Accountability in an Information Age: Opportunities and Risks for Records Management

Electronic records of government organizations are becoming increasingly important for accountability. Managing electronic records, however, proves to be difficult since information and communication technologies confront organizations with various opportunities and risks. In this paper the findings of an international expert survey on electronic records management are presented. These findings identify opportunities and risks for e-mail systems, database management systems, office systems, web technology systems and smart systems. They also point to five crucial questions that must be addressed in order to guarantee the availability of electronic records for accountability.This revised version was published online in October 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Science on the Periphery. The spanish Reception of Nuclear Energy: an Attempt at Modernity?

During the Cold War, Franco’s dictatorship attempted to use technological transfer and nuclear technology to strengthen the geopolitical influence of his Government in Spain. This paper studies this process, with particular reference to the role played by German scientists as advisers to the Spanish nuclear project.     

Informatik-Patente

Informatik-Patente

Informatik-Patente     

The roles of teacher efficacy in instructional innovation: its predictive relations to constructivist and didactic instruction

Constructivist instruction has been implemented in the current instructional innovation in Singapore. Large scale survey study was conducted to examine the roles of teacher efficacy in implementing the innovative constructivist instruction. The results showed that the positive correlation between teacher efficacy and constructivist instruction was stronger than the correlation between teacher efficacy and didactic instruction. The study suggests that policy makers and school leaders should try to improve teacher’s efficacy beliefs so that innovative instruction could be effectively implemented by school teachers.     

Measurement Bias Detection Through Factor Analysis

Assessing the correctness of a structural equation model is essential to avoid drawing incorrect conclusions from empirical research. In the past, the chi-square test was recommended for assessing the correctness of the model but this test has been criticized because of its sensitivity to sample size. As a reaction, an abundance of fit indexes have been developed. The result of these developments is that structural equation modeling packages are now producing a large list of fit measures. One would think that this progression has led to a clear understanding of evaluating models with respect to model misspecifications. In this article we question the validity of approaches for model evaluation based on overall goodness-of-fit indexes. The argument against such usage is that they do not provide an adequate indication of the “size” of the model's misspecification. That is, they vary dramatically with the values of incidental parameters that are unrelated with the misspecification in the model. This is illustrated using simple but fundamental models. As an alternative method of model evaluation, we suggest using the expected parameter change in combination with the modification index (MI) and the power of the MI test.