Of change,training and public affairs in Europe

European public affairs practitioners need to be increasingly professional in their reactions to an EU undergoing transformational change. The paper offers a comprehensive summary of the subtleties of institutional change in Commission, Parliament and Council in 2004. In particular, the author argues that expansion from 15 member states to 25 has fundamentally changed the nature of the Union's politics and the skills required to influence it. This new EU requires more of practitioners than experience and amateur instinct: to achieve results and avoid restrictive regulation, the public affairs community must adopt effective training strategies, challenging competence targets and regular self‐assessment of its performance and ethics. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

An Exploration of Religion and Education in the Life of Constance Maynard,Mistress of Westfield College

This article provides an overview of the motivation for digitising Maynard's writings, evaluates the benefits and challenges of reproducing and publishing archives, and considers the implications of greater digitisation. Maynard's writings reveal that she drew on her evangelical belief system as a means of protection and inspiration, and never overcame the concerns of early educationalists to maintain ‘decorum’ and ‘femininity’ in the management of the college. Published and unpublished sources are considered to review Maynard's decision to enter higher education, the inspiration for a Christian college for women, impact of contemporary arguments opposing education for women on Maynard and Westfield College, and Maynard's reaction to the development of a science faculty in the early twentieth century.     

Analyzing block randomized studies: the example of the Jersey City drug market analysis experiment

Objectives

While block randomized designs have become more common in place-based policing studies, there has been relatively little discussion of the assumptions employed and their implications for statistical analysis. Our paper seeks to illustrate these assumptions, and controversy regarding statistical approaches, in the context of one of the first block randomized studies in criminal justice—the Jersey City Drug Market Analysis Project (DMAP).

Methods

Using DMAP data, we show that there are multiple approaches that can be used in analyzing block randomized designs, and that those approaches will yield differing estimates of statistical significance. We develop outcomes using both models with and without interaction, and utilizing both Type I and Type III sums-of-squares approaches. We also examine the impacts of using randomization inference, an approach for estimating p values not based on approximations using normal distribution theory, to adjust for possible small N biases in estimating standard errors.

Results

The assumptions used for identifying the analytic approach produce a comparatively wide range of p values for the main DMAP program impacts on hot spots. Nonetheless, the overall conclusions drawn from our re-analysis remain consistent with the original analyses, albeit with more caution. Results were similar to the original analyses under different specifications supporting the identification of diffusion of benefits effects to nearby areas.

Conclusions

The major contribution of our article is to clarify statistical modeling in unbalanced block randomized studies. The introduction of blocking adds complexity to the models that are estimated, and care must be taken when including interaction effects in models, whether they are ANOVA models or regression models. Researchers need to recognize this complexity and provide transparent and alternative estimates of study outcomes.

     

第三方警务与保险——以市场为基准的犯罪预防案例研判（上）

本文试图探讨一种新的发展趋势。即以市场为基准展开的犯罪预防。保险公司是该种新型犯罪预防模式的代表机构。尽管保险的传统关注点在于犯罪或其他灾难发生后所遭受的损失,我们在此将揭示保险业从反应型犯罪管理模式向主动型管理模式的转变。该种趋势是更广义上的“去中心化警务”（decentralization of policing）的一部分,即警务从国家控制的管理机构向以社区和市场为基准的第三方的转移。新的意识形态支持这种转变,包括针对犯罪的保险统计理念的更新和对谨慎之人看法的转变。