This paper uses proprietary quality of care data to examine the consequences of organizational form in privatized US foster care services. The contract failure hypothesis generically proposes that nonprofits should provide higher quality services, relative to for-profits, when output is costly to observe. Advocates argue that the nonprofits offer important consumer protections when public services are contracted to private agencies. Contrary to expectations, we find that nonprofit firms do not offer higher quality services. We explore the possibility that monitoring efforts by state regulators or competition among foster care agencies effectively mitigate the influence of organizational form in this particular mixed market.
Assessment, by definition, is a means of estimating the quality or
value of something. In this case assessment may be geared toward students
directly in the form of enhancing learning, faculty in terms of better
teaching, departments for improved curriculum development, and
institutions for the purpose of public relations, resource allocation, and
accreditation. This panel examined assessment in all of these cases, with
a particular focus on assessment of learning outcomes. Learning outcomes
are at the very essence of what we as teachers are trying to achieve and
assessment provides us with ways to determine whether we are actually
meeting these goals. The purpose of this track was to examine both
assessment and learning outcomes and to develop ways to improve both. This
article synthesizes the main findings of papers presented in the track
together with the ensuing discussion. The article is split into five major
topics: the role of assessment, the uses of assessment, the inevitability
of assessment, approaches of assessment, and how we do assessment.
This paper applies a social-cognitive model to the situation in Israel following the second intifada. In the model cognitive and social-contextual factors directly influence behavioral responses to terrorism as well as indirectly through affective factors. The findings suggest that the perceived risk of a terrorist attack influenced both preparedness and anxiety and concern. However, in some cases the influence of anxiety and concern on behavioral responses was greater than the cognitive or social-contextual factors i.e. gas mask preparedness. In other cases, the Iranian nuclear threat, the perceived risk did not influence the level of preparedness indirectly through anxiety and concern. The divergence in these findings reflects overconfidence in the state's ability to cope with the nuclear threat and the hypothetical nature of the responses.
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