Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Based on in-depth interviews and short stays with private farming households in and around St. Petersburg during the summer of 2004, this paper examines the bases of differing definitions of quality, expectations for the relationship between quality and price, and perceptions of credibility in quality claims producer strategies to navigate Russia’s developing agrifood market. For producers, this situation requires establishing customer loyalty on the basis of trust and proven consistency in quality. In order to capture price premiums and establish market share, producers employ a variety of quality discourses and marketing strategies that alternatively emphasize local origin, production practices, specific varietals, and flavor. These claims, and the interpersonal relationships that lend them credibility, are increasingly challenged by imported goods that–despite general distrust of foreign products and processed foods–employ a formal and internationally respected labeling system.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Hospital competition in the United States shifted from a quality/amenity basis to a price basis with the growth of managed care in the 1980s and 1990s. However, a significant managed care backlash starting in the mid-to-late 1990s may have blunted its effectiveness in reducing the rate of increase in hospital costs. This may have altered the balance between price and quality competition in hospitals over time.

Preliminary analysis using hospital financial data from California showed that while from 1991-96 the mean annual rate of increase in hospital expenses was lower in markets with higher managed care penetration, these effects are reversed from 1997-2001. The difference in the rate at which expenses increased between high and low competition areas narrowed over these two time periods as well, suggesting that managed care no longer effectively facilitated price competition between hospitals during this later period.

To assess the impacts on quality of the change in the effects of managed care penetration in influencing hospital competition, we use annual hospital financial and patient-level discharge data from 1991 through 2001 linked with state death certificates from California to examine effects on 30-day mortality for a group of 4 common and severe conditions (AMI, stroke, GI bleed, hip fracture) as well as failure to rescue (death after post-operative complications) during two different time periods (1991-96, 1997-2001). Since managed care is expected to have a stronger effect in more competitive areas, our design incorporates interaction effects between market competitiveness and MCP. We control for baseline costs and quality in more competitive areas at baseline and adjust for differences in patient severity.

We focus on testing whether the nature of competition between hospitals shifts from favoring price competition (1990-96) to greater emphasis on quality competition (1997-2001). We use long-difference regressions to examine the effect of changes in MCP on outcomes and the effects of changes in MCP in more and less concentrated hospital markets. Preliminary evidence suggests that increases in managed care penetration reduce mortality risk overall but to a lesser degree in more competitive markets. Hospital market concentration is also associated with better mortality outcomes. Next steps will include testing for differences in the relationship between managed care and hospital market concentration with outcomes in different time periods and exploring effects by payer group and whether potentially more vulnerable populations such as the uninsured were adversely affected to a greater degree than the insured in terms of either the quality or quantity of services received.

This work is important to developing a better understanding of how the nature of hospital competition has evolved in conjunction with significant changes in recent years in the effects of managed care. These results will contribute to debates on approaches to payment policy, cost containment, and quality improvement efforts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Much of research and practice literature on the quality of pre-sentence reports suggests that report writers should employ information in such a way as to so effect the art of gentle persuasion. In their attempt to influence sentencers without being seen to be directing them, report writers are forced to encode their persuasive messages under a facade of neutrality.

Drawing on direct comparisons in specific cases between the intention of report writers and the interpretation of those same reports by sentencers, this research finds that, in fact, these strategies of indirect persuasion and apparent neutrality often fail. Sentencers tend to interpret the ‘messages’ in the reports very differently from that intended by the report writers. Indeed, these different interpretations often backfire against the credibility of the report writer.

The paper suggests that this failure to communicate a persuasive message effectively cannot simply be ironed out by the application of set quality criteria (eg ‘national standards’).

Why not? More fundamental issues are at play. In their construction, reports are themselves necessarily the product of a range of competing policy and practice imperatives. Moreover, in their interpretation, reports are worked upon, mediated and regarded through multiple and contradictory lenses in the production of guilt by the criminal process. This paper examines and illustrates some of these tensions drawing on some examples of the research’s follow-through of cases from the client interview to sentencing.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Quality is a key term in media organizations. Public broadcasters are even justified by it. Yet, viewer ratings show a declining interest in classic quality genres such as news and documentaries, and not just among the younger generation. Does the quality audience no longer exist or does quality programming no longer appeal to what could be termed the ‘quality audience’? This paper answers to the ‘crisis in quality television’ by revealing the outcome of a large-scale qualitative audience study of the changing taste and media use of 251 active, articulate, well-educated, socially involved citizens as well as media users who given their passion for and interest in media can be considered as an audience of experts.

Publication Type: Single Paper Format
Abstract: The development of Quality Indicators for innovative teacher preparation programs through Project KNOTtT is an example of a multi-state collaborative effort to create and sustain a network among universities, schools, state departments of education, corporations and businesses, and non-profit organizations that support the preparation of teachers in both school-university partnerships and school-based programs.