Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Targets For Transformation: A Strategic Plan For The Syracuse University Library, 2000-2005, Roberta B. Gwilt, Martha J. Hanson, Kelley Lasher, Pamela Whiteley Mclaughlin, Lisa Moeckel, Suzanne Preate

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

A strategic plan is a tool that enables an organization to revitalize itself and focus on a set of mission-critical goals over a period of time. A well-crafted plan intentionally implemented and consistently monitored promotes success in strategic areas and provides a foundation for transforming services, technology, collections, and infrastructure to meet the constantly evolving needs and demands of teaching, research, and scholarly communication. A strategic plan:

• articulates commonly held values and a shared sense of purpose and mission
• proposes goals and assesses progress to those goals
• informs decision-making
• enables action within a larger context that is known and understood …

Cross-Language Information Retrieval Using Dutch Query Translation, Anne R. Diekema, Wen-Yuan Hsiao

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This paper describes an elementary bilingual information retrieval experiment. The experiment takes Dutch topics to retrieve relevant English documents using Microsoft SQL Server version 7.0. In order to cross the language barrier between query and document, the researchers use query translation by means of a machine-readable dictionary. The Dutch run was void of the typical natural language processing techniques such as parsing, stemming, or part of speech tagging. A monolingual run was carried out for comparison purposes. Due to limitations in time, retrieval system, translation method, and test collection, there is only a preliminary analysis of the results.

Representation And Organization Of Information In The Web Space: From Marc To Xml, Jian Qin

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Representing and organizing information in libraries has a long tradition of using rules and standards. As the very first standard encoding format for bibliographic data in libraries, MAchine Readable Cataloging (MARC) format is being joined by a large number of new formats since the late 1980s. The new formats, mostly SGML/HTML based, are actively taking a role in representing and organizing networked information resources. This article briefly describes the historical connection between MARC and the newer formats for representing information and the current development in XML applications that will benefit information/knowledge management in the new environment.

Searching And Search Engines: When Is Current Research Going To Lead To Major Progress?, Elizabeth D. Liddy

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

For many years, users of commercial search engines have been hearing how the latest in information and computer science research is going to improve the quality of the engines they rely on for fulfilling their daily information needs. However, despite what is heard, these promises have not been fulfilled. While the Internet has dramatically increased the amount of information to which users now have access, the key issue appears to be unresolved – the results for substantive queries are not improving. However, the past need not predict the future because sophisticated advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) have, in fact, …

Question Answering: Cnlp At The Trec-10 Question Answering Track, Jiangping Chen, Anne R. Diekema, Mary D. Taffet, Nancy Mccracken, Necati Ercan Ozgencil

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This paper describes the retrieval experiments for the main task and list task of the TREC-10 question answering track. The question answering system described automatically finds answers to questions in a large document collection. The system uses a two-stage retrieval approach to answer finding based on matching of named entities, linguistic patterns, and keywords. In answering a question, the system carries out a detailed query analysis that produces a logical query representation, an indication of the question focus, and answer clue words.

Question Answering: Cnlp At The Trec-9 Question Answering Track, Anne R. Diekema, Xiaoyong Liu, Jiangping Chen, Hudong Wang, Nancy Mccracken

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This paper describes a question answering system that automatically finds answers to questions in a large collection of documents. The prototype CNLP question answering system was developed for participation in the TREC-9 question answering track. The system uses a two-stage retrieval approach to answer finding based on keyword and named entity matching. Results indicate that the system ranks correct answers high (mostly rank 1), provided that an answer to the question was found. Performance figures and further analyses are included.

Processes As Theory In Information Systems Research, Kevin Crowston

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Many researchers have searched for evidence of organizational improvements from the huge sums invested in ICT. Unfortunately, evidence for such a pay back is spotty at best (e.g., Brynjolfsson, 1994; Meyer and Gupta, 1994; Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 1998). On the other hand, at the individual level, computing and communication technologies are increasingly merging into work in ways that make it impossible to separate the two (Gasser, 1986; Zuboff, 1988; Bridges, 1995). This problem—usually referred to as the productivity paradox—is an example of a more pervasive issue—linking phenomena and theories from different levels of analysis. Organizational processes provide a bridge between …

The Effects Of Market-Enabling Internet Agents On Competition And Prices, Kevin Crowston, Ian Macinnes

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The Internet offers a vision of ubiquitous electronic commerce. A particularly useful feature is the ability to automate the search for price or other information across multiple vendors by using an "agent" to retrieve relevant information. The use of agents has the potential to dramatically reduce buyers ' search costs. We develop a framework that suggests that vendors who sell products with many differentiating factors beyond price will tend to accept agents, while vendors of commodities or branded goods will tend to resist them unless they have lower costs than their competitors. Empirically, we found that agents seem to be …

How Do Information And Communication Technologies Reshape Work? Evidence Form The Residential Real Estate Industry, Kevin Crowston, Steve Sawyer, Rolf Wigand, Marcel Allbritton

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

We are exploring how ICT use affects the work lives of real estate agents, the process of selling/buying houses and the overall structure of the residential real estate industry. Earlier stages of our work involved intensive field research on how real estate agents use ICT. In this paper, we report on the design and analysis of a pilot survey of 868 agents intended to investigate their ICT use more generally. Analysis of the 153 responses to this survey sheds light on how ICT use supports information control, enables process support, and helps agents to extend and maintain their social capital.

The Role Of Classification In Knowledge Represantation And Discovery, Barbara H. Kwasnik

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The link between classification and knowledge is explored. Classification schemes have properties that enable the representation of entities and relationships in structures that reflect knowledge of the domain being classified. The strengths and limitations of four classificatory approaches are described in terms of their ability to reflect, discover, and create new knowledge. These approaches are hierarchies, trees, paradigms, and faceted analysis. Examples are provided of the way in which knowledge and the classification process affect each other.

Why Elephants Gallop: Assessing And Predicting Organizational Performance In Federal Agencies, Gene A. Brewer, Sally Coleman Selden

Public Administration - All Scholarship

Hal G. Rainey and Paula Steinbauer (1999) recently proposed a theory of effective government organizations. Several other theories exist in whole or in part, but empirical testing is rare. In this article we cut to the chase and examine several key elements of these theories empirically. First, we explore the theoretical dimensions of organizational performance and derive a taxonomy to help measure the construct. Second, we draw from the literature and develop a model predicting organizational performance. Third, we operationalize and test the model with data from the 1996 Merit Principles Survey, U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. In the end, …

Historical Archaeology In America: Implications Of The 1998 Sha Membership Survey For Future And Most Recent Generations, Christopher R. Decorse

Anthropology - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Soziale Arbeit Und Ökonomie : Politische Ökonomie - Arbeitsmärkte - Sozialpolitik Grenzen Der Ökonomisierung - Soziale Ökonomie Gemeinwesenentwicklung - Bürgergesellschaft, Susanne Elsen, Dietrich Lange, Isidor Wallimann

Books

Globalization has seen the removal of borders and increased global flows of capital and goods and services, changing the employment landscape, pressuring revenues and social-welfare spending of modern welfare states. This collection of essays brings together perspectives from different disciplines to discuss the role globalization has had on social policies of the modern welfare state and the changing relationship between social policy, social work and the economy, describes its consequences and presents innovative approaches for action.

Medicaid, Managed Care, And Kids. 12th Annual Herbert Lourie Memorial Lecture On Health Policy, Deborah A. Freund

Center for Policy Research

This policy brief talks about what managed care for Medicaid is, how it influences kids, and how it relates to the State Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP). It focuses on what we have learned over the last 20 years through research about cost, use, and quality. It also discusses some of the expectations we had for children covered by Medicaid managed care. Finally, it talks about the future of Medicaid managed care and the implications for CHIP.

Worldwide Population Aging: Endogenous Policy Formation And Capital Market Transmissions In The Presence Of Symmetric Demographic Shocks, Mehmet Serkan Tosun

Center for Policy Research

This paper examines the transition effects of population aging in more developed regions that is also expected to occur in developing regions in the near future. We address these effects by exploring the influences of internationally mobile capital and a politically responsive fiscal policy in a two-country overlapping generations model. Our results show that the combination of capital mobility and endogenous fiscal policy play an important role in how economies respond to population aging. Capital mobility has consumption smoothing effects but endogenous fiscal policy is the key factor in creating asymmetries between countries. The interaction of the two may even …

Does Chronic Illness Affect The Adequacy Of Health Insurance Coverage?, Kevin T. Stroupe, Eleanor D. Kinney, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

Although chronically ill individuals need protection against high medical expenses, they often have difficulty obtaining adequate insurance coverage due to medical underwriting practices used to classify and price risks and to define and limit coverage for individuals and groups. Using data from healthy and chronically ill individuals in Indiana, we found that illness decreased the probability of having adequate insurance, particularly among single individuals. Chronic illness decreased the probability of having adequate coverage by about 10 percentage points among all individuals and by about 25 percentage points among single individuals. Pre-existing condition exclusions were a major source of inadequate insurance. …

Chronic Illness And Health Insurance-Related Job Lock, Kevin T. Stroupe, Eleanor D. Kinney, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

We examine job duration patterns for evidence of health insurance-related job lock among chronically ill workers or workers with a chronically ill family member. Using Cox proportional hazard models, we allow for more general insurance effects than in the existing literature to indicate the impact of health insurance and health status on workers' job durations. We use data for workers in Indiana predating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to examine the potential impact of HIPAA on job mobility. Chronic illness reduced job mobility by about 40 percent among the workers in our sample who relied on their …

How Well Can We Track Cohabitation Using The Sipp? A Consideration Of Direct And Inferred Measures, Reagan Anne Baughman, Stacy Dickert-Conlin, Scott Houser

Center for Policy Research

Cohabitation is an alternative to marriage and to living independently for an increasing number of Americans. Despite this fact, research exploring links between living arrangements and economic behavior is limited by a lack of data that explicitly identify cohabiting couples. To aid researchers in using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) rich data for cohabitation issues, our paper considers direct and inferred measures of cohabitation. Our findings suggest that: (1) the best inferred measures in pre-1966 SIPP depends upon a researcher's goals, and (2) the SIPP counts a larger number of cohabiting couples than the widely used CPS.

Microdata Panel Data And Public Policy: National And Cross-National Perspectives, Richard V. Burkhauser

Center for Policy Research

This paper focuses on the movement of data-based social policy analysis from a single-country cross-section frame to a multi-country panel frame. It provides examples of policy insights this movement to panel data has permitted, both with respect to economic well-being and behavior--using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the British Household Panel Study (BHPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). It also suggests fruitful areas for future panel data-based policy research.

Are We Understating The Impact Of Economic Conditions On Welfare Rolls?, Dan A. Black, Terra G. Mckinnish, Seth G. Sanders

Center for Policy Research

In this brief we argue that welfare participation is more sensitive to economic conditions than previously believed. Why? Prior research focused on short-term economic fluctuations and ignored differences between high- and low-skilled workers. As welfare is long-term (i.e., permanent) it makes more sense to make comparisons with long-term economic trends. Also, since low-skilled workers are more likely to end up on welfare, it is proper to focus on their economic opportunities. Thus, we focus on the long-term impact of economic conditions on welfare participation, and we concentrate our analysis on low-skilled workers. Specifically, we analyze long-term changes in the supply …