A Delphi study to determine nursing research priorities in the North Glasgow University Hospitals NHS Trust and the corresponding evidence base

The aims of the study are to identify and prioritize research questions of importance to nurses in North Glasgow University Hospitals NHS Trust and to investigate and describe the existing evidence base for the highest priority questions identified. The consensus method known as the Delphi technique was used. Systematic searching of the literature for each question identified from the research priorities enabled the existing evidence base to be characterized. The following priorities were identified as the most important (in descending order of importance): Recruitment and Retention of Nursing Staff; Staff Stress & Morale; Training & Education of Nursing Staff; Infection Control; and Pain Management. The Delphi technique proved a useful method to determine and prioritize research areas in nursing.     

Seven-Year Outcome of the Vermont Intervention Program for Low-Birthweight Infants

We compared 24 low-birthweight subjects of an experimental intervention (LBWE), 32 no-treatment controls (LBWC), and 37 normal birthweight (NBW) subjects. The intervention involved 7 hospital sessions and 4 home sessions in which a nurse helped mothers adapt to their LBW babies. At age 7, LBWE scored significantly higher than LBWC on the Kaufman Mental Processing Composite (p less than .001), Sequential (p = .02), and Simultaneous (p = .001) Scales, after statistical adjustments for socioeconomic status. LBWE did not differ from NBW (F less than 1). These results bear out a divergence between the LBWE and LBWC that first became statistically significant at age 3. The findings suggest that the intervention prevented cognitive lags among LBW children, and that long-term follow-ups are needed to evaluate the developmental effects of efforts to overcome major biological and environmental risks.     

The effects of school quality on income

This paper uses a unique data set created by merging the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with school data from the Common Core of Data to examine the relationship between school expenditures and earnings. I find that school expenditures are related to earnings, and also positively affect the returns to schooling. This is particularly important given recent papers that have found no effect because this study is able to observe wages at later ages and is estimated for males and females. Robustness estimates find that if the sample were only observed at young ages, or estimated for white males, as has been done previously, the results would not hold. Therefore, it appears that even using an individual-level data set with students educated in this half of the century, school spending affects earnings.     

Science and ideology

Presented here is his keynote address to the November 1994 convention of the National Association of Scholars in Cambridge, MA. A portion was taken in slightly modified form from Professor Wilson's autobiography,Naturalist (Washington, D.C. and Covelo, Calif.: Island Press-Shearwater Books, 1994).