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Towards Building A New Consensus About New Zealand's Productivity
There is a wide consensus that New Zealand's productivity has been poor despite the comprehensive market-oriented reforms of the 1980's. This consensus is based on estimates of New Zealand's productivity growth measured either in terms of GDP per capita or total factor productivity (TFP). TFP is typically computed using growth accounting (i.e., calibrating a Solow model with fixed capital share). We argue that identification of the nature of the trend and the method of estimation are important elements of any study of productivity growth. Although difficult, it is quite important to determine whether the trend is linear deterministic or stochastic. It is equally important to measure the trend and TFP growth when there is a structural change (the reform in 1984 and the following adjustment periods) because factor shares, which are coefficients in the production function, are unstable. New Zealand data are short and undoubtedly badly measured and estimates of the standard errors of factor shares are quite large. Thus, even when we account for structural change, TFP estimate, which depends on the estimate of factor shares, is an unreliable measure of New Zealand's productivity. There is evidence, both time series and panel data that productivity has improved in the 1990's and by more than we thought. There is also significant evidence of increasing returns to scales (spillovers), which when ignored understates the estimate of the share of capital. Also, there is evidence of improving convergence of productivity between New Zealand and Australia during the 1990's. The conclusion has policy implications. We need to re-think and scrutinise the current consensus regarding current estimates before we engage in planning programmes to lift productivity.
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Length: | 40 pages |
Date of creation: | 06 May 2004 |
Handle: | RePEc:wpa:wuwpge:0405002 |
Note: | Type of Document - pdf; pages: 40 |
Contact details of provider: | Web page: http://econwpa.repec.org |
References listed on IDEAS
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- Bruce E. Hansen, 2001. "The New Econometrics of Structural Change: Dating Breaks in U.S. Labour Productivity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 117-128, Fall.
- Paul M Romer, 1999.
"Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth,"
Levine's Working Paper Archive
2232, David K. Levine.
- Romer, Paul M, 1986. "Increasing Returns and Long-run Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(5), pages 1002-1037, October.
- Alesina, Alberto F & Ardagna, Silvia & Perotti, Roberto & Schiantarelli, Fabio, 1999.
"Fiscal Policy, Profits and Investment,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
2250, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- Alberto Alesina & Silvia Ardagna & Roberto Perotti & Fabio Schiantarelli, 2002. "Fiscal Policy, Profits, and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 571-589, June.
- Schiantarelli, Fabio & Perotti, Roberto & Ardagna, Silvia & Alesina, Alberto, 2002. "Fiscal Policy, Profits, and Investment," Scholarly Articles 4685103, Harvard University Department of Economics.
- Alberto Alesina & Silvia Ardagna & Roberto Perotti & Fabio Schiantarelli, 1999. "Fiscal Policy, Profits, and Investment," NBER Working Papers 7207, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Alberto Alesina & Silvia Ardagna & Roberto Perotti & Fabio Schiantarelli, 2000. "Fiscal Policy, Profits, and Investment," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 504, Boston College Department of Economics.
- Erwin Diewert & Denis Lawrence, 1999. "Measuring New Zealand's Productivity," Treasury Working Paper Series 99/05, New Zealand Treasury.
- Peter Mawson, 2002. "Measuring Economic Growth in New Zealand," Treasury Working Paper Series 02/14, New Zealand Treasury.
- N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David N. Weil, 1992.
"A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth,"
The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
Oxford University Press, vol. 107(2), pages 407-437.
- N. Gregory Mankiw & David Romer & David N. Weil, 1990. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 3541, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Stefano Scarpetta & Andrea Bassanini & Dirk Pilat & Paul Schreyer, 2000. "Economic Growth in the OECD Area: Recent Trends at the Aggregate and Sectoral Level," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 248, OECD Publishing.
- Paul Conway & Ben Hunt, 1998. "Productivity growth in New Zealand: economic reform and the convergence hypothesis," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series G98/2, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
- Friedman, Milton, 1992. "Do Old Fallacies Ever Die?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(4), pages 2129-2132, December.
- W. Erwin Diewert & Kevin J. Fox, 1999. "Can measurement error explain the productivity paradox?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 32(2), pages 251-280, April.
- Chang-Tai Hsieh, 2002. "What Explains the Industrial Revolution in East Asia? Evidence From the Factor Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 502-526, June.
- Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
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Intracluster correlation coefficients and coefficients of variation for perinatal outcomes from five cluster-randomised controlled trials in low and middle-income countries: results and methodological implications
- Christina Pagel1Email author,
- Audrey Prost†2,
- Sonia Lewycka2, 3,
- Sushmita Das4,
- Tim Colbourn2, 5,
- Rajendra Mahapatra6,
- Kishwar Azad7,
- Anthony Costello2 and
- David Osrin2
© Pagel et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011
Received: 15 February 2011
Accepted: 14 June 2011
Published: 14 June 2011
Public health interventions are increasingly evaluated using cluster-randomised trials in which groups rather than individuals are allocated randomly to treatment and control arms. Outcomes for individuals within the same cluster are often more correlated than outcomes for individuals in different clusters. This needs to be taken into account in sample size estimations for planned trials, but most estimates of intracluster correlation for perinatal health outcomes come from hospital-based studies and may therefore not reflect outcomes in the community. In this study we report estimates for perinatal health outcomes from community-based trials to help researchers plan future evaluations.
We estimated the intracluster correlation and the coefficient of variation for a range of outcomes using data from five community-based cluster randomised controlled trials in three low-income countries: India, Bangladesh and Malawi. We also performed a simulation exercise to investigate the impact of cluster size and number of clusters on the reliability of estimates of the coefficient of variation for rare outcomes.
Estimates of intracluster correlation for mortality outcomes were lower than those for process outcomes, with narrower confidence intervals throughout for trials with larger numbers of clusters. Estimates of intracluster correlation for maternal mortality were particularly variable with large confidence intervals. Stratified randomisation had the effect of reducing estimates of intracluster correlation. The simulation exercise showed that estimates of intracluster correlation are much less reliable for rare outcomes such as maternal mortality. The size of the cluster had a greater impact than the number of clusters on the reliability of estimates for rare outcomes.
The breadth of intracluster correlation estimates reported here in terms of outcomes and contexts will help researchers plan future community-based public health interventions around maternal and newborn health. Our study confirms previous work finding that estimates of intracluster correlation are associated with the prevalence of the outcome of interest, the nature of the outcome of interest (mortality or behavioural) and the size and number of clusters. Estimates of intracluster correlation for maternal mortality need to be treated with caution and a range of estimates should be used in planning future trials.
Public health interventions are increasingly evaluated using cluster-randomised controlled trials (cRCTs) in which groups rather than individuals are allocated randomly to treatment and control arms. Cluster-randomised designs are pertinent to public health for three main reasons [1]. First, many contemporary public health interventions are large in scale, complex in nature, and 'unblinded' in design because they require the active involvement of participants. It is often more appropriate and feasible to implement them 'with' groups or communities rather than to apply them 'to' individuals. Second, cRCTs have the advantage of minimising the risk of contamination that would occur if individuals from the same community were randomised to different treatment arms. Third, cRCTs enable policy-makers and researchers to assess the population-level effects of an intervention applied to a proportion of a population, giving more information about its effectiveness in real life settings. There are now numerous examples of well-conducted public health cRCTs from high, middle and low-income countries. The Mwanza study, for example, tested the impact of improved sexually transmitted infection (STI) case management on the incidence of HIV infection in Mwanza, Tanzania, by randomising 12 pair-matched communities to intervention or control arms [2]. Other, current cRCTs include a UK study in which deprived areas of London have been randomised to receive interventions promoting healthy eating, physical activity and mental health [3], and, in India, a trial in which urban wards of Mumbai were randomly allocated to a community mobilisation intervention for improved maternal and newborn health [4].
An important implication of cluster-randomised designs is that intervention recipients are often groups of individuals who share socio-economic and cultural characteristics and have similar health outcomes by virtue of living in the same area. Similarity between individuals in the same cluster lessens the variability of responses within clusters (within-cluster variance), thereby artificially magnifying differences in outcomes between clusters and reducing the power of trials to detect true differences between intervention and control arms. An intracluster correlation coefficient (ICC) is commonly used to quantify how much more similar outcomes are for individuals within clusters than for those in different clusters [5, 6]. The ICC is defined as the ratio of the between-cluster variance to the total variance (both between and within clusters), and therefore has a value between 0 and 1. An ICC of 0 indicates that individuals within clusters are no more similar to each other than individuals from different clusters (there is no between-cluster variability), while an ICC of 1 indicates that individuals within the same cluster all have identical outcomes (there is no within-cluster variability) [1].
The increase in variance due to clustering, or design effect, is given by 1 + (m-1) ICC, where m is the average cluster size [7]. Within-cluster correlation has a correlate - between-cluster variation - which is commonly expressed as the coefficient of variation, k. For binary outcomes, the relationship between the ICC and k has been defined as , where π is the probability of the binary outcome of interest [8]. Obtaining estimates of ICC or k is essential to calculate sample sizes for studies with clustered designs, but these are seldom available to researchers when designing trials and are often approximated from previous research or through modeling techniques [9–11].
Several community-based interventions to reduce mortality in mothers and neonates in low-resource settings have recently been evaluated through cRCTs, and there is increasing momentum to support health systems in delivering components of these community programmes at scale [12–17]. Designing adequately powered studies to measure the impact of programmes will be critical. However, most ICC or k estimates for perinatal health outcomes available in the literature come from hospital-based studies and may therefore not reflect outcomes in the community [18]. In this study, we report ICC and k estimates for perinatal health outcomes from community-based trials in three countries (Bangladesh, India, and Malawi) to help researchers planning efficacy and effectiveness evaluations of interventions to improve maternal and newborn health.
Characteristics of studies used, prevalence, and rates, for key perinatal indicators from 5 community-based cluster RCTs
Project Country | Perinatal Care Project Rural Bangladesh | Ekjut Rural India | City Initiative for Newborn Health Urban India | MaiMwana Malawi | MaiKhanda* Malawi |
Study location | Three districts: Bogra, Maulvibazaar and Faridpur | Three districts of Jharkhand and Orissa: Keonjhar, West Singhbhum and Saraikela | Mumbai municipality | Mchinji district | Three districts: Lilongwe, Salima and Kasungu |
Period for which data are included | 1st Feb 2005 - 31st Dec 2007 | 1st July 2005 - 30th June 2008 | 1st October 2005 - 30th September 2008 | 1st January 2005 - 31st January 2009 (study is ongoing) | 1st July 2008 - 31st July 2010 (study is ongoing) |
Estimated population | 478 000 | 228 000 | 280 000 | 180 000 | 312 000 |
Design | Two-by-two factorial cluster RCT | Cluster RCT | Cluster RCT | Two-by-two factorial cluster RCT | Two-by-two factorial cluster RCT |
Stratification | By district (3 strata) | By district (3 strata) | By municipal ward (6 strata) | None | None |
Cluster characteristics | Villages making up a union | 8-10 village with residents classified as tribal or OBC | 1000-1500 households in slum areas | Aggregated villages and group village headman areas | Aggregated villages and group village headman areas in the catchment area of one Health Centre/Dispensary |
Total number of clusters (Number included in this study)** | 18 (5) | 36 (18) | 48 (24) | 48 (12) | 76 (30) |
Annual births per cluster: Mean (SD) | 587 (123) | 171 (38) | 131 (61) | 139 (25) | 143 (61) |
Mean cluster population (SD, min, max) | 27953 (5953, 15441-35110) | 6338 (2101, 3605-7467) | 5865 (1077, 4310-7750) | 3958 (404, 3068-4645) | 3934 (1332, 2121-8558) |
Crude birth rate*** | 20.8 | 28.1 | 22.3 | 35.1 | 35.0 |
We report ICC and k for seven selected perinatal health outcomes: neonatal mortality, stillbirths, maternal mortality, four or more antenatal care visits, skilled birth attendance (by a nurse or doctor), exclusive breastfeeding prior to interview at about six weeks, and postnatal check-ups by a nurse or doctor in the same period. In addition, we calculated ICC and k for uptake of HIV testing and use of insecticide treated bed nets in one site in Malawi, as these are important outcomes for African studies. We selected stillbirths and neonatal mortality because they are outcomes commonly used to calculate perinatal study sample sizes, maternal mortality because there are few reports of ICC or k since it is a rare outcome, and other outcomes as process indicators that may be increasingly used in the future to calculate sample sizes for effectiveness studies. We used the framework proposed by Campbell and colleagues [19] to report ICC and provide: a description of the dataset from which estimates were drawn and a description of the outcome characteristics; information on how ICC was calculated; and information on its precision through a 95% confidence interval.
We chose to exclude data from the intervention clusters of the five trials from the main calculations of ICC and k for two reasons. First, three of the five trials had not yet reported results for their primary outcome (neonatal mortality) at the time of analysis. Second, we hypothesised that the interventions tested in these studies could influence ICC for perinatal outcomes, as they sought to increase care-seeking and institutional deliveries. We felt that discussing the extent and reasons for variation between trial intervention and control clusters was beyond the scope of this paper and therefore opted to exclude data from the trial intervention clusters. However, recent research underscores the importance of taking into account the likely effect of the intervention when estimating the between-cluster variability [20].
Data collection
In all five trials perinatal outcomes were measured using community-based prospective surveillance systems [4]. These systems differed slightly between sites and are briefly described here.
The Perinatal Care Project trial took place in three rural districts of Bangladesh. In each district, six unions per district (mean union population: 27 953) were purposively sampled for surveillance. In these unions, Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) prospectively reported births and deaths to women in pregnancy or up to six weeks after delivery within an area covering around 200 households. Interviewers then verified the births and deaths, paid the TBA an incentive for each correct identification, and completed a questionnaire covering maternal background characteristics, the antenatal, delivery, and post-partum periods with the mother, or, in case of a maternal death, with a relative. All eligible women identified were also asked if they could identify any other pregnant women.
In the Ekjut trial (Jharkhand & Orissa, rural eastern India), a key informant, usually a community member, covered around 250 households and prospectively reported any births, maternal or newborn deaths and deaths to women aged 15-49 within her allocated area. The trial area covered 36 clusters over three districts (mean cluster population 6338). Clusters were purposively sampled to include a high proportion of tribal communities. In each district, 12 interviewers met with key informants, verified all births, and paid the key informant a fee for every correct identification. The interviewers administered a structured questionnaire to mothers at around six weeks after delivery to collect information about their socio-demographic characteristics and events during the antenatal, delivery and postnatal periods.
The City Initiative for Newborn Health in Mumbai monitored 48 urban slum clusters of about 1000 households each (5500 population), selected randomly from a sampling frame of 92 clusters over six municipal wards. Births and deaths were identified by 99 locally resident women, generally two per cluster, each covering an average 500 households and receiving a fee for identification. Events were confirmed by 12 interviewers, each responsible for four clusters, who visited mothers at home and arranged follow-up interviews.
In the MaiMwana trial (Malawi), pregnancies were prospectively identified by a paid woman enumerator who visited all females aged 10-49 years once a month to ask about missed menses. Information was recorded in a register of all women of childbearing age and updated monthly. Live births were followed up with interviews one month and six months after birth [23]. There were 48 women enumerators (one per cluster), and 48 interviewers (also one per cluster) who verified births and conducted post-partum interviews.
In the MaiKhanda evaluation, also in Malawi, the team selected health centre catchment areas with a typical population of 30 000. Within each of these, a population of 4000 was selected for surveillance by randomly choosing catchment populations of government community health workers that summed to roughly 4000. In each of these areas, 20-25 key informants reported data on births, deaths, and the antenatal and postnatal period. In all sites, verbal autopsies were conducted for neonatal deaths, stillbirths, and maternal deaths.
Trial designs
The trials used moderately different designs to arrive at one-to-one random allocation of intervention and control clusters. In the Perinatal Care Project (Bangladesh) and the Ekjut trial (rural India), districts were identified and clusters purposively sampled, then randomised within each district. In the Bangladesh Perinatal Care Project, clusters initially randomised to the women's group interventions were also re-randomised to receive training for Traditional Birth Attendants in a two-by-two factorial design. In the Mumbai City Initiative for Newborn Health trial, urban slum clusters were randomly sampled from a frame stratified by six purposively selected municipal wards, and then randomly allocated to the intervention. MaiKhanda and MaiMwana in Malawi used two-by-two factorial designs in which clusters were allocated randomly to a women's group intervention or no intervention, and each group was stratified by the presence or absence of another intervention - a breastfeeding counseling intervention in the case of MaiMwana, or a Quality Improvement of maternal and neonatal facility-based healthcare intervention in the case of MaiKhanda. For the Bangladesh Perinatal Care Project and the Malawi MaiKhanda and MaiMwana trials, we therefore only included in this study the clusters that were 'pure' controls. Details of stratification and number of clusters included are given in Table 1. Although all five trials included in the study had baseline data, we only included these for the 'pure' control clusters of the MaiKhanda study in Malawi because it started later than the other trials and had fewer cases to contribute to the analysis. One of the other trials (PCP) had retrospective baseline data, which we decided not to include in order to preserve data quality.
Ethical approval
All trials from which data for this study were drawn were approved by the ethics committee of the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (UK) and by the following research ethics committees: the ethics committee of the Diabetic Association of Bangladesh (Perinatal Care Project, Bangladesh Diabetes Somity or BADAS); an independent ethics committee in Jamshedpur, India (Ekjut trial); the Mumbai Independent Ethics Committee for Research on Human Subjects (City Initiative for Newborn Health trial, reference IEC/06/31); the Malawi National Health Sciences Research Committee (MaiMwana trial, reference MED/4/36/1/167, MaiKhanda protocol #420). All trials were conducted in disadvantaged areas with high levels of female illiteracy; all participants gave consent in writing, by thumbprint or verbally.
Outcome definitions
We used the ICD 10 definitions of neonatal death, stillbirth and maternal death [24]:
Stillbirth - "A stillbirth or foetal death is a death prior to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy; the death is indicated by the fact that after such separation the foetus does not breathe or show any other evidence of life, such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord or definite movement of voluntary muscles." ICD classifies late foetal deaths (birthweight greater than 1000 gm or after 28 weeks) and early foetal deaths (500 to 1000 gm or 22-28 weeks). We use the ICD-10 criteria for stillbirth modified to include births after 28 completed weeks rather than 22 weeks.
Neonatal death: death within the first 28 days of an infant after "the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of the pregnancy, which after such separation, breathes or shows any other evidence of life, such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached."
Maternal death: "the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes."
For postnatal outcomes (exclusive breastfeeding and postnatal check-up by a doctor or a nurse), we used data collected between one month and six weeks after birth, except in MaiMwana Malawi where data were available on exclusive breastfeeding up to six months.
Statistical analysis and calculations
We used two methods for estimating ICC: one-way analyses of variance in STATA (Versions 10 and 11; Stata Corp., College Station, TX) using the loneway command as described by Hayes and Moulton [1], and estimation equations from Donner and Klar [25], p84-5. We calculated estimates and confidence intervals for ICC within each stratum, then calculated the unweighted average of the ICC estimates and the lower and upper bounds of the confidence intervals across strata. For the ICC estimates calculated using Donner and Klar's equations, we calculated 95% confidence intervals using Fisher's method [26], which uses the following equation:
where m is the mean number of births per cluster and n is the number of clusters in the control arm. Where the estimate for the lower bound of the confidence interval for ICC was negative, we set it to zero, assuming that the population within our clusters would not be more heterogeneous than the entire study population.
For all outcomes, we calculated k from the intracluster correlation coefficients by reversing the equation from Hayes and Moulton [1]: , where ICC is the estimated intracluster correlation coefficient and is the observed proportion of the binary outcome for the entire population.
Several practical issues arose when calculating ICC using individual-level datasets in which the denominators were births. For example, we recoded the vital status for mothers who died but had twins so that maternal deaths were not double-counted. In addition, calculating ICC for maternal mortality (where live births are the denominator) required adding antepartum deaths to the list of live births so that they could be counted.
Simulation experiments
In order to explore further the impact of cluster size and number on the reliability of estimates of k, we ran two simple simulations for maternal and neonatal mortality in Microsoft Excel 2003 (Microsoft Corporation). In each simulation we considered a hypothetical study area with a given number of clusters and a given number of live births per cluster. We set the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) at 300 deaths per 100 000 live births and the neonatal mortality rate (NMR) at 40 deaths per 1000 live births. For each run of the simulation, we randomly assigned neonatal and maternal outcomes for each cluster by generating random numbers and assigning outcomes according to the assumed mortality rates. By doing this, we made an explicit assumption that the outcomes of births were independent of the outcomes of other births, so that the coefficient of variation, k, for each simulation was identical to zero (individuals within clusters were set to be no more similar to each other than to individuals from different clusters). Each run of the simulation thus generated a hypothetical set of maternal and neonatal outcomes, from which we calculated the coefficient of variation k that would be estimated if these were real data, using the formula described by Hayes and Moulton [1, p.18]. The impact of cluster size and number of clusters is evaluated by comparing estimates of k to the 'true' k of zero: the smaller the estimates and the narrower their range across simulations, the more reliable the estimates.
Prevalence and rates for selected perinatal indicators
Intracluster correlation coefficients and coefficients of variation for key perinatal indicators
Project Country | Perinatal Care Project Rural Bangladesh | Ekjut Rural India | City Initiative for Newborn Health Urban India | MaiMwana Malawi | MaiKhanda* Malawi |
Neonatal mortality | |||||
Neonatal deaths | 314 | 518 | 127 | 187 | 357 |
Live births | 8503 | 8819 | 8283 | 6688 | 12499 |
Neonatal deaths, % of live births | 3.7 | 5.9 | 1.5 | 2.8 | 2.9 |
Neonatal mortality rate, per 1000 live births | 37.0 | 58.7 | 15.3 | 28.0 | 28.6 |
Stata-one way ICC stratum-averaged (95% CI) | 0.00055 (0-0.00316) | 0.00099 (0-0.00591) | - | 0.00247 (0-0.00605) | 0.00034 (0-0.00346) |
Stata-one way k | 0.15 | 0.13 | - | 0.29 | 0.15 |
Donner and Klar ICC (95% CI) | 0.00055(0-0.0024) | 0.00099 (0-0.00442) | 0.0004 (0-0.0041) | 0.00309 (0-0.0070) | 0.00094 (0-0.00263) |
Donner and Klar k | 0.12 | 0.13 | 0.16 | 0.33 | 0.18 |
Stillbirths | |||||
Stillbirths | 298 | 270 | 106 | 116 | 406 |
Births | 8801 | 9089 | 9719 | 6804 | 12905 |
Stillbirths, % of births | 3.4 | 3.0 | 1.1 | 1.7 | 3.1 |
Stillbirth rate, per 1000 births | 33.9 | 29.7 | 10.9 | 17.0 | 31.5 |
Stata-one way stratum-averaged ICC (95% CI) | 0.00000 (0-0.00224) | 0.00012 (0-0.00307) | - | 0.00000 (0-0.00148) | 0.00206 (0-0.00590) |
Stata one way k | 0.00 | 0.06 | - | 0.00 | 0.25 |
Donner and Klar ICC (95% CI) | 0.00000 (0-0.00062) | 0.00012 (0-0.00250) | 0.0013 (0-0.0055) | 0.000 (0-0.0015) | 0.00242 (0.00002-0.00482) |
Donner and Klar k | 0 | 0.06 | 0.34 | 0.00 | 0.27 |
Maternal mortality | |||||
Maternal deaths | 19 | 68 | 21 | 32 | 42 |
Livebirths | 8503 | 8819 | 8283 | 6710 | 12499 |
Maternal deaths, % of live births | 0.22 | 0.77 | 0.25 | 0.48 | 0.33 |
Maternal mortality ratio, per 100 000 livebirths | 223.4 | 771.1 | 219.8 | 476.9 | 336 |
Stata-one way ICC (95% CI) | 0.00008 (0-0.00014) | 0.00051 (0-0.00382) | - | 0.00000 (0-0.00150) | 0.00031 (0, 0.00172) |
Stata-one way k | 0.19 | 0.26 | - | 0.00 | 0.10 |
Donner and Klar ICC (95% CI) | 0.00005 (0-0.00082) | 0.00071 (0-0.00383). | 0.0034 (0-0.010) | 0.000 (0-0.0015) | 0.00333 (0.00044-0.00622) |
Donner and Klar k | 0.16 | 0.30 | 1.16 | 0.00 | 0.99 |
Four antenatal check-ups (ANC) | |||||
Mother received 4 or more ANC check-ups %, (N) | 15.1% (8189) | 23.4% (8867) | 84.2% (7834) | 26.6% (6436) | Not collected |
Stratum-averaged ICC (95% CI) | 0.04849 (0-0.18522) | 0.15444 (0.30298-0.31837) | 0.0211 (0-0.06073) | 0.03010 (0.00398-0.05623) | - |
Skilled birth attendance | |||||
Births attended by a nurse or doctor % (N) | 15.2% (8801) | 23.3% (9089) | 87% (7834) | 41.9% (6788) | 52.9% (12853) |
Stratum-averaged ICC (95% CI) | 0.03233 (0.00831-0.00319) | 0.04103 (0.00594-0.14733) | 0.02522 (0-0.07051) | 0.15243 (0.04186-0.26300) | 0.12699 (0.06411, 0.18926) |
Postnatal check-up | |||||
Infants received a postnatal check-up % (N) | 20.9% (8128) | 6.3% (8301) | 56.5% (7711) | 30.9% (5949) | - |
Stratum-averaged ICC (95% CI) | 0.03558 (0-0.12604) | 0.01873 (0-0.05687) | 0.01566 (0-0.04627) | 0.23066 (0.07948-0.38185) | - |
Exclusive breastfeeding (1 st 6 weeks) | |||||
Infants exclusively breastfed for the first 6 weeks % (N) | 62.6% (8128) | 62.3% (8301) | 64.7% (7711) | 9.2% (3749)** | - |
Stratum-averaged ICC (95% CI) | 0.01286 (0-0.04821) | 0.09163 (0.0006-0.23459) | 0.01341 (0-0.04062) | 0.03746 (0.00351-0.07140) | - |
Uptake of antenatal HIV testing | |||||
Uptake of HIV testing % (N) | - | - | - | 39.2% (6624) | - |
Use of insecticide-treated bednets during pregnancy | |||||
Use of insecticide-treated bednets & (N) | - | - | - | 48.1% (6678) | - |
Intracluster correlation coefficients for selected perinatal indicators
Overall, ICCs for mortality outcomes were lower than for process outcomes such as skilled birth attendance (SBA). Estimates of intracluster correlation for MMR and NMR were low in all sites. Estimates for maternal mortality were particularly unreliable, reflected in the broader confidence intervals, with a single maternal death having large impacts on ICC and k values. We noted that the ICCs estimated using the loneway command (one-way analysis of variance) in STATA were very similar to those calculated using the equations of Donner and Klar, especially for the more common outcomes of neonatal death and stillbirth.
ICCs for behavioural outcomes such as care-seeking were higher than those for mortality outcomes, not only because the proportions of interest were higher, but also perhaps because one might expect them to be more similar for women living in the same area than for women in other areas. It is also possible that cluster-specific features (for example, the presence of a popular health facility) could influence the proportion of outcomes such as skilled birth attendance in each cluster, and thereby ICC and k.
It is likely that there were genuine differences in population heterogeneity across sites. For instance, urban slums are home to a range of communities that maintain to some degree patterns of behaviour imported from their places of origin; they also maintain their rural-urban links. Urban areas might therefore be expected to be more heterogeneous than rural villages. Equally, there might be cultural factors that lead women to care for their infants more or less similarly in different countries.
Areas with smaller cluster sizes tended to yield higher ICCs. In the MaiKhanda study in Malawi, the average cluster size in Lilongwe was about three-quarters that of the other two districts, and the ICC for Lilongwe was higher. Not surprisingly, estimates drawn from larger numbers of clusters were more reliable (narrower confidence intervals) than those from small numbers. Estimates drawn from the Bangladesh Perinatal Care Project varied widely between districts and overall estimates appeared to have more face validity than district-specific data, which yielded more extreme values. This was especially the case for the maternal mortality estimates. Stratification reduced ICC as well as k values, but had a greater impact on ICCs. For instance, in the rural India trial, the estimate for ICC based on the average of estimates for ICC in each stratum for stillbirths was 0.00012, compared with 0.00033 when stratification was ignored.
Measuring ICCs for rare outcomes: simulation results
Neonatal and maternal deaths are relatively rare population events. A typical MMR in a low-income setting might be around 300 per 100 000 live births. If the total number of live births per cluster over the period of a trial is 400 to 2000, there will, on average, only be between 1 and 6 deaths per cluster. Given such small numbers, we would expect much variation in the actual number of deaths reported in each cluster and, consequently, significant random variation in estimates of intracluster correlation. This is shown with our estimate of ICCs for observed maternal mortality in Table 2.
Simulation results showing the impact of number of live births per cluster and number of clusters on k estimates for rare outcomes
Live births per cluster | Simulation mean k for maternal mortality | 75th percentile of estimated k for maternal mortality | Simulation mean k for neonatal mortality | 75th percentile of estimated k for neonatal mortality |
200 | 0.23 | 0.44 | 0.070 | 0.14 |
400 | 0.19 | 0.37 | 0.045 | 0.090 |
800 | 0.12 | 0.26 | 0.034 | 0.071 |
1600 | 0.10 | 0.20 | 0.021 | 0.042 |
3200 | 0.06 | 0.13 | 0.018 | 0.036 |
Clusters | ||||
16 | 0.23 | 0.42 | 0.059 | 0.12 |
32 | 0.18 | 0.37 | 0.047 | 0.092 |
64 | 0.15 | 0.28 | 0.040 | 0.084 |
128 | 0.15 | 0.28 | 0.035 | 0.072 |
Figures 2 and 3 show that estimates of k are much less reliable when the number of births per cluster is less than 500 for both maternal and neonatal outcomes. The number of clusters was less important in determining the reliability of estimates of k for neonatal mortality, but for maternal mortality fewer than 60 clusters led to less reliable estimates of k. Across all simulations, estimates of k for maternal mortality were much less reliable than for neonatal mortality. Considering the 75th percentile of estimates in table 3, 25% of simulation runs for maternal mortality resulted in high estimates of k (> 0.25), even with 800 births per cluster in simulation 1 and across all numbers of clusters in simulation 2. Estimates of k for neonatal mortality had a smaller range throughout.
Data from our trials accord with the rare published ICCs for perinatal outcomes from other community-based studies. A recent systematic review of community-based interventions to reduce maternal mortality found five cluster-randomised controlled trials seeking to improve perinatal survival [29]. None of these adjusted for cluster effect on maternal mortality and the ICC for maternal mortality was estimated to be close to 0.
For neonatal mortality, the Newhints trial in Ghana reported a baseline ICC of 0.0007256 (with a baseline neonatal mortality rate of 31 per 1000 livebirths) [30], and the Makwanpur Nepal cRCT an ICC of 0.00644 (95% CI 0.00004-0.0128) [5]. By contrast, estimates from our community-based samples were generally lower than those reported in an analysis of ICCs for perinatal outcomes in hospitals conducted as part of the 2005 WHO Survey on Maternal and Perinatal Health using data from over 90 000 births in 120 facilities across eight Latin American countries. Although the comparability of data from the WHO survey and ours is compromised by differences in data collection and outcome ascertainment methods, it is worth noting that the median ICC for neonatal death at hospital discharge or 7 days after delivery was 0.005, and the median ICC for maternal death was 0.003 in the WHO study, while our one-way analysis of variance ICC estimates range from 0.00034 to 0.00247 for neonatal death and from 0 to 0.00051 for maternal death. The higher ICCs found in the WHO study may reflect greater similarities in outcomes and practices among women who deliver in institutions, as well as differences inherent to the Latin American context.
Previous studies have suggested that the research setting (for example, primary or secondary care) and the type of variable (process or outcome) are key determinants of ICCs, but that the effects of outcome prevalence and cluster size are less straightforward [31]. Our study confirms the first two findings, but also suggests, as simulation work shows, that cluster size and the number of clusters also affect estimates of ICCs (or k). The simulation results highlight the difficulty in interpreting estimates of intracluster variability for rare outcomes such as maternal mortality. In almost all the simulation runs 25% of estimates of k for maternal mortality were greater than 0.25. Given that in these simulations there was no intracluster correlation, such estimates would have been misleading if derived from an actual data set. Given the wide range of maternal mortality estimates of k over the sets of 500 simulation runs, we must be cautious in placing too much trust in estimates of k (or ICC) for maternal mortality from individual trials, including our estimates given in table 2. However, the simulation experiments show much lower estimates of k for neonatal mortality with a much narrower range, indicating that estimates for NMR from individual trials are likely to be reliable, even with small numbers of clusters or births per cluster.
Our study had three main limitations. First, we drew upon heterogeneous trials with different cluster recruitment strategies and degrees of stratification. These design features need to be taken into consideration when using our ICCs to calculate sample sizes. For example, increased stratification leads to lower ICCs and k values. Second, ICCs could have been influenced by different reporting preferences in different clusters. For example, some cluster-based key informants or interviewers might have been more adept at reporting or tracking births and deaths than others. Quality of data collection (in terms of both completeness and accuracy) will strongly influence ICCs and is likely to vary between clusters given differences in fieldworkers, terrain and supervision. Finally, we used data from trials with fewer than 40 clusters in their control arms. Donner and Klar advise against overestimating the stability of a sample estimate obtained from a trial involving less than about 40 clusters. The small number of clusters selected would also have increased the confidence intervals around our ICC estimates. We also note that Fisher's method for estimating confidence intervals is unlikely to be strictly valid for the smaller samples used in this study. However, combined, our study offers the largest number of ICCs available to date for perinatal outcomes for community-based samples.
Our study has three main implications. The first relates to the importance of using data drawn from community-based samples when planning effectiveness studies. Mortality estimates from our community-based trials were often substantially different from national DHS estimates and ICCs from our community-based samples in Asia and Africa were lower than those estimated from hospital-based samples in Latin America. This underscores the importance of collecting baseline data to obtain adequate estimates of mortality when planning evaluations of community interventions. Second, our results accord with findings from previous methodological studies regarding the key determinants of the intracluster correlation coefficient: the size of the ICC is related to the prevalence of the outcome of interest, and point estimates of ICC for rare outcomes such as maternal mortality are not likely to be reliable. When planning future trials, published estimates of ICCs from larger clusters are probably safer to use and a range of possible ICCs should be used for sample size calculations. Finally, as maternal and neonatal survival increases and research moves to testing interventions seeking to improve care-seeking or process outcomes, the high ICCs found for these will need to be accounted for in study sample sizes.
List of Abbreviations used
- cRCT:
Cluster randomised controlled trial
Demographic and health survey
Intracluster correlation coefficient ICD: International classification of diseases
Maternal mortality ratio
National family health survey
Neonatal mortality rate
Perinatal Care Project
Skilled birth attendant
Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action
Traditional birth attendant.
We wish to thank principal investigators and colleagues from the Wellcome Trust Strategic Award partnership for the Population Science of Maternal and Child Survival: Prof Dharma Manandhar (MIRA, Nepal), Dr Prasanta Tripathy and Dr Nirmala Nair (Ekjut, India), Dr Wasundhara Joshi and Neena Shah More (SNEHA, India), Dr Charles Mwansambo (MaiMwana, Malawi), Prof Kishwar Azad (Perinatal Care Project, Bangladesh).
Funding: In Bangladesh, the Perinatal Care Project is funded by the UK Community Fund, the UK Department for International Development and the Big Lottery Fund and is registered with trial number ISRCTN54792066. In India, the Ekjut trial was funded by the Health Foundation and the Big Lottery Fund and is registered with trial number ISRCTN21817853. The City Initiative for Newborn Health was funded by the ICICI Centre for Child Health and Nutrition and The Wellcome Trust and is registered with trial number ISRCTN96256793. In Malawi, the MaiMwana project is funded by Saving Newborn Lives (Save the Children USA), Effective Interventions, and the UK Department for International Development and is registered with trial number ISRCTN06477126. MaiKhanda and Tim Colbourn are funded by the Health Foundation and the study is registered as trial number ISRCTN18073903. David Osrin was funded by a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship (081052/Z/06/Z). The funders played no part in the development of the article or the decision to submit it for publication.
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


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"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." –Albert Einstein
"Today for Show and Tell, I've brought a tiny marvel of nature: a single snowflake. I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water, just like every other one, when you bring it in the classroom. And now, while the analogy sinks in, I'll... be leaving you drips and going outside." --Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbes
Saturday, January 30, 2010
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Very pleased with the food provided and the helpfulness of the staff and their interest in offering advice when requested. The outside traffic, but you can't do anything about that and we had no real problem with it.it


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LSE Growth Commission, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE
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The Role of Skills in a Growth Strategy for the UK
Date: Wednesday 14 March 2012 Time: 10.00am Location: Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics
Eric Hanushek - download slides Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He has been a leader in the development of economic analysis of educational issues, and his work on efficiency, resource usage, and economic outcomes of schools has frequently entered into the design of both US and international educational policy.
Stephen Machin - download slides Professor of Economics at University College London, Research Director at the Centre for Economic Performance, a member of the Low Pay Commission and Director of the Centre for the Economics of Education.
Ludger Wößmann - download slides Professor of Economics and Head of Human Capital and Innovation at CES Ifo Institute for Economic Research, University of Munich.
In this session, Eric Hanushek, Stephen Machin and Ludger Wößmann gave their views on the role skills should play in the formulation and implementation of a strategy to secure long-term growth for the UK, reflecting on lessons from international experience and state of the art academic literature.
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Jordan Schur
A veteran of the entertainment industry, Jordan Schur has garnered a reputation for creating and overseeing innovative and highly profitable ventures. Schur's most recent endeavor is Suretone Entertainment, comprised of companies that are engaged in film and television production, artist management, as well as a record label. Schur also continues ...
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Born:in New York City, New York, USA |


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Chicago needs a bigger stadium for opening and closing ceremonies if its going to score gold when it comes to hosting the 2016 Olympics.
That's the word from U.S. Olympic Committee members. They're in town discussing the city's bid. One idea floating around is to build a temporary stadium near Soldier Field. Despite the hurdles Mayor Daley says the committee is impressed with the city's infrastructure, transportation system, lakefront, and political stability.


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Looking for a technology or invention to commercialize? This site has a large array of technologies listed across multiple categories that can be searched and licensed. With a direct link to universities and institutions, this is the best place to find new technologies online.
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For more information on JLab Patents, contact:
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Latest media releases
UBS to report Third Quarter 2006 Results on October 31st
The results will be presented on Tuesday, 31 October by Clive Standish, Chief Financial Officer and Tom Hill, Chief Communication Officer.
Tuesday, 31 October 2006 |
Time: |
Webcast: |
The results webcast will be available at www.ubs.com/ investors from 9 am (CET)/3am (EST). |
Conference Call: |
UK participants: +44 20 7107 0611 |
Webcast Playback: |
will be available from Tuesday, 31 October |
Audio Playback: |
will be available from Tuesday, 31 October |
A test site for the results webcast is now available. It is recommended that you visit this site, register for an e-mail reminder of the presentation and view the test video and slides before 31 October to avoid technical problems on the day.
Technical Test
To view the webcast, please select one of the following options.
Technical Information
If you experience technical problems with this test webcast, please contact our broadcast provider World Television by email or call +41 44 306 5166 (between 9 AM and 5 PM CET) and ask for the broadcast support team.
Analysts and Media Q&A Session
The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session for analysts. Those participating via conference call will be informed by the conference call operator on how to register for a question.
Media participants will have the opportunity to ask questions immediately after the analysts' Q&A session.
The Third Quarter 2006 report, shareholders' letter, media release and slide presentation will be available on Tuesday, 31 October at 07.00 CET on the UBS Investor Relations homepage at www.ubs.com/investors or UBS Media Relations homepage at www.ubs.com/media.


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TRAN Family Tree and TRAN Genealogy Records
Last updated: 2011-08-28 | Researchers: 1 | Journals: 1
This is the surname research page for TRAN. This section is designed to contain general information about TRAN genealogy research. Please consider adding some of your own research, either as an editor or with journals below.
What is this? This section (in blue) is available for editing to our advanced members, in a Wiki style. If you would like access to edit this surname page wiki, please contact us.
TRAN Family History and TRAN Family Genealogy Journals
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SEATON marriages (males) 1851-1920 Victoria Australia
by tonkin on 2011-08-28 02:03:16. page views: 1336, comments: 0
by tonkin on 2011-08-28 02:03:16. page views: 1336, comments: 0


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Jungo Suzuki
From Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.
This article is incomplete. Please feel free to edit this article to add missing information and complete it. |
Jungo Suzuki is an illustrator for the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Jungo was also a 3-D Pokémon modeler for all the main 3-D games as of Generation III.
Cards illustrated
Neo Destiny
EX Team Magma vs Team Aqua
- Team Aqua's Seviper
- Team Aqua's Corphish
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- Team Aqua's Corphish
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Lot 285: Leo Brooks
International Fine Art Auction
by Barridoff Galleries
October 28, 2016
Portland, ME, USA
Live AuctionLeonard Brooks (1911-2011) Please Register/Login to access your Invaluable Alerts
Looking for the realized and estimated price?
Description: Leo Brooks Am. 1909?1993 Artist in Cathedral Woods, Monhegan Signed "Leo Brooks" l.r. Watercolor 14 1/2 x 21 in. 36.8 x 53.3 cm Property of a collector, California
Condition Report: Good condition, good appearance, no apparent loss of color or luminosity, not examined out of frame
Provenance: Private California collection
Dimensions: 14 1/2 x 21 in. 36.8 x 53.3 cm
Artist or Maker: Leo Brooks
Literature: Watercolor


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Buy a house in Paesana Best wines from Paesana and Piemonte region Traditional food from Paesana Paesana Distance Calculator Recipes from Piemonte (something you can't miss) Old pictures of Paesana |
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Immigration Lawyers and Law Firms in Port Royal, SC
Immigration Lawyers
McNair Law Firm, P.A.
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Home » Carnival 2013 » » | Saturday, March 25 2017 |
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click on pic to zoom in BOUND FOR HELL The Bookman records the names of all destined for hell as he and aband of devils pass by on the streets of Port-of-Spain yesterday... The annual Dragon Parade Festival drew the attention of many onlookers yesterday, as brightly coloured dragons, Jab Jabs, and blue devils danced in front the office of the Crosstown Carnival Committee, corner of Prince and George Street, Port-of-Spain. The purpose of the annual festival, was to display Chinese mythology and local folklore with the main attraction being the re-enactment of a fictional love story between two dragons.
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Ultra 130 Piece Premium Tool Kit
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Click buy underneath to any title you want to add to your shopping basket.
When released in September 2002, Porcupine Tree's 7th studio album, In Absentia, was their first for a major label (lava/warner) and the first to add a heavier sound to the band's already eclectic blend of influences (a sound that would be explored comprehensively throughout the ensuing decade). Following classic vinyl editions of Fear Of A Blank Planet and The Incident, Tonefloat presents In Absentia in a beautiful, re-designed, package on 180 grams audiophile vinyl. A regular edition is available on black vinyl (the special limited edition on marbled vinyl has sold out), housed in a special spot-varnished gatefold picture sleeve (designed by Carl Glover and using the original Lasse Hoile photography).
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School grants offer much-needed financial help for schools
School funding difficulties show no sign of abating, and school budgets are stretched to the limit. Many educators and administrators rely on school grants to fund important projects and opportunities for students.
Each month, eSchool News compiles a list of the most current education grants expiring soon—from a focus on STEM learning to funding for financial education programs. You don't want to miss out on these school funding opportunities for teachers, students, parents, and administrators.
(Next page: August's funding opportunities)


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Delicious makes drastic changes to its feature set. Scraps "stacks", replaces with good ol' tags.
- 15
As someone who saw Delicious' stacks feature as its USP, I'm somewhat surprised at this. Delicious has decided to make changes to its core feature set, the most significant being the removal of "stacks," a feature which let its users collaboratively create collections of links.
Delicious will instead now revert back to its basic and original tagging feature, common to most social bookmarking sites on the web. The reason isn't clear but a note in the announcement email suggests another product by its parent company, AVOS, will give us a clue.
"…given the upcoming launch of new products from Delicious' parent company, AVOS, and our focus on simplifying the Delicious site, we realized the value of stacks is limited for our users moving forward."
"This event was off the charts"
Gary Vaynerchuk was so impressed with TNW Conference 2016 he paused mid-talk to applaud us.
Your guess is as good as mine. The only upcoming product we're aware of is a social magazine called Zeen.
For active Delicious stacks users, such as ourselves, a guide is available explaining exactly how to manage your links during the consolidation process. All stacks will be converted into tags with identical names. Delicious is also keen to point out that you will not lose any links in the process but "Stack-specific descriptions, categories, comments, link order, and stack followers will not be included as part of the migration."
Other notable changes to Delicious include the addition of a Facebook Connector. Similar to its previously launched Twitter Connector, Facebook connector imports every link you share on Facebook. Neatly it also maintains privacy settings so if you've only shared with a certain group of friends on Facebook, it won't be visible publicly on your Delicious profile.
Delicious relaunched in September 2011 after being purchased from Yahoo by AVOS, owned by YouTube's Co-Founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. The social bookmarking site doesn't seem to have made a resurgence despite a drastic overhaul of its look & feel, and its features – the most compelling being 'stacks.' Which brings me back to my first point, I'm somewhat surprised at this.
Image Credit / Antialiasfactory
Read next: Apple's iOS App Store goes down for many across the world [Updated with workaround]


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Former names | Wilhelm-Koch-Stadion (1970-1998) |
Location | St. Pauli, Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg, Germany |
Coordinates | 53°33′16.5″N 9°58′3.6″E / 53.554583°N 9.967667°ECoordinates: 53°33′16.5″N 9°58′3.6″E / 53.554583°N 9.967667°E |
Public transit | St. Pauli, Feldstrasse |
Owner | FC St. Pauli |
Operator | Millerntorstadion Betriebs-GmbH und Co. KG |
Executive suites | 39[1] |
Capacity | 29,546 (League Matches)[1] |
Record attendance | 29,546 (FC St. Pauli - Arminia Bielefeld, 25 July 2015)[2] |
Field size | 105 m × 68 m |
Surface | Grass |
Construction | |
Broke ground | 1961 |
Opened | 1963[5] |
Renovated | 1988 |
Expanded | 2006-2015 |
Construction cost | € 55 million (2006-2015)[3] |
Architect | agn Niederberghaus & Partner GmbH,[4] ar.te.plan GmbH (Reconstruction) |
Main contractors | Walter Hellmich GmbH |
Tenants | |
FC St. Pauli |
The Millerntor-Stadion is a multi-purpose stadium in Hamburg St. Pauli, Germany. It is mainly used for football matches and is the home stadium of FC St. Pauli. It is on the Heiligengeistfeld, near the Reeperbahn, the red light district of Hamburg. The stadium had a capacity of 32,000 when it was built in 1961. Sometimes it is used for the American football team of the Hamburg Blue Devils and, although very rarely, for concerts or festivals such as a show by Prince on 31 August 1988, the Retter festival 2003 or the Jubiläumsfestival 100 Jahre FC St.Pauli in 2010.
The first sports ground at the Heiligengeistfeld was created after the First World War as a simple flat space. This was the home ground of the St. Pauli TV, together with other workers sports associations (Arbeitersportkartells).
In 1946, the club (now called FC St. Pauli) built its own stadium partially on the original site of Hamburg Observatory, built in 1802 by Johann Georg Repsold and moved to Bergedorf in 1912. The stadium was located on the Heiligengeistfeld, opposite to the old firestation[6] and in the corner between Glacischaussee and Budapester strasse (during 1946 to 1956 named Ernst Thälmann strasse).[7]
In a city laid to ruins by the Second World War, the stadium was made possible only with the help from fans and club members. However, the stadium was not to last long as it had to be removed in 1961. This was due to the IGA (International Garden exposition) 1963 in Hamburg[8] and parts of the park Planten un Blomen was constructed at the site. (The site is today used by the northern entrance of the U Bahn-station St. Pauli.)
As a result, the club had to find a new stadium and so in 1961 the construction of the Millerntor-Stadion started. The new stadium opened in 1963, delayed by of an initial lack of drainage system, which made the pitch unplayable after rain. The new stadium held 32,000 spectators, but the capacity was later reduced to 20,629[9] for safety reasons.
The Millerntor-Stadion has undergone numerous modifications over the years, the biggest change was the construction of a temporary seating area above the Back straight, allowing the promotion into the Bundesliga 1988. This temporary area was in use until May 2012 when the entire Back straight was demolished.
In the end of the 1980s, plans for a new stadium, the so-called Sport-Dome were blocked by supporters of the club and residents. The Sport-Dome would have become a state of the art all-seater stadium that would have combined sport facilities with a shopping mall and a hotel. The fans protested against the commercialization of their stadium[10] and there were also fears that the Sport-Dome would have led to higher rents in the neighbourhood.
In the 1990s, the chairman of the club, the architect Heinz Weisener, made new plans, but they too collapsed, this time due to the financial situation of the club. The question of a new stadium looked like a never-ending story and every chairman has made their own plans.
Redevelopment 2006-2015[edit]
In December 2006, the South Stand was demolished after the game versus Wuppertal. This caused the capacity to be reduced to 15,600 people. Some due to issues caused by mismanagement of the redevelopment project, the building of the new stand on this side of the ground was heavily delayed, and some fans cynically referred to the now empty side of the ground as the "Littman hole", referring to the controversial club chairman Corny Littmann held responsible for the delay. Eventually construction of the new South Stand began in Spring 2007.
With the new South Stand completed and a new temporary seating area above the North Stand, the capacity was increased to 22,648. With the first phase of the redevelopment completed, the club also ensure that the club fulfilled the ground grading requirements for a licence from the DFL, including the installation of under-soil heating. In addition, the iconic old manually operated scoreboard was, for many fans lamentably, replaced by a more modern new digital display screen.
After the completion of the new South Stand, the Main Stand was demolished in mid-November 2009. The new all-seater Main Stand was completed in time for the start of the 2010-2011 season, with the capacity of the Millerntor-Stadium rising to 24,487 spectators.
The redevelopment of the Gegengerade (lit. Far side) started in January 2012 with the building of a new subway under the Heiligengeistfeld.[11] Two heavy air-dropped bombs from the Second world war, weighing approximately 250-500 kilograms, were found in the middle of the Heiligengeistfeld during the exploratory works.[12]
Two different designs for the new Gegengerade had been mooted during the autumn of 2011: "The Wave", an elaborate curvaceous design, or a more conventional design more in keeping with the rest of the redeveloped stadium. "The Wave" came from collaboration between the engineering firm OSD and the Hamburg-based Interpol +- outfit. The proposed stand was to have measured 27 meters in height, with a total capacity of 14,000 spectators (3,000 seated).[13] In the end, FC St. Pauli announced in November 2011, after extensive consultation with supporters, they would build the more conventional design with the red brick facade, designed by the Dortmund-based architect bureau art.te.plan GmbH.[14][11] The reasons given for the decision were safety, construction time, the more sympathetic architectural style and cost.[11] With a price possibly as high as €21m, "The Wave" would have taken up almost the entire budget for the reconstruction of the Gegengerade, the North stand and the new training facilities combined.[15]
The new completed Gegengerade has a total capacity of 13,199, with standing room for 10,126 spectators in the paddock and 3,030 seats in the upper tier. At the top of the stand there will still be 27 seats for media and commentators, as well as 16 seats for the visually impaired and their accompanying helpers.[16]
The old Gegengerade was demolished after the game against SC Paderborn in May 2012, and the main contractor for the construction of the new Gegengerade was Walter Hellmich GmbH.[17]
With the new Gegengerade completed, the capacity of the Millerntor-Stadion rose to 29,063 at the beginning of 2013.[18][19] The final phase of the planned redevelopment program is the North stand. The demolition of the North stand came into full swing after the 2014–15 DFB-Pokal match against Borussia Dortmund at end of October 2014. When the North stand is fully demolished, the ground will be analyzed and searched for undetonated bombs and then the reconstruction will start.[20][21]
When the redevelopment work at the ground is completed, the capacity of the ground is expected to rise to approximately 30,000 spectators.[22]
As of July 2015 the stadium is permitted for a capacity of 29,546 spectators of which 16,940 are standing and 12,606 are seated. The seating capacity includes seats for media and commentators, seats for impaired, business seats and seats in the 39 suites.[1]
The suites are officially known as "Séparées". This is made with a humoristic reference to the "Chambres Séparées" used by the sex workers at the nearby Red Light District around Reeperbahn.[23]
The name Millerntor is derived from the Millerntor Gate, one of the gates permitting entry through the city wall that surrounded the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. The area now constituting modern St. Pauli was located outside the city wall, on the no man's land between Hamburg and the Danish city of Altona. [24]
From 1970 to 1998, the Millerntor-Stadion was known as Wilhelm-Koch-Stadion. It was renamed Millerntor-Stadion by the club members because its namesake Wilhelm Koch had been a member of the NSDAP. In 2007 the club members decided that there would be no commercial use of the name.
The match FC St. Pauli - FSV Frankfurt in 2013, view from the new Gegengerade.
The match FC St. Pauli - DSC Arminia Bielefeld in 2013, view from the old North stand.
- Citations
- ^ a b c "FC St. Pauli - Fakten zum Millerntor". fcstpauli.com (in German). Fußball-Club St. Pauli v. 1910 e.V. Retrieved 28 July 2015.
- ^ Krause, Stefan; Rosenfeld, Butte (25 July 2015). "Nullnummer vor Rekordkulisse". Hamburger Morgenpost (in German). Hamburg. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
- ^ Willborn, Nina; Dierenga, Thomas; Funk, Martin (2 April 2015). "Verliert St. Pauli sein Finanz-Hirn? Nürnberg baggert an Geschäftsführer Meeske". Bild (in German). Retrieved 30 July 2015.
- ^ http://www.agn.de/en/projects/stadionrekonstruktion/
- ^ http://www.worldofstadiums.com/europe/germany/millerntor-stadion/
- ^ http://www.fcstpauli.com/home/verein/historie/vereinsgeschichte
- ^ http://www.fcstpauli.com/home/stadion/millerntor/historie
- ^ http://www.fcstpauli.com/staticsite/staticsite.php?menuid=182&topmenu=113
- ^ http://www.fcstpauli.com/home/stadion/millerntor/fakten
- ^ http://www.11freunde.de/bundesligen/108217?page=3
- ^ a b c http://www.ndr.de/sport/fussball/zweitebundesliga/stpauli1641.html
- ^ http://www.fcstpauli.com/home/stadion/news/484
- ^ http://www.express.de/fussball/spektakulaere-neue-gegengerade-millerntor--st--pauli-plant-die-perfekte-welle,3186,9567752.html
- ^ http://mobilbeta.mopo.de/home/m-sport/m-paulinews/millerntor--st--pauli-plant-die-perfekte-welle/5076214,9565360,view,asFitMl.html
- ^ http://www.bild.de/sport/fussball/st-pauli/welle-weg-gegengerade-wird-normal-20334388.bild.html
- ^ http://www.radiofreemusic.de/ag-stadionbau/AGStadionbau-Gegengerade-20110926.pdf, p. 7.
- ^ https://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/sport/article13729075/Keine-Welle-am-Millerntor.html
- ^ http://www.stadionwelt.de/sw_stadien/index.php?head=Neuer-Zuschauerrekord-im-Millerntor-Stadion-&folder=sites&site=news_detail&news_id=8384&gal_id=195&bild_nr=1
- ^ http://www.ndr.de/sport/fussball/zweitebundesliga/stpauli2951.html
- ^ http://www.fcstpauli.com/home/verein/news/5950
- ^ http://www.fcstpauli.com/home/stadion/news/6353
- ^ http://www.fcstpauli.com/staticsite/staticsite.php?menuid=174&topmenu=113
- ^ Hesse 2010, p. 112.
- ^ Hesse 2010, p. 104.
- "Neubau Haupttribune". 2010.
- Hesse, Ulrich (2010). "Bakom Helvetets Portar". Offside. Offside Press AB. Nummer 6. ISSN 1404-6822.
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Millerntor-Stadion. |


text:
Diocesan Girls' School
This article does not cite any sources. (February 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
Diocesan Girls' School Chinese: 拔萃女書院 |
Diocesan Girls' School crest
Location | |
1 Jordan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong |
Information | |
Type | DSS, Grant School, primary, secondary |
Motto | Daily Giving Service |
Denomination | Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui (Anglican Episcopalian) |
Established | 1860 |
School district | King's Park |
Headmistress | Mrs. Stella Lau, JP |
Grades | P1 – S6 |
Gender | Girls |
Campus size | 28,336m2 |
Colour(s) | Persian blue |
Website | dgs.edu.hk |
Diocesan Girls' School, one of the oldest girls' schools in Hong Kong, was founded in 1860 by the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church to provide an all-round secondary education for girls in Hong Kong. Commonly known as DGS, the school is governed by the Council of the Diocesan Girls' School, a group of administrators who ensure that the school is well-managed and adheres to DGS's School Mission. Having run as a grant-aided school since it was founded, the school commenced operation in the DSS mode starting with Secondary One classes in September 2005. It uses English as the medium of instruction, and has always been ranked as one of the top secondary schools in Hong Kong, with students known to be high achievers in academics, music and sports etc. DGS accounts for a total of 43 winners of the Hong Kong Outstanding Students Awards, ranking first among all the secondary schools in Hong Kong, and outnumbering the combined number of winners of the next two schools. The school is also a member of the G20 Schools group. It has a "feeder" primary school known as Diocesan Girls' Junior School ("DGJS"), which is currently lead by Ms Annie Lee.
Diocesan Boys' School is a sister school of Diocesan Girls' School. The schools have a close relationship, and are collectively referred to as the Diocesan Family.
DGS was originally named Diocesan Native Female Training School in 1860, when it was founded at Bonham Road and Eastern Street[citation needed] in Hong Kong Island. The school set up by the wife of Bishop Smith. He was the First Bishop of Victoria sent by[citation needed] the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East, a sub-society of the London Missionary Society. At first, it admitted only girls. In 1866 it was renamed Diocesan Female School. Because of financial problems the school had to restrict its services solely to orphans and destitute Hongkongese girls in 1869.[citation needed] Later,[when?] it became the Diocesan Home and Orphanage and accepted boys as well.
The school[which?] first received government financial assistance in 1878 and was placed under the grant-in-aid scheme, officially establishing itself as a girls' school.[citation needed] The boys would continue their education at the newly founded Diocesan Boys' School.[citation needed]
In 1913, the school finally moved to its present site in 1 Jordan Road, Kowloon, formerly a rice paddy field. In the 1920s, the school motto, Daily Giving Service, was adopted. During the Japanese occupation in the Second World War, the school was taken over as headquarters of the Japanese gendarmerie until it was re-opened in September 1945 by Ms. Gibbins, then headmistress, who was interned at Stanley camp during the occupation. Immediately upon her release, Gibbins hurried back to reclaim the school premises despite difficulty in crossing the harbour, thus saving the building from being looted.[citation needed]
Post war[edit]
In the 1950s, with the closure of the adjacent town-gas depot, the School was able to expand. The old Edwardian edifice was pulled down, and three school blocks were constructed to accommodate the enlarged student body. The school embarked on a large scale school expansion project, and two extension blocks were opened respectively in 1993 and 1996. A new phase of expansion had been completed and was opened officially on 12 January 2007.
In 2005, DGS joined the Direct Subsidy Scheme, so as to enhance the facilities to meet the demand of increased number of classes. In site redevelopment has been chosen against the use of a new site provided by the Education Bureau, based on costs considerations. The new school was designed by an award-winning architect,[who?] and the preliminary designs was reviewed and polished by a group of alumni. A fund-raising campaign was launched in 2008 for the redevelopment of the old school campus, which targets on HKD 380 million. In 2009, the classes in DGS were temporarily relocated to 101 Castle Peak Road, Sham Shui Po, whereas DGJS was moved to Tseung Kwan O, as the reconstruction begins. In September 2011, the school returned to 1 Jordan Road upon completion of the new campus.
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