Apples to oranges: benchmarking vocational education and training programmes

This paper discusses methods for benchmarking vocational education and training colleges and presents results from a number of models. It is conceptually difficult to benchmark vocational colleges. The colleges typically offer a wide range of course programmes, and the students come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. We solve the comparability problem by focusing on effects in terms of retention and employment rates as opposed to the intermediate outcomes like grades. We neutralize cost differences using alternative cost measures. And we use detailed register data to account for student backgrounds. From a methodological point of view, we combine average methods (multilevel analysis) with frontier methods. We thus combine the key methods of school effectiveness research and school efficiency and productivity research. The analyses show that the efficiency of Danish vocational colleges varies considerably. Adopting best practices could lead to cost savings of between 9 and 33%.     

Contagious Media Effects: How Media Use and Exposure to Game-Framed News Influence Media Trust

The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which trust in media is affected by personal media use and the framing of politics as a strategic game. The study is based on a four-wave panel survey matched with media content data, which allows us to investigate not only correlations but also individual-level effects on media trust. In accordance with previous research, our analyses show that the use of specific media types leads to more trust in those specific media. The results also show that media framing of politics as a strategic game has a negative effect on trust in the media. The more citizens are exposed to game-framed news, the less they tend to trust the media, with the exception of tabloid newspapers. Overall, these results lend support to the assumption of contagious effects of game-framed news. In a concluding section, we sum up our results and discuss the implications of our findings.     

Sensitivity of the RMSD for Detecting Item-Level Misfit in Low-Performing Countries

Although the root-mean squared deviation (RMSD) is a popular statistical measure for evaluating country-specific item-level misfit (i.e., differential item functioning [DIF]) in international large-scale assessment, this paper shows that its sensitivity to detect misfit may depend strongly on the proficiency distribution of the considered countries. Specifically, items for which most respondents in a country have a very low (or high) probability of providing a correct answer will rarely be flagged by the RMSD as showing misfit, even if very strong DIF is present. With many international large-scale assessment initiatives moving toward covering a more heterogeneous group of countries, this raises issues for the ability of the RMSD to detect item-level misfit, especially in low-performing countries that are not well-aligned with the overall difficulty level of the test. This may put one at risk of incorrectly assuming measurement invariance to hold, and may also inflate estimated between-country difference in proficiency. The degree to which the RMSD is able to detect DIF in low-performing countries is studied using both an empirical example from PISA 2015 and a simulation study.     

Public e-service development: Understanding citizens' conditions for participation

For decades, user participation has brought value to various systems development projects. Today, there are expectations that public e-service development will experience the same benefits. However, existing research has shown that introducing user participation into public e-service development can be challenging. In this study, we interviewed citizens in order to explore their willingness and ability to participate in public e-service development according to three user participation schools: User-Centred Design, Participatory Design and User Innovation. Our findings show that citizens in general are willing to participate, but their ability to do so is limited. Based on our findings, we developed nine propositions to explain citizens' willingness and ability to participate in public e-service development. The propositions contribute to practice by acting as a tentative guide for systems developers when they use user participation schools as inspiration in public e-service projects. They also act as a starting point for future research into conditions for user participation in public e-service development.     

Supporting Change in Schools

In his article in the March 1997 edition of BJSE , Professor Mel Ainscow speculated on some of the reasons for the lack of progress towards a more inclusive school system in Britain, and identified possible ways of moving forward. Implicit in his penetrating analysis is that policies for implementing change in schools need to be supported at all levels, both within the education system itself and throughout society. Jesper Holst, associate professor at the Royal Danish School of Educational Studies, focuses on these wider issues and uses examples from Denmark and Mongolia to identify successful strategies for change which rely on professional and economic support (from both central and local government), and the backing of parents and local communities. In Denmark the concept of inclusive education is reflected in the new (1993) Danish Education Act and the basis of the work described is the assumption that by supporting change schools can be better prepared to respond to pupil diversity.     

Eco-Driven Chemical Research in the Boundary Between Academia and Industry

This paper examines and discusses the views on science and society held among PhD students working in two different industrially and environmentally driven research programmes in the broad area of green chemistry. It is based on thirteen in-depth interviews. The analysis shows three main ways of handling the situation as “post-academic” PhD student: (1) the student sees the PhD work mainly as a job and does not reflect about his/her research or the research funding, (2) the student is satisfied with the post-academic situation, accepts the established innovation policy discourse and is sceptical to traditional academic research, and (3) the student sees collaborative research programmes as a way to get funding, which can be used for secretly done basic research. Most PhD students either emphasise usefulness—in line with the dominating research policy discourse—or they adopt the positivistic view of science as objective and independent of the surrounding society. However, there are only a few signs of “double problematisation”, that is a critical view where both disciplinary-oriented and industry-dependent research are problematised.     

Dynamic in situ chromosome immobilisation and DNA extraction using localized poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) phase transition

A method of in situ chromosome immobilisation and DNA extraction in a microfluidic polymer chip was presented. Light-induced local heating was used to induce poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) phase transition in order to create a hydrogel and embed a single chromosome such that it was immobilised. This was achieved with the use of a near-infrared laser focused on an absorption layer integrated in the polymer chip in close proximity to the microchannel. It was possible to proceed to DNA extraction while holding on the chromosome at an arbitrary location by introducing protease K into the microchannel.     

Exercise performance and cardiovascular health variables in 70-year-old male soccer players compared to endurance-trained,strength-trained and untrained age-matched men

Abstract

The aim was to investigate performance variables and indicators of cardiovascular health profile in elderly soccer players (SP, n = 11) compared to endurance-trained (ET, n = 8), strength-trained (ST, n = 7) and untrained (UT, n = 7) age-matched men. The 33 men aged 65–85 years underwent a testing protocol including measurements of cycle performance, maximal oxygen uptake (VO₂max) and body composition, and muscle fibre types and capillarisation were determined from m. vastus lateralis biopsy. In SP, time to exhaustion was longer (16.3 ± 2.0 min; P < 0.01) than in UT (+48%) and ST (+41%), but similar to ET (+1%). Fat percentage was lower (P < 0.05) in SP (–6.5% points) than UT but not ET and ST. Heart rate reserve was higher (P < 0.05) in SP (104 ± 16 bpm) than UT (+21 bpm) and ST (+24 bpm), but similar to ET (+2 bpm), whereas VO₂max was not significantly different in SP (30.2 ± 4.9 ml O₂ · min^?1 · kg^?1) compared to UT (+14%) and ST (+9%), but lower (P < 0.05) than ET (?22%). The number of capillaries per fibre was higher (P < 0.05) in SP than UT (53%) and ST (42%) but similar to ET. SP had less type IIx fibres than UT (?12% points). In conclusion, the exercise performance and cardiovascular health profile are markedly better for lifelong trained SP than for age-matched UT controls. Incremental exercise capacity and muscle aerobic capacity of SP are also superior to lifelong ST athletes and comparable to endurance athletes.     

Ranking national research systems by citation indicators. A comparative analysis using whole and fractionalised counting methods

This paper presents an empirical analysis of two different methodologies for calculating national citation indicators: whole counts and fractionalised counts. The aim of our study is to investigate the effect on relative citation indicators when citations to documents are fractionalised among the authoring countries. We have performed two analyses: a time series analysis of one country and a cross-sectional analysis of 23 countries. The results show that all countries’ relative citation indicators are lower when fractionalised counting is used. Further, the difference between whole and fractionalised counts is generally greatest for the countries with the highest proportion of internationally co-authored articles. In our view there are strong arguments in favour of using fractionalised counts to calculate relative citation indexes at the national level, rather than using whole counts, which is the most common practice today.