeholders, and democratic practice.     

Enhancing Information Sharing in Family Drug Courts: A Lean Six Sigma Case Study

Given the variety of stakeholders involved in cases within family drug courts, efficient communication and information sharing, which are needed to support decision‐making, can be quite challenging. Through a case study in one family drug court system, this research employed an action research approach to improve the information sharing process following the Lean Six Sigma methodology. The solutions implemented through this study contributed to improving the quality of the services provided by this court system and its overall productivity. In addition, this research extends our knowledge about methods for improving court systems from which others can learn to guide future improvement efforts.     

关于《邮政法》修改若干问题的探讨

随着国内各项改革的深化及法制环境的变化,《邮政法》的修改问题日益受到社会各界的关注。就邮政法的效力与适用、普遍服务与补偿机制、邮政专营与垄断等问题进行深入分析,并提出自己的观点和一些建议。     

移动通信基站环境保护问题探讨

介绍了移动通信的特点、电磁辐射对环境及人体健康的影响、电磁辐射控制标准、移动通信基站建设过程中环境保护距离的理论计算,并对移动通信基站建设环境保护程序和对策进行了探讨。     

英语教学中应实现课堂互动最大化

学习英语的目的是交流。交流是双方或多方沟通思想信息的过程。学校英语教学应当追求课堂互动最大化 ,这对于提高英语学习者使用这一交流工具的能力培养意义重大。     

Rethinking Conflict: Perspectives from the Insight Approach

In this article, the authors present the “insight approach” to conflict as an analytical and methodological framework that addresses the dynamic interactions between conflicting parties. According to the insight approach, conflict is relational, dynamic, and adaptive, generated from the responsive interpretive frameworks that parties use to construct meaning. Conflict arises as a result of parties' experience of what insight theorists call “threat‐to‐cares,” which generates defend–attack patterns of interaction between them. The authors suggest that rethinking the nature of conflict so that it is seen as an interaction embedded in meaning making enables conflict interveners to help parties gain insight into, and articulate, the values that are being generated, advanced, threatened, and realigned within the complex interactions that define us as social beings. In doing so, parties develop abilities to generate new patterns and solutions that can limit and even eliminate the experiences of threat that generate conflict between them.     

Application of three spectrometric methods to total selenium determination in postmortem material in a case of acute selenium compound poisoning

Three spectrometric methods, that is, spectrofluorimetry (SF), atomic absorption spectrometry with electrothermal atomization (ET-AAS), and atomic fluorescence spectrometry with hydride generation (HG-AFS) were used for the determination of total selenium in biological samples taken from postmortem material in a case of acute selenium compound poisoning. The precision of the SF, ET-AAS, and HG-AFS methods (RSD, n=10) was found to be in the ranges of 10.0-15.0, 3.0-6.0 and 1.0-1.5%, respectively, and the detection limit was 10.0, 4.0, and 0.1 μg/L of Se, respectively. In the case of HG-AFS, the analytical procedure takes less time and is less laborious than the other methods considered. The obtained results show the usefulness of the HG-AFS method as a supplementary analytical tool to the SF and ET-AAS methods with respect to the determination of selenium as well as the possibility of using this method as a primary one in forensic toxicology practice.     

情感沟通、商家知识对客户忠诚的影响研究

把情感沟通区分为三个维度,把商家知识区分为选择产品的知识与使用产品的知识两个维度,同时把客户忠诚分为推荐购买及重复购买两类。在此基础上构建了情感沟通、商家知识对客户忠诚的影响。研究结果丰富了知识管理理论及客户忠诚理论,并对企业通过情感沟通、商家知识的管理来提升客户忠诚具有一定的启示意义。     

网络民意表达与地方官民沟通机制创新——对广东奥一网络问政平台的案例解读

伴随着网络时代的到来,公民通过互联网表达自身利益诉求和公共意见已成为一种普遍现象。为此,地方政府通过制度创新,建立网络问政平台,顺势关注和吸纳网络民意。这种官民沟通机制的建立,改变着传统的单向式决策模式,构建着“官民共治”的新型治理模式,并最终将推动国家与社会良性互动关系的形成。