Social Assistance – also known as welfare – has been a program of last resort for individuals in poverty across Canada for many years. The use of social assistance in early adulthood is of particular interest, as these individuals have a long life of consequences ahead of them. The social assistance program available in Manitoba, Canada – the setting of this study – is Employment and Income Assistance (EIA). This study examines difference in predictors of early adult (ages 18-25) EIA usage across income quintiles of the neighborhoods individuals lived in as they enter young adulthood (age 18) and the type of EIA (General Assistance, Single Parent or Disability) received.

This thesis is comprised of three essays relating to long term unemployment in Spain. The first chapter is methodological analysis of the main dataset that is used throughout the thesis. The second and third chapter provide two applications of the dataset for the study of long term unemployment. The methodology in these chapters can be easily adapted to study unemployment in other countries. Chapter 1. On the use of administrative data for the study of unemployment Social security administrative data are increasingly becoming available in many countries. These are very attractive data as they have a long panel structure (large N, large T) and allow to measure many different variables with higher precision. Because of their nature they can capture aspects that are usually hidden due to design or timing of survey data. However, administrative data are not ready to be used for labour market research, especially studies involving unemployment. The main reason is that administrative data only capture those registered unemployed, and in some cases only those receiving unemployment benefits. The gap between total unemployment and registered unemployment is not constant neither across workers characteristics nor time. In this paper I augment Spanish Social Security administrative data by adding missing unemployment spells using information from the institutional framework. I compare the resulting unemployment rate to that of the Labour Force Survey, showing that both are comparable and thus the administrative dataset is useful for labour market research. I also explore how the administrative data can be used to study some important aspects of the labour market that the Labour Force survey can’t capture. Administrative data can also be used to overcome some of the problems of the Labour Force survey such as changes in the structure of the survey. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive guide on how to adapt administrative datasets to make them useful for studying unemployment. Chapter 2. Unemployment Duration Variance Decomposition `a la ABS: Evidence from Spain Existing studies of unemployment duration typically use self-reported information from labour force surveys. We revisit this question using precise information on spells from administrative data. We follow the recent method proposed by Alvarez, Borovickova and Shimer (2015) for estimating the different components of the duration of unemployment using administrative data and have applied it to Austria. In this paper we apply the same method (the ABS method hereafter) to Spain using Spanish Social Security data. Administrative data have many advantages compared to Labour Force Survey data, but we note that there are some incompleteness that need to be enhanced in order to use the data for unemployment analysis (e.g., unemployed workers that run out of unemployment insurance have no labour market status in the data). The degree and nature of such incompleteness is country-specific and are particularly important in Spain. Following Chapter 1, we deal with these data issues in a systematic way by using information from the Spanish LFS data as well as institutional information. We hope that our approach will provide a useful way to apply the ABS method in other countries. Our findings are: (i) the unemployment decomposition is quite similar in Austria and Spain, specially when minimizing the effect of fixed-term contracts in Spain. (ii) the constant component is the most important one; while (total) heterogeneity and duration dependence are roughly comparable. (iii) also, we do not find big differences in the contribution of the different components along the business cycle. Chapter 3. Search Capital and Unemployment Duration I propose a novel mechanism called search capital to explain long term unemployment patters across different ages: workers who have been successful in finding jobs in the recent past become more efficient at finding jobs in the present. Search ability increases with search experience and depreciates with tenure if workers do not search often enough. This leaves young (who have not gained enough search experience) and older workers in a disadvantaged position, making them more likely to suffer long term unemployment. I focus on the case of Spain, as its dual labour market structure favours the identification of search capital. I provide empirical evidence that search capital affects unemployment duration and wages at the individual level. Then I propose a search model with search capital and calibrate it using Spanish administrative data. The addition of search capital helps the model match the dynamics of unemployment and job finding rates in the data, especially for younger workers.

There is a significant increase in demand for rapid laboratory medical diagnoses for various ailments in order for clinicians to make informed medical decisions and prescribe the correct medication within a limited specified time. Since no further informed action can be taken on the patient until the laboratory report reaches the clinician, the delivery of the report to the clinician becomes a critical path in the value chain of the laboratory testing process. The National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) currently delivers lab results in three ways: via a physical paper report, and electronically through a web application. The third alternative is for short and high-priority test results, like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB), that are delivered via short message service (SMS) printers in remote rural clinics. However, despite its inefficiencies, the paper report remains the most commonly used method. As turnaround times for basic and critical laboratory tests remain a great challenge for NHLS to meet the specified targets; there is need to shift method of final delivery from paper to a paperless secured electronic result delivery system. Accordingly, the recently-implemented centralised TrakCare Lab laboratory information system (LIS) makes provision for delivery of electronic results via a web application, 'TrakCarewebview'. However, the uptake of TrakCarewebview has been very low due to the cumbersomeness of the application; this web application takes users through nine steps to obtain the results and is not designed for mobile devices. In addition, its access in remote rural health care facilities is a great challenge because of lack of supportive infrastructure. There is therefore an obvious gap and considerable potential in diagnostic result delivery system that calls for an immediate action to design and development of a less complex, cost effective and usable mobile application, for electronic delivery of laboratory results. After obtaining research ethics clearance approval from the University’s Faculty of Science Research Ethics Committee a research was sanctioned. A survey of public sector clinicians across South Africa indicated that 98% have access to the internet through smartphones, and 93% of the clinicians indicated that they would use their mobile devices to access electronic laboratory results. A significant number of clinicians believe that the use of a mobile application in health facilities will improve patient care. This belief, therefore, set a strong basis for designing and developing a mobile application for laboratory results. The study aims to design and develop a mobile application prototype that can demonstrate the capability of delivering electronic laboratory test results to clinicians on their smart devices, via a usable mobile application. The design of the mobile application prototype was driven by user-centred design (UCD) principles in order to develop an effective design. Core and critical to the process is the design step which establishes the user requirements specifications that meet the user expectations. The study substantiated the importance of the design aspect as the initial critical step in obtaining a good final product. The prototype was developed through an iterative process alternating prototype development and evaluation. The development iterations consisted of a single paper prototyping iteration followed by further two iterations using an interactive Justinmind prototyping tool. Respective to the development iterations, cognitive walk-through and heuristic principles were used to evaluate the usability of the initial prototype. The final prototype was then evaluated using the system usability scale (SUS) survey quantitative tool, which determines the effectiveness and perceived usability of the application. The application scored an average SUS score of 77, which is significantly above the average acceptable SUS score of 68. The standard SUS measurement deems 80 to be an excellent score. Yet a score below 68 is considered below average. The evaluation was conducted by the potential user group which was involved in the initial design process. The ability of the interactive prototyping tool (Justinmind) to mimic the actual final product offered end users a feel of the actual product thus giving the outcome of the evaluation a strong basis to develop the actual product.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how routine, day-to-day public health nursing (PHN) practice in one BC health authority affected health outcomes related to breastfeeding initiation and duration, infant immunizations, and household tobacco use within the population of perinatal women who were a high priority for additional and ongoing PHN services. Using administrative data from the integrated public health information system (iPHIS), outcomes for the priority population were compared to those of the general population of new mothers receiving usual PHN services. Additionally, through semi-structured interviews with PHNs, this study explored how the context of the work environment influenced PHN practice, and ultimately the achievement of those outcomes. Based on a philosophical foundation of critical realism, and a theoretical framework of critical caring, a mixed methods case study design was used to study PHN practice, as it existed day-to-day, amidst the array of ever changing organizational influences. Results from the statistical analysis of administrative data and thematic analysis of PHN interviews and organizational guiding documents, showed that priority women, who received five or more postnatal contacts from PHNs initiated breastfeeding in higher proportions than non-priority women, and continued breastfeeding to 18 months in the same proportion as non-priority mothers. Rates of breastfeeding duration for priority women were higher than expected based on current literature. Children of priority mothers were fully immunized in a slightly higher, but not significantly different proportion than children of the non-priority population, also at rates higher than expected. Although high rates of household tobacco use among this group of priority women did not appear to be influenced by PHN contact, the relationships that developed between priority women and PHNs suggest that organizational support for tobacco cessation activities may be a missed opportunity. Thematic analysis of PHN interviews and guiding documents provided background context and clarification for the kinds of organizational factors and underlying mechanisms that may have influenced the ability of PHNs to provide additional and ongoing support to priority perinatal women in achieving these three outcomes of interest. Finally, the theory of critical caring was verified and extended through the experiences and explanations of PHNs, with the addition of “navigating organizational complexity” to the original seven carative health promoting processes. / Graduate

In 2011, Statistics Austria carried out its first register-based census. Advantages of using administrative data for statistical purposes are, among others, a reduced burden for respondents and lower cost for the National Statistical Institutes (NSI). However, new challenges, like need for a new approach to the quality assessment of this kind of data arise. Therefore, Statistics Austria developed a comprehensive standardized framework to evaluate data quality for register-based statistics. In this paper, we present the basic concept of this quality framework and provide detailed results from the quality evaluation of the Austrian census of 2011. More specifically, we derive a quality measure for each census attribute from four complementary hyperdimensions. The first three of these hyperdimensions address the documentation of data, the usability of records and an external data validation. The fourth hyperdimension focuses on the quality of data imputations. The proposed framework combines these different quality-related information sources for each attribute to form an overall quality indicator. This procedure allows to track changes in quality during data processing and to compare the quality of different census generations.

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INTRODUCTION: The burden of child maltreatment is substantial, highlighting the importance of identifying effective prevention programs in reducing occurrence and costs. The SafeCare® model was developed as a home-based service for high-risk parents in child protective services for child maltreatment. Although limited, studies that evaluate interventions for child maltreatment through a public health strategy can be achieved through administrative data and have a positive impact on population level reduction of abuse and neglect. AIM: This current secondary analysis examines the effect of the statewide implementation of SafeCare compared to services as usual on the likelihood of out-of-home placement. The research question is “are there differences in out-of-home placement among families referred to SafeCare compared to families who received services as usual?” METHOD: The original study was a cluster-randomized research design was implemented to evaluate SafeCare verses services as usual at the agency/region level including two urban and four rural child protective services administrative regions of Oklahoma. The secondary analysis sample included 2,175 families, prioritizing the primary caregiver for intervention. The Cox proportional-hazards regression model was used to estimate the relative risk for an out-of-home placement and participants were categorized according to intervention type group. RESULTS: By the end of the 2.9-year follow-up, there were 283 first time occurrences of out-of-home placement. Families randomized to receive services as usual had no effect compared to families receiving SafeCare on the likelihood of out-of-home placement after adjusting for baseline family covariates. DISCUSSION: These findings suggest that many chronic cases in the child welfare system may show limited change with services and may suggest a different service approach for reducing recidivism in out-of-home placement outcomes. Although limited, evaluating interventions for child maltreatment by using administrative data can be achieved through administrative data and have a positive impact on establishing effective prevention programs in reducing occurrence of abuse and neglect on a population level.

Migration has become an important feature of health labour markets due to the global shortage of health professionals. While there exists an extensive Labour Economics literature studying the general migration, policy development remains hampered by limited research undertaken in the health sector. This thesis fills some of that gap by examining the economic influences on and impacts of the migration of health professionals. The migration of skilled health professionals has exhibited strong sectoral properties, such as the motivation of career development and various regulatory regimes. We incorporate these features into the self-selection model by Borjas and Bratsberg (1996) and examine factors that influence the scale and skill composition of the migration flow. Our model suggests that the restrictive relicensing regime and work permit requirements for non-EEA professionals adopted by the British government to maintain practice standards and secure employment opportunities for native graduates, could only limit the migration from countries with higher returns to skills. The effect is ambiguous for most donor countries, which provide lower returns to skills.Using the administrative data derived from the Scottish dental system, we also examine the impacts of health professional migration within EU on the host country by investigating the performance of EEA dentists contracted under the Scottish NHS in terms of retention and treatment provision. A discrete-time survival analysis has been applied to characterize the time trend of the retention and identify factors associated with the likelihood of a dentist leaving the NHS. We also compare treatments provided by migrant and non-migrant dentists by estimating a difference-in-differences model. Unobserved heterogeneity in dentists is controlled using fixed effects.Our results suggest that EEA health professionals can be a good substitute to British graduates. They provide marginally different treatments and exhibit strong assimilation within two years post-entry. However, a constant issue we have found is their high turnover rates in the NHS: half of them left the service by the 26th month following entry. The primary policy recommendation of our analyses is that there is need for the government to develop recruitment initiatives so as to retain migrant dentists. Our results suggest hazards of leaving are significantly associated with dentists’ age-at-entry, arrival cohort and patient composition, but not with dentists’gender, country and practice deprivation. These findings potentially help to set evidence-based targets for international recruitment programmes

LieMSIS PDB is the system designed for gathering of scientific publications data and for statistical analysis of such data. The system allows not only analysis of scientific publications bibliographical information (sort of publication, year of publishing, etc.) but it also allows to account administrative data of the authors (position in the institution, degree and etc.). This document contains overview of LieMSIS PDB development process, LieMSIS PDB evolution from the first version to the current version and statistical data of LieMSIS PDB usage.

As the population ages, policymakers struggle to cope with the increasing demands for home care and institutional long-term care. This thesis project focuses on factors associated with the transition from home to institutional care for people with dementia. Using health administrative data at a population level, we construct a multivariable model that estimates the time between home care initiation after dementia diagnosis and placement in a long-term care home. From the model, we identify protective factors that allow people with dementia to remain at home for longer, with a particular emphasis on the health workforce and the contribution of formal and informal caregivers to delaying the transition from home to institutional care. Together, these results inform policymakers in capacity planning and in determining where investments should be targeted to maintain people with dementia at home, along with the associated health workforce implications.