Dystopia on the Health Superhighway

The emerging Information Superhighway is starting to induce visions of dystopia within the medical profession. In several countries, doctors have opposed plans for the establishment of national health data networks. In the most recent example, the Council of the British Medical Association threatened to boycott the government's national data strategy. This action followed the lead of Australian doctors, many of whom have consistently opposed a national wide-area network for health data. In common is the fear that this data linkage will erode medical independence, increase the power of government health authorities, and eliminate the confidentiality of medical information. Doctors have a duty of care to patients to protect confidentiality, and they say the emerging national networks compromise this responsibility. Here, I argue that the emerging health superhighways should either conform to strict privacy standards or they should be demolished.     

Management education at a distance and its effects on career progression: The case of MBA in retailing and wholesaling students

Students who register for any MBA programme anticipate that their career opportunities will be improved. When they are also practising managers, evidence shows that career changes may occur at any time during the course of their programme. Using a survey on students studying the University of Stirling's MBA in Retailing and Wholesaling by distance learning this paper was able to support this evidence as well as investigating the type and frequency of career changes being experienced by managers.     

Policies on Inequality in the Third World: dependency or autonomy?

Analysis of the national planning documents of selected Third World countries reveals common key issues in policies on educational inequality. Expansion, national unity, decentralisation, positive discrimination and terminal education are highlighted as recurring themes. A further focus on the dimensions of aid, training, nationalism, regionalism and finance provides a framework which can be used both to assess the degree of dependency or autonomy exhibited in equity planning and to provide a critique of over‐simplified applications of dependency theory regarding educational policy.     

Measuring sports class learning climates: The development of the Sports Class Environment Scale

The development and validation of a new and unique learning climate instrument, the Sports Class Environment Scale (SCES), was the focus of this study. We began with a consolidation of the dimensions and items of the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire–2 and the Classroom Environment Scale. Field-testing of the SCES involved 204 competitive gymnasts from six metropolitan and four regional competitive gymnastics clubs in Queensland, Australia. Exploratory factor analysis provided a revised SCES with five scales labelled Task Involvement & Improvement, Ego Involvement & Mistakes, Coach–Athlete Communication, Effort, Order & Organisation, and Affiliation. Using scales of the revised SCES as dependent variables, multivariate analyses of variance were conducted to compare club types, genders and competitive levels. Effective measurement of sports class learning climates using the SCES could lead to a greater understanding of effective sports classes, and of coach and athlete behaviours in those classes, and provide a first step in monitoring sports class learning climates.     

Interparental conflict as a quadratic predictor of children’s reactivity to interparental conflict and school adjustment: Steeling effects or risk saturation?

This study examined interparental conflict as a curvilinear predictor of children's reactivity to interparental conflict and, in turn, their school problems across three annual measurements. Participants included 243 preschool children (M_age = 4.60 years; 56% girls) and their parents from racially (e.g., 48% Black; 16% Latinx) diverse backgrounds. Interparental conflict was a significant quadratic predictor of children's emotional reactivity (β = .23) and behavioral dysregulation (β = .27) to conflict over a 1-year period. The robust association between interparental conflict and behavioral dysregulation weakened at high levels of interparental conflict. In contrast, interparental conflict more strongly predicted children's emotional reactivity as conflict exposure increased. Children's emotional reactivity, in turn, predicted their greater school problems 1 year later (β = .25).