Although competition among health plans has been encouraged as a means to control health care expenditures, some fee-for-service (FFS) insurers attribute part of their increased average expenditures to favorable selection of low users into newly offered health maintenance organization (HMO) plans. To test this hypothesis, the health care…

The high cost of providing medical care through Medicaid has prompted the federal government to examine ways to constrain costs. One experiment to limit Medicaid costs is Arizona's Health Care Cost Containment System, under which the state contracts with prepaid health plans to provide comprehensive medical care for a set monthly fee per patient.…

A study explored the social uses of computer-mediated communication, identifying primary users and amounts of time spent using two related systems. Interviews and observations of computer users suggest that a large, socially active computing subculture is based at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst campus. It was hypothesized that members of…

The relationship between teacher burnout and the use of various media in teaching was examined with data collected from 545 elementary and secondary teachers in the Fort Worth, Texas public school system. Subscales measured factors indicating teacher burnout, including teachers' perceptions of the degree of administrative support received, career…

Columbia-Greene Community College (Hudson, New York) takes a yearly 10% statistical sample of its entire circulating collection, noting the call number, acquisition year, and circulation record of each book, in order to determine the pattern of book use over the preceding 2.5 years, and to facilitate the development of an acquisition pattern that…

This two-phase study of the use of networks and information retrieval systems by schools in Australia was designed to inquire as to the extent that schools are using all available networks; how appropriate and effective these sources of information are for schools; how costly such services might be; and what developments can be reasonably expected…

This survey questioned almost 6,000 students concerning media use for 16 new and seven continuing courses at the British Open University. Student access to and use of various types of media are detailed, and helpfulness, irrelevance, and difficulty ratings for various components and services in the new courses are presented. Brief feedback…

As a continuation of research into online public access catalog systems (OPAC's), this study focused on the actual use of OPAC's and on refinement of the methodologies used in carrying out transaction analysis studies. Current patron use patterns were obtained via machine-readable catalogs from four online public catalog systems: The Library of…

This survey of the literature provides a review and synthesis of research findings and current thought on the use of microcomputers by school children. Modes of learning and taxonomies of learning are described, and the results of recent surveys indicating the number of computers in schools and the amount of access by students are reported.…

Previous work assessing the effectiveness of computers in education has gone no further than acknowledging a network of interconnected variables (comprising a system) which contribute to computer impact and describing its component parts. An impact systems model developed by Glasman and Bibiaminov (1981) has been adapted to facilitate measurement…

A study examined the shift of the United States public's primary news source from newspapers to radio and then to television between 1937 and 1987 to determine the validity of the generally accepted explanation that people have shifted media (displacement). Two alternative processes were discovered that could also account for this phenomenon: (1)…

In 1972, when the third campus of Montgomery College was being planned, a commitment was made to community use of the campus facilities. From the day the Germanstown Campus library opened, its services have been available to the college's students and to the community at large. The library has a bookstack capacity of 65,000 books, 100 study…

In order to determine the capacity of high schools to profit from the pre-high school computer experiences of its students, a study was conducted to measure computer utilization in selected high schools of Middle Tennessee. Questionnaires distributed to 50 principals in 28 school systems covered the following areas: school enrollment; number and…

The six surveys on photocopying and publishing activity in America that are described in this report were conducted in 1981 to assess the effectiveness of the 1976 Copyright Act in balancing the rights of creators and the needs of users for copyrighted works. An indication of their statistical precision precedes detailed reports on each type of…

A five-page questionnaire was mailed to 709 persons on the subscriber list of the "Newspaper Research Journal" to determine if a problem existed between academic journalism researchers and practitioner consumers of the research. The questionnaire was constructed to measure the usefulness of various sources of information to the…