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"Equivalency Framing in Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.

The controversies over the "National History Standards" and the Smithsonian's abortive effort to mount a fiftieth anniversary exhibit on the decision to drop the atomic bomb, along with insights drawn from the opening of former Soviet and Eastern European archives, highlight the "moral equivalency" debate being waged over the writing and teaching of Cold War history. Gaddis suggests the need for historians to rethink some of their academic approaches to this subject, using a moral as opposed to a materialist framework.

"Three notions of item equivalency are distinguished. They correspond to the back-translation approach, the psychometric IRT approach, and the facet-theoretical approach. The latter defines equivalent item as items that answer the same questions. The question, then, is explicated in terms of its design. This yields the item's blueprint. One can extract such blueprints by studying given items, but the result is generally not unique. Nevertheless, it makes it possible to predict empirical regularities for the items and, therefore, tests for equivalency. If the tests fail, however, item non-equivalency is just one possible explanation. Design-equivalency is, on the other hand, a definitional issue, not an empirical one. The enmpirical issue is the design's usefulness for a particular purpose, usually for answering the research question." (author's abstract)

Environmental compensation is the provision of natural resources through a restoration project, which is scaled to ensure the public is compensated for the environmental damage. The European Union (EU) recently implemented the Environmental Liability Directive (ELD), requiring that environmental damage be remediated (restored) so that the affected environment returns to (or toward) its baseline condition and the public is compensated for the initial damage and the losses during the time it takes for the environment to recover (interim losses). Equivalency Analysis (EA) represents a method for scaling compensation to offset interim losses. Compensation is a human-centric concept aimed at society's well-being which, among other things, depends upon a flow of environmental services (e.g., biodiversity, nutrient and carbon cycling, provision of recreation, etc). This study considers compensation scaled using a non-monetary (ecologic) metric, as in a Habitat Equivalency Analysis (HEA) or a Resource Equivalency Analysis (REA). Both HEA and REA assume the utility change associated with environmental damage and subsequent restoration is proportional to changes in an ecologic metric (e.g., acres of habitat, number of birds, etc). This study's objective is to examine the social welfare implications of resource-based compensation, with a focus on the distributive impacts across society (intra-generational equity) and between generations (inter-generational equity). Paper I develops an illustrative and hypothetical case study to demonstrate how one might apply EA to the case of bird mortality associated with wind power development. Paper II argues for the use of EA to scale resource-based compensation within the existing Environmental Impact Assessment hierarchy of impacts: avoid-minimize-compensate, with a particular focus on wind power development.

In the measurement of att's a greater standardization of scale items has been called for by res'ers. Those with this position have argued that once the reliability of an attitude scale has been established it should be used in preference over an investigator's own operationalization of the concept. This position is rejected on grounds that the reliability of widely used scales has rarely been appropriately established. Some evidence of diff'ial att structures within Amer samples is examined & alternative solutions to the measurement problems which these diff attitude structures pose are offered. The problem is illustrated by the Survey Res Center's scale for pol'al efficacy (Survey P364 by the U of Wisconsin Survey Res Laboratory). It is found that questionaire items are understood diff'ly among diff subcultures. However, clusters which have some items in common may be identified by factor analysis. On the basis of such clusters scales can then be examined for factors which share a common anchor item between samples even though they have unique associated items. Here, the item which had the highest loading on a dimension in all 3 samples involved was tekan as anchor item. Another solution indicated is to consider each factor revealed by the factor analysis as a dimension for which factor scores may be calculated to use as scale scores. Each questionaire item contributes to the scale score in proportion of its factor loading on the dimension. Items which load on several dimensions contribute to several scale scores; those loading on only 1 dimension contribute only to its scale score. This method permits an empirical estimation of the content of several dimensions. A 3rd alternative involves using diff data gathering techniques in order to obtain more appropriate measures of att's in various subcultures (see SA 104/F6782). All of these alternative approaches permit a more flexible & wider choice of responses which may reveal the common elements of attitude structure among subpop & make possible meaningful comparative analysis. 7 Tables. M. Maxfield.

A high school equivalency program for the visually impaired includes a rigorous evaluation process to determine if the person would make a good candidate for instruction. The instruction includes the teaching of math, spelling and grammar, literature, history, and science. The use of various materials, special aids and modifications for visually impaired students is discussed.