title: The Role of Fatherhood in the Everyday Life of Young Māori Men

authors: Elkington, Angus Marangai Brons

subjects: maori men

abstract: Little research exists that explores the positive aspects of young Māori fathers. The aim of this study was to explore the everyday lived reality of expectant and young Māori males as fathers and partners, within the context of a positive based approach and Kaupapa Māori research framework. A secondary objective of this study was to provide ideas to enhance parent resources for young Māori fathers, such as father centric parenting programmes and mobile applications. The research was derived from semi-structured interviews, which explored the unique experiences and narratives of eight young Māori fathers between the age of 16 and 25 years of age. Using thematic analysis, the findings were categorised into key themes that portrayed their perception and attitudes to roles, responsibility, relationships, barriers, and wellbeing strategies. The findings identified, a strong desire of young Māori fathers to be involved with their children and that the quality of whānau relationships provided resilience, support, and motivation to fulfil the responsibilities of fatherhood. The young Māori fathers had strong goals and aspirations but acknowledged barriers that delayed their ability to achieve them. In the outcome of this study, I have tried to portray a positive understanding of young Māori fathers and to challenge the negative stereotypes that persist in New Zealand society. Furthermore, this research supports the need for restorative cultural practices as the key to wellbeing for our whānau and further investigations in regards to policy reforms and resources to include full participation in society.

text: The Role of Fatherhood in the Everyday Life of Young Māori Men Little research exists that explores the positive aspects of young Māori fathers. The aim of this study was to explore the everyday lived reality of expectant and young Māori males as fathers and partners, within the context of a positive based approach and Kaupapa Māori research framework. A secondary objective of this study was to provide ideas to enhance parent resources for young Māori fathers, such as father centric parenting programmes and mobile applications. The research was derived from semi-structured interviews, which explored the unique experiences and narratives of eight young Māori fathers between the age of 16 and 25 years of age. Using thematic analysis, the findings were categorised into key themes that portrayed their perception and attitudes to roles, responsibility, relationships, barriers, and wellbeing strategies. The findings identified, a strong desire of young Māori fathers to be involved with their children and that the quality of whānau relationships provided resilience, support, and motivation to fulfil the responsibilities of fatherhood. The young Māori fathers had strong goals and aspirations but acknowledged barriers that delayed their ability to achieve them. In the outcome of this study, I have tried to portray a positive understanding of young Māori fathers and to challenge the negative stereotypes that persist in New Zealand society. Furthermore, this research supports the need for restorative cultural practices as the key to wellbeing for our whānau and further investigations in regards to policy reforms and resources to include full participation in society.

year: 2016

title: Restructuring and hospital care: Sub-national trends, differentials, and their impacts; New Zealand from 1981

authors: Pool, Ian

abstract: An analysis of the "nation's health" is the central concern of this study. Its genesis was a detailed, technical, time-series research on regional and ethnic differentials in health in New Zealand. But as this work progressed it became increasingly evident that the results of this more narrow analysis could make a wider contribution to the development of a knowledge-base on health trends and on the impacts of policy on these. In a sense, the analysis provides a demographic audit of health trends over the last two decades.
The focus here is different from that in most other studies on restructuring of the New Zealand health system as their concern was either to review in detail the rewriting of policy per se, and attendant structural and institutional changes (Fougere 2001), or to identify how these changes relate to changes in mortality (Blakely et al. 2008). The research question reported here was, instead, to analyse the most crucial of health outcomes, „how long we live and how often we end up in hospital‟, identified in the earlier quotation, to report patterns and trends in hospital use nationally and sub-nationally over the period under review, and to determine the degrees to which various sub-populations benefited, or did not benefit, from these changes. The analysis focuses on the hospital sector in the system, but it will also show relations between this and other sectors, formal (e.g. primary health) and less formal (notably the healthcare afforded sickness and invalid beneficiaries). Thus two questions are addressed:
1. whether or not the nation‟s population health improved over the period and;
2. whether or not there was a convergence in patterns of health gain across its constituent sub-populations defined geographically and ethnically.
This monograph deals with sub-national differences in health in New Zealand over a period of substantial socio-economic restructuring and associated radical changes in health policy, health systems and their related information systems (see also, Text Appendix A). It complements the recently published analysis of national ethnic trends in mortality (Blakely et al. 2004), but differs in several critical respects. That study reviewed health status by emphasising aetiologies and causes of death. In contrast, the present analysis focuses on actuarial dimensions of both mortality and morbidity and on health as measured by functional capacity rather than the disease orientated „burden of disease‟. It goes beyond health status issues to look at the system itself, to assess whether health policy outcomes were generated more through efficiency-gain (economic or service delivery, such as those resulting in a convergence sub-nationally of supply and demand effects), or through health gains, or ideally, by both.
To do this, and as a by-product to analyse changes in health status and the system in an era of restructuring, innovative methodologies and composite time-series indices combining the two dimensions of a „nation‟s health‟, needing hospital care and longevity, have had to be custom-designed. To achieve this objective, the ensuing analysis is often technical, and may introduce concepts that are unfamiliar to some readers. In order to look at possible inequalities of outcome, comparisons were made between regions and ethnic groups, as well as age-groups and genders, and as a result, in places the analysis becomes rather complex.

text: Restructuring and hospital care: Sub-national trends, differentials, and their impacts; New Zealand from 1981 An analysis of the "nation's health" is the central concern of this study. Its genesis was a detailed, technical, time-series research on regional and ethnic differentials in health in New Zealand. But as this work progressed it became increasingly evident that the results of this more narrow analysis could make a wider contribution to the development of a knowledge-base on health trends and on the impacts of policy on these. In a sense, the analysis provides a demographic audit of health trends over the last two decades.
The focus here is different from that in most other studies on restructuring of the New Zealand health system as their concern was either to review in detail the rewriting of policy per se, and attendant structural and institutional changes (Fougere 2001), or to identify how these changes relate to changes in mortality (Blakely et al. 2008). The research question reported here was, instead, to analyse the most crucial of health outcomes, „how long we live and how often we end up in hospital‟, identified in the earlier quotation, to report patterns and trends in hospital use nationally and sub-nationally over the period under review, and to determine the degrees to which various sub-populations benefited, or did not benefit, from these changes. The analysis focuses on the hospital sector in the system, but it will also show relations between this and other sectors, formal (e.g. primary health) and less formal (notably the healthcare afforded sickness and invalid beneficiaries). Thus two questions are addressed:
1. whether or not the nation‟s population health improved over the period and;
2. whether or not there was a convergence in patterns of health gain across its constituent sub-populations defined geographically and ethnically.
This monograph deals with sub-national differences in health in New Zealand over a period of substantial socio-economic restructuring and associated radical changes in health policy, health systems and their related information systems (see also, Text Appendix A). It complements the recently published analysis of national ethnic trends in mortality (Blakely et al. 2004), but differs in several critical respects. That study reviewed health status by emphasising aetiologies and causes of death. In contrast, the present analysis focuses on actuarial dimensions of both mortality and morbidity and on health as measured by functional capacity rather than the disease orientated „burden of disease‟. It goes beyond health status issues to look at the system itself, to assess whether health policy outcomes were generated more through efficiency-gain (economic or service delivery, such as those resulting in a convergence sub-nationally of supply and demand effects), or through health gains, or ideally, by both.
To do this, and as a by-product to analyse changes in health status and the system in an era of restructuring, innovative methodologies and composite time-series indices combining the two dimensions of a „nation‟s health‟, needing hospital care and longevity, have had to be custom-designed. To achieve this objective, the ensuing analysis is often technical, and may introduce concepts that are unfamiliar to some readers. In order to look at possible inequalities of outcome, comparisons were made between regions and ethnic groups, as well as age-groups and genders, and as a result, in places the analysis becomes rather complex.

year: 2009

title: Refinement for probabilistic systems with nondeterminism

authors: Reeves, Steve

subjects: computer science

abstract: Before we combine actions and probabilities two very obvious questions should be asked. Firstly, what does "the probability of an action" mean? Secondly, how does probability interact with nondeterminism? Neither question has a single universally agreed upon answer but by considering these questions at the outset we build a novel and hopefully intuitive probabilistic event-based formalism. 
In previous work we have characterised refinement via the notion of testing. Basically, if one system passes all the tests that another system passes (and maybe more) we say the first system is a refinement of the second. This is, in our view, an important way of characterising refinement, via the question "what sort of refinement should I be using?" 
We use testing in this paper as the basis for our refinement. We develop tests for probabilistic systems by analogy with the tests developed for non-probabilistic systems. We make sure that our probabilistic tests, when performed on non-probabilistic automata, give us refinement relations which agree with for those non-probabilistic automata. We formalise this property as a vertical refinement.

text: Refinement for probabilistic systems with nondeterminism Before we combine actions and probabilities two very obvious questions should be asked. Firstly, what does "the probability of an action" mean? Secondly, how does probability interact with nondeterminism? Neither question has a single universally agreed upon answer but by considering these questions at the outset we build a novel and hopefully intuitive probabilistic event-based formalism. 
In previous work we have characterised refinement via the notion of testing. Basically, if one system passes all the tests that another system passes (and maybe more) we say the first system is a refinement of the second. This is, in our view, an important way of characterising refinement, via the question "what sort of refinement should I be using?" 
We use testing in this paper as the basis for our refinement. We develop tests for probabilistic systems by analogy with the tests developed for non-probabilistic systems. We make sure that our probabilistic tests, when performed on non-probabilistic automata, give us refinement relations which agree with for those non-probabilistic automata. We formalise this property as a vertical refinement.

year: 2011