Effectiveness of public and private sector agricultural extension: Implications for privatisation in Pakistan

Worldwide serious reservations are being expressed about the ability and competency of the public sector to deliver agricultural extension services, especially in developing countries such as Pakistan which is faced with serious financial difficulties. Consequently, the government is looking for alternative extension paradigms that are cost-effective and client-oriented. To this end the government of Pakistan is inclined towards privatizing the provision of agricultural extension services as a means to promote a second ‘Green Revolution’. This study was conducted among cotton farmers in the Punjab Province to examine the comparative effectiveness of public and private sector extension as perceived from the stakeholders. Data were collected from 52 contact farmers of both extension systems. A number of biases were identified in both systems; namely, a preference for farmers with better education and larger landholdings than their noncontact farmer counterparts. Overall, neither system appears to be working for the benefit of the wider farming community.     

Young offenders in New South Wales,Australia and the need for remedial sexual health education

The 2005–2008 Australian National Sexually Transmissible Infections Strategy identifies young people as a key target group in need of sexual health education, screening and management. For young people who are in contact with the New South Wales (NSW) juvenile justice system, a dire need for remedial sexual health education exists. NSW young offenders indicate initiation of sexual activity at a younger age than their peers, higher numbers of sexual partners, infrequent condom use and higher rates of sexually transmitted infections. They also report family instability, poor accessing of health services, and low school attendance: all factors that result in poor sexual knowledge and health outcomes. An examination into the cognitive profile of these young offenders indicates remedial education for this group may require a dual approach in order to redress their specific circumstances and needs. The first approach should target young offenders who simply missed out on stages of sexual health information in the school curriculum. The second approach requires a tailored teaching methodology more appropriate for a group with atypical cognitive profiles. Both approaches need to engage an educative model that acknowledges that these disadvantaged young people are already sexual active; and that many did not have the benefit of an informed or consensual decision making processes. More importantly, the tailoring of a sexual health education program to these young people needs to resonate with teaching to a cognitively distinctive population who have experienced higher than usual rates of alcohol and other drugs abuse, and higher than usual episodes of physical and emotional abuse and neglect.     

Fact or folklore? Exploring “Myths” about outdoor education accidents: Some evidence from New Zealand

Abstract

This paper provides analysis on the frequency and nature of accidents and near accidents that have occurred in larger outdoor education centres in New Zealand. This is the first time that information of this type has been collected and analysed in New Zealand.

All 25 of the known outdoor education organisations employing three or more full-time staff were invited to participate in a study that would extract and review data from their records about accidents and near accidents. Twelve agreed to participate.

The data collected is analysed in the context of various myths that are often heard referred to by the outdoor education community. These are that: 1. i.focusing on minor incidents prevents major accidents occurring,

2. ii.selecting activities with high perceived risk but low real risk reduces exposure to accidents,

3. iii.more accidents occur while under the supervision of male rather than female instructors,

4. iv.accidents are more likely in the afternoon than the morning, and

5. v.outdoor education is dangerous compared to other risks in life.

The results lend some support to the factual nature of “myths” iii and iv, but help consign “myths” i, ii and v to the category of folklore. These results provide insights that may assist in developing strategies to improve safety in outdoor education.

In view of the current size and importance of the outdoor education sector in New Zealand and its likely future growth, one of the main recommendations arising from this study is for the establishment of a national system to formally record and report incidents and accidents.     

Mixed Mode Latent Class Analysis: An Examination of Fit Index Performance for Classification

This Monte Carlo study examines the performance of fit indices commonly used by applied researchers interested in finite mixture modeling for the purposes of classification. Conditions for the simulation study were selected to reflect conditions found in applied educational and psychological research. The factors included in the investigation were metric level of indicators, sample size, and class prevalence. All models contained a combination of categorical and continuous indicators. All categorical indicators were dichotomous, and continuous indicators were normally distributed. The fit indices examined were Akaike’s information criterion, Bayesian information criterion (BIC), sample size-adjusted Bayesian information criterion (SSBIC), integrated classification likelihood criterion with Bayesian-type approximation, and Lo–Mendell–Rubin likelihood ratio test. Overall, SSBIC tended to identify the correct solution with higher frequency than other indices. BIC tended to identify the correct solution with higher frequency than the other indices in models with more continuous than categorical indicators, or when rare classes were absent.     

Politics,Paradoxes and Pragmatics of Happiness

European leaders and the popular media have shown a new-found interest in happiness as a socio-political value and goal. A growing body of research attempts to identify the conditions under which humans experience the highest levels of happiness, life-satisfaction or subjective well-being. This essay examines what makes a contemporary science and politics of happiness possible by taking a critical look at such efforts to define, measure and promote happiness, while seeking out a range of diverging, often paradoxical, cultural discourses of happiness. The essay covers the following themes: happiness is attainable; happiness is lost; happiness is obligatory; happiness is impossible; and, happiness is inauthentic. The essay critically examines political uses of the word happiness, disrupting received opinions about this contested term.     

“Lies,damn lies and statistics”: a history of museum visits in Australasia

ABSTRACT

While a great deal of attention has been paid to museum visit data in the last few decades, very little is known about long-term trends. This article examines the distinctive history of museum visits in Australasia through a comparative study of eight key institutions from across the region. Archival research was undertaken at each institution to compile as complete as possible a data set of annual visitation from opening until present day. Any stated changes in funding, admission charges, buildings etc. were also recorded, along with comments indicating contemporary explanations for fluctuations in visitation. Sources included official documents such as annual reports and trustee minutes, as well as visitor books and attendance records. We provide an initial overview of the quantitative and contextual data we collected from the case study museums focusing on a number of key questions: How have museums in Australasia been counting and reporting visit data over the past 150 years? What does this reveal about changes over time in the perceived value of visit data and museum attitudes towards their visitors? What are the key trends in museum attendance at the local, national and regional level in Australia and New Zealand? What contemporary explanations were given for fluctuations in museum attendance and are they supported by a long-term, cross-institutional comparison of the data? The study provides insights into historical shifts in thinking about the importance of visitors, appropriate methods for recording visitation, and the value of this data. The findings are also relevant to how museums today interpret attendance figures. The ways in which visit data were included or excluded from historical narratives about the value of museums highlights the constructed nature of visitor data and raises questions about the role of visitor research in contemporary museums.     

Depression and Anxiety in the Postnatal Period: An Examination of Infants’ Home Language Environment,Vocalizations, and Expressive Language Abilities

This longitudinal study investigated the effects of maternal emotional health concerns, on infants’ home language environment, vocalization quantity, and expressive language skills. Mothers and their infants (at 6 and 12 months; 21 mothers with depression and or anxiety and 21 controls) provided day-long home-language recordings. Compared with controls, risk group recordings contained fewer mother–infant conversational turns and infant vocalizations, but daily number of adult word counts showed no group difference. Furthermore, conversational turns and infant vocalizations were stronger predictors of infants’ 18-month vocabulary size than depression and anxiety measures. However, anxiety levels moderated the effect of conversational turns on vocabulary size. These results suggest that variability in mothers’ emotional health influences infants’ language environment and later language ability.