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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zoe Pilger

Zoe Pilger was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was DELETE

Stub for person whose only claim to notability is being related to someone marginally notable. Dsmdgold 02:40, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Zoe might have chosen the same profession as her father, but we don't know that. Wyllium 03:06, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC)
 * Delete: Substub that tells you nothing that you don't already know, because you either found this as a link from ther pop's page or knew enough to search for her. Geogre 00:38, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete and redirect to John Pilger, where I've just added a sentence about his two children. 36 hits on Google, mostly pertaining to an article she wrote for The Independent newspaper in 2003 on the Iraq war. Pilger's website states that Zoe was born in 1984, so it's not that surprising that she hasn't yet established notability. Pnot 00:43, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.


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România liberă

România liberă (lit. 'Free Romania') is a Romanian daily newspaper founded in 1943 and currently based in Bucharest. A newspaper of the same name also existed between 1877 and 1888.

History and profile
The name România liberă was first used by a daily newspaper focusing on politics published between 15 May 1877, (one day after Romania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire) and 13 April 1888, and afterwards by daily with somewhat erratic publication between 1915 and 1920.

The current series of România liberă began on 28 January 1943, during World War II, as an illegal newspaper of the Union of Patriots, a front organisation of the Communist Party. During the war it opposed the Nazi-allied government of Ion Antonescu, issuing calls to sabotage of the war industry and open armed resistance. Although after 1947 all the newspapers were controlled by the Communist Party, it has been described as the least ideological daily during the era of Nicolae Ceaușescu. It was also the only Romanian newspaper allowed to publish full-page advertisement sections.

In 1988, four journalists from România liberă, Petre Mihai Băcanu, Anton Uncu, Mihai Creanga, and Alexandru Chivoiu, attempted to publish a clandestine newspaper called Romania in which they criticized the Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu and the censorship of the press, demanding press freedom and democracy. The four journalists were arrested by the Securitate, the secret police of the Communist regime, and were thrown in prison. They were freed on December 22 by the revolutionaries who had overthrown Ceausescu. They returned to România liberă and transformed the newspaper into a voice of the opposition to communism.

Although Ceaușescu was killed in December 1989, the power in Romania was taken mostly by former members of the Communist Party, notably Ion Iliescu. România liberă newspaper became the most critical voice against Iliescu and his government. The newspaper promoted conservative values, democracy, and the argued that Romania should join NATO and the European Union. They also wrote extensively about the abuses of the Securitate during the Communist Party's rule.

In 1990, România liberă's circulation rose as high as 1.5 million. However, those numbers fell off ten years later, and in 2000 the paper was purchased by the German company WAZ. Echoing complaints of journalists at rival daily Evenimentul Zilei, which was owned by the Swiss press trust Ringier, România liberă journalists complained in September 2004 that foreign owners were telling them to lessen political coverage and tone down their negative reporting of the government. Their concern was echoed by a variety of organizations including the Open Society Foundations. Paper's management denied the charges.

In the case of România liberă, this protest took the form of a statement in the edition of 13 September 2004, in which the newspaper's editors protested interference by WAZ. They accused their German ownership of having no concern for the public interest, and accused Klaus Overbeck in particular of trying to dictate to them what they could print in the newspaper. At the time of purchase WAZ had promised to confine themselves to the business side of the newspaper and stay out of editorial matters.

The paper has published The New York Times International Weekly on Fridays for some time beginning with 2009. This eight-page supplement featured a selection of English-language articles from The New York Times.

In 2010 WAZ left the Romanian market and its shares at România liberă, leaving businessman Dan Adamescu as single share holder of Medien Holding Group.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: România liberă


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Villa Badoer

Villa Badoer is a villa in Fratta Polesine, in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It was designed in 1556 by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio for the Venetian noble Francesco Badoer, and built between 1557 and 1563 on the site of a medieval castle, which guarded a bridge across a navigable canal. This was the first time Palladio used his fully developed temple pediment in the façade of a villa.

Villa Badoer has been part since 1996 of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto".

The building is open to the public and one of the wings houses the Museo archeologico nazionale di Fratta Polesine, opened in 2009.

History

In 1554, on the southern border of the Venetian Republic’s territories, in the flat and foggy country of Polesine, Palladio designed a villa for the Venetian noble Francesco Badoer, intended to become the epicentre of the vast agricultural estate of almost five hundred fields that he had inherited six years previously.

Constructed and inhabited in 1556, the villa therefore functioned for the management of the fields and was simultaneously a visible sign of the “feudal” presence, so to speak, of Badoer in the territory: it is not coincidental that the building rises on the site of an ancient medieval castle. Palladio succeeded in uniting within one effective synthesis these dual meanings, joining the majestic manor house to the two barchesse (farm wings) bent into semicircles, which screen the stables and other agricultural annexes.

The project by Palladio
There are no surviving drawings by Palladio relating to Villa Badoer, nor any building accounts, except those published by the architect in his I quattro libri dell'architettura (1570).

Probably as a result of exploiting the substructures of the medieval castle, the manor house of the villa rises on a high basement, and recalls precedents like the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano by Giuliano da Sangallo, and the not far distant Villa dei Vescovi at Luvigliano by Giovanni Maria Falconetto. Building on the old foundations saved money, and gave a slightly raised setting to the building. This manoeuvre rendered necessary a scenographic staircase of several flights leading to the front door of the villa, the main descending to the courtyard and the two lateral ones connecting with the gable-ends of the barchesse. Thus, the ensemble recalls the structures of an antique, terraced temple complex.

The elegant curvilinear barchesse are the only ones that were realised by Palladio from the many projected (for example, those for the Villa Mocenigo on the Brenta, the Villa Thiene at Cicogna or the Villa Trissino at Meledo) and their shape – as Palladio writes – recalls arms opening to receive the visitor; the relevant antique source was very probably the exedrae of the Temple of Augustus in Rome. These originally housed agricultural activities, for this was a working villa, like Villa Emo and most of the villas by Palladio. Unusual among Palladio's completed works, the wings here do not touch the villa, and they are set slightly in front of it. Vasari thought that they were beautiful, and even fantastic.

On the barchesse Palladio used the Tuscan order, appropriate to their utilitarian function and for the opportunity they afforded of realising very broad intercolumniations, which would not impede carriage access. Instead, the villa's loggia displays an elegant Ionic order, to emphasise its residential, manorial status. The visual focus of the entire complex was centred precisely on the dominant axis of the great triangular pediment supported by Ionic columns, which bears the family arms, such that the villa's flanks and rear are unarticulated and present a simply utilitarian aspect. This was the first time Palladio used his fully developed temple pediment in the façade of a villa.

Moreover, the distributive structure of the manorial house reveals Palladio's usual organisation into a vertical axis, with service rooms occupying the basement storey, the patron's habitation on the piano nobile, and a granary in the attic.

The plan and elevation of Villa Badoer presented in Palladio's woodcuts in the Quattro Libri of 1570 is somewhat different from what was built there. A rear elevation and portico shown in the book were never built, but whether interrupted and not resumed, or curtailed in the course of construction are not known. Puppi suggested "that the omission of the ceremonial features from the back façade had been decided by the patron, who must have thought them unnecessary in confrontation with the empty expanse of open countryside, and with the short extent of his property... on that side."

Interiors and decoration

The piano nobile retains its original fresco decoration. All the rooms are covered by flat ceilings and on the walls a certain "Giallo Fiorentino" designed complex combinations of allegorical figures, whose significance remains partially obscure. Palladio referred to these frescoes as being "grottesche di bellissima inventione" by a certain Giallo Fiorentino, whose real identity has remained uncertain. Milanesi's identification as Jacopo Giallo, a Florentine illuminator to whom some manuscript work has been assigned, was eliminated by Lionello Puppi's archival discovery that Jacopo Giallo was dead by 1545, thirteen years before the villa was built; Puppi offered instead a certain fresco painter "Giallo Fiorentino", an assistant to Giuseppe Salviati for exterior frescoes at Palazzo Loredan at San Stefano. More recently, Pier Francesco di Jacopo Foschi has been suggested.

Architectural critics such as Witold Rybczynski think that the interior is relatively small and unimpressive, compared to the grandiose exterior.

Conservation
The building passed to the public in the 1960s (initially to the Ville Venete Institute, then to the Province of Rovigo) and was completely restored.

In 1996, UNESCO designated Villa Badoer as part of the World Heritage Site "City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto".

The building is open to the public. Since 21 February 2009 the northern barchesse of the Villa houses the Museo archeologico nazionale di Fratta Polesine (National archaeological museum of Fratta Polesine).

title: Villa Badoer


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Response bias

Response bias is a general term for a wide range of tendencies for participants to respond inaccurately or falsely to questions. These biases are prevalent in research involving participant self-report, such as structured interviews or surveys. Response biases can have a large impact on the validity of questionnaires or surveys.

Response bias can be induced or caused by numerous factors, all relating to the idea that human subjects do not respond passively to stimuli, but rather actively integrate multiple sources of information to generate a response in a given situation. Because of this, almost any aspect of an experimental condition may potentially bias a respondent. Examples include the phrasing of questions in surveys, the demeanor of the researcher, the way the experiment is conducted, or the desires of the participant to be a good experimental subject and to provide socially desirable responses may affect the response in some way. All of these "artifacts" of survey and self-report research may have the potential to damage the validity of a measure or study. Compounding this issue is that surveys affected by response bias still often have high reliability, which can lure researchers into a false sense of security about the conclusions they draw.

Because of response bias, it is possible that some study results are due to a systematic response bias rather than the hypothesized effect, which can have a profound effect on psychological and other types of research using questionnaires or surveys. It is therefore important for researchers to be aware of response bias and the effect it can have on their research so that they can attempt to prevent it from impacting their findings in a negative manner.

History of research
Awareness of response bias has been present in psychology and sociology literature for some time because self-reporting features significantly in those fields of research. However, researchers were initially unwilling to admit the degree to which they impact, and potentially invalidate research utilizing these types of measures. Some researchers believed that the biases present in a group of subjects cancel out when the group is large enough. This would mean that the impact of response bias is random noise, which washes out if enough participants are included in the study. However, at the time this argument was proposed, effective methodological tools that could test it were not available. Once newer methodologies were developed, researchers began to investigate the impact of response bias. From this renewed research, two opposing sides arose.

The first group supports Hyman's belief that although response bias exists, it often has minimal effect on participant response, and no large steps need to be taken to mitigate it. These researchers hold that although there is significant literature identifying response bias as influencing the responses of study participants, these studies do not in fact provide empirical evidence that this is the case. They subscribe to the idea that the effects of this bias wash out with large enough samples, and that it is not a systematic problem in mental health research. These studies also call into question earlier research that investigated response bias on the basis of their research methodologies. For example, they mention that many of the studies had very small sample sizes, or that in studies looking at social desirability, a subtype of response bias, the researchers had no way to quantify the desirability of the statements used in the study. Additionally, some have argued that what researchers may believe to be artifacts of response bias, such as differences in responding between men and women, may in fact be actual differences between the two groups. Several other studies also found evidence that response bias is not as big of a problem as it may seem. The first found that when comparing the responses of participants, with and without controls for response bias, their answers to the surveys were not different. Two other studies found that although the bias may be present, the effects are extremely small, having little to no impact towards dramatically changing or altering the responses of participants.

The second group argues against Hyman's point, saying that response bias has a significant effect, and that researchers need to take steps to reduce response bias in order to conduct sound research. They argue that the impact of response bias is a systematic error inherent to this type of research and that it needs to be addressed in order for studies to be able to produce accurate results. In psychology, there are many studies exploring the impact of response bias in many different settings and with many different variables. For example, some studies have found effects of response bias in the reporting of depression in elderly patients. Other researchers have found that there are serious issues when responses to a given survey or questionnaire have responses that may seem desirable or undesirable to report, and that a person's responses to certain questions can be biased by their culture. Additionally, there is support for the idea that simply being part of an experiment can have dramatic effects on how participants act, thus biasing anything that they may do in a research or experimental setting when it comes to self-reporting. One of the most influential studies was one which found that social desirability bias, a type of response bias, can account for as much as 10–70% of the variance in participant response. Essentially, because of several findings that illustrate the dramatic effects response bias has on the outcomes of self-report research, this side supports the idea that steps need to be taken to mitigate the effects of response bias to maintain the accuracy of research.

While both sides have support in the literature, there appears to be greater empirical support for the significance of response bias. To add strength to the claims of those who argue the importance of response bias, many of the studies that reject the significance of response bias report multiple methodological issues in their studies. For example, they have extremely small samples that are not representative of the population as a whole, they only considered a small subset of potential variables that could be affected by response bias, and their measurements were conducted over the phone with poorly worded statements.

Acquiescence bias
Acquiescence bias, which is also referred to as "yea-saying", is a category of response bias in which respondents to a survey have a tendency to agree with all the questions in a measure. This bias in responding may represent a form of dishonest reporting because the participant automatically endorses any statements, even if the result is contradictory responses. For example, a participant could be asked whether they endorse the following statement, "I prefer to spend time with others" but then later on in the survey also endorses "I prefer to spend time alone," which are contradictory statements. This is a distinct problem for self-report research because it does not allow a researcher to understand or gather accurate data from any type of question that asks for a participant to endorse or reject statements. Researchers have approached this issue by thinking about the bias in two different ways. The first deals with the idea that participants are trying to be agreeable, in order to avoid the disapproval of the researcher. A second cause for this type of bias was proposed by Lee Cronbach, when he argued that it is likely due to a problem in the cognitive processes of the participant, instead of the motivation to please the researcher. He argues that it may be due to biases in memory where an individual recalls information that supports endorsement of the statement, and ignores contradicting information.

Researchers have several methods to try and reduce this form of bias. Primarily, they attempt to make balanced response sets in a given measure, meaning that there are a balanced number of positively and negatively worded questions. This means that if a researcher was hoping to examine a certain trait with a given questionnaire, half of the questions would have a "yes" response to identify the trait, and the other half would have a "no" response to identify the trait.

Nay-saying is the opposite form of this bias. It occurs when a participant always chooses to deny or not endorse any statements in a survey or measure. This has a similar effect of invalidating any kinds of endorsements that participants may make over the course of the experiment.

Courtesy bias
Courtesy bias is a type of response bias that occurs when some individuals tend to not fully state their unhappiness with a service or product as an attempt to be polite or courteous toward the questioner. It is a common bias in qualitative research methodology.

In a study on disrespect and abuse during facility based childbirth, courtesy bias was found to be one of the causes of potential underreporting of those behaviors at hospitals and clinics. Evidence has been found that some cultures are especially prone to the courtesy bias, leading respondents to say what they believe the questioner wants to hear. This bias has been found in Asian and in Hispanic cultures. Courtesy bias has been found to be a similar term referring to people in East Asia, who frequently tend to exhibit acquiescence bias. As with most data collection, courtesy bias has been found to be a concern from the phone survey respondents.

Attempts were made to create a good interview environment in order to minimize courtesy bias. An emphasis is needed that both positive and negative experiences must be important to showcase to enhance learning and minimize the bias as much as possible.

Demand characteristics
Demand characteristics refer to a type of response bias where participants alter their response or behavior simply because they are part of an experiment. This arises because participants are actively engaged in the experiment, and may try to figure out the purpose, or adopt certain behaviors they believe belong in an experimental setting. Martin Orne was one of the first to identify this type of bias, and has developed several theories to address their cause. His research points to the idea that participants enter a certain type of social interaction when engaging in an experiment, and this special social interaction drives participants to consciously and unconsciously alter their behaviors There are several ways that this bias can influence participants and their responses in an experimental setting. One of the most common relates to the motivations of the participant. Many people choose to volunteer to be in studies because they believe that experiments are important. This drives participants to be "good subjects" and fulfill their role in the experiment properly, because they believe that their proper participation is vital to the success of the study. Thus, in an attempt to productively participate, the subject may try to gain knowledge of the hypothesis being tested in the experiment and alter their behavior in an attempt to support that hypothesis. Orne conceptualized this change by saying that the experiment may appear to a participant as a problem, and it is his or her job to find the solution to that problem, which would be behaving in a way that would lend support to the experimenter's hypothesis. Alternatively, a participant may try to discover the hypothesis simply to provide faulty information and wreck the hypothesis. Both of these results are harmful because they prevent the experimenters from gathering accurate data and making sound conclusions.

Outside of participant motivation, there are other factors that influence the appearance of demand characteristics in a study. Many of these factors relate to the unique nature of the experimental setting itself. For example, participants in studies are more likely to put up with uncomfortable or tedious tasks simply because they are in an experiment. Additionally, the mannerisms of the experimenter, such as the way they greet the participant, or the way they interact with the participant during the course of the experiment may inadvertently bias how the participant responds during the course of the experiment. Also, prior experiences of being in an experiment, or rumors of the experiment that participants may hear can greatly bias the way they respond. Outside of an experiment, these types of past experiences and mannerisms may have significant effects on how patients rank the effectiveness of their therapist. Many of the ways therapists go about collecting client feedback involve self-reporting measures, which can be highly influenced by response bias. Participants may be biased if they fill out these measure in front of their therapist, or somehow feel compelled to answer in an affirmative matter because they believe their therapy should be working. In this case, the therapists would not be able to gain accurate feedback from their clients, and be unable to improve their therapy or accurately tailor further treatment to what the participants need. All of these different examples may have significant effects on the responses of participants, driving them to respond in ways that do not reflect their actual beliefs or actual mindset, which negatively impact conclusions drawn from those surveys.

While demand characteristics cannot be completely removed from an experiment, there are steps that researchers can take to minimize the impact they may have on the results. One way to mitigate response bias is to use deception to prevent the participant from discovering the true hypothesis of the experiment and then debrief the participants. For example, research has demonstrated that repeated deception and debriefing is useful in preventing participants from becoming familiar with the experiment, and that participants do not significantly alter their behaviors after being deceived and debriefed multiple times. Another way that researchers attempt to reduce demand characteristics is by being as neutral as possible, or training those conducting the experiment to be as neutral as possible. For example, studies show that extensive one-on-one contact between the experimenter and the participant makes it more difficult to be neutral, and go on to suggest that this type of interaction should be limited when designing an experiment. Another way to prevent demand characteristics is to use blinded experiments with placebos or control groups. This prevents the experimenter from biasing the participant, because the researcher does not know in which way the participant should respond. Although not perfect, these methods can significantly reduce the effect of demand characteristics on a study, thus making the conclusions drawn from the experiment more likely to accurately reflect what they were intended to measure.

Extreme responding
Extreme responding is a form of response bias that drives respondents to only select the most extreme options or answers available. For example, in a survey utilizing a Likert scale with potential responses ranging from one to five, the respondent may only give answers as ones or fives. Another example is if the participant only answered questionnaires with "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" in a survey with that type of response style. There are several reasons for why this bias may take hold in a group of participants. One example ties the development of this type of bias in respondents to their cultural identity. This explanation states that people from certain cultures are more likely to respond in an extreme manner as compared to others. For example, research has found that those from the Middle East and Latin America are more prone to be affected by extremity response, whereas those from East Asia and Western Europe are less likely to be affected. A second explanation for this type of response bias relates to the education level of the participants. Research has indicated that those with lower intelligence, measured by an analysis of IQ and school achievement, are more likely to be affected by extremity response. Another way that this bias can be introduced is through the wording of questions in a survey or questionnaire. Certain topics or the wording of a question may drive participants to respond in an extreme manner, especially if it relates to the motivations or beliefs of the participant.

The opposite of this bias occurs when participants only select intermediate or mild responses as answers.

Question order bias
Question order bias, or "order effects bias", is a type of response bias where a respondent may react differently to questions based on the order in which questions appear in a survey or interview. Question order bias is different from "response order bias" that addresses specifically the order of the set of responses within a survey question. There are many ways that questionnaire items that appear earlier in a survey can affect responses to later questions. One way is when a question creates a "norm of reciprocity or fairness" as identified in the 1950 work of Herbert Hyman and Paul Sheatsley. In their research they asked two questions. One was asked on whether the United States should allow reporters from communist countries to come to the U.S. and send back news as they saw it; and another question was asked on whether a communist country like Russia should let American newspaper reporters come in and send back news as they saw it to America. In the study, the percentage of “yes” responses to the question allowing communist reporters increased by 37 percentage points depending on the order. Similarly results for the American reporters item increased by 24 percentage points. When either of the items was asked second, the context for the item was changed as a result of the answer to the first, and the responses to the second were more in line with what would be considered fair, based on the previous response. Another way to alter the response towards questions based on order depends on the framing of the question. If a respondent is first asked about their general interest in a subject their response interest may be higher than if they are first posed technical or knowledge based questions about a subject. Part-whole contrast effect is yet another ordering effect. When general and specific questions are asked in different orders, results for the specific item are generally unaffected, whereas those for the general item can change significantly. Question order biases occur primarily in survey or questionnaire settings. Some strategies to limit the effects of question order bias include randomization, grouping questions by topic to unfold in a logical order.

Social desirability bias
Social desirability bias is a type of response bias that influences a participant to deny undesirable traits, and ascribe to themselves traits that are socially desirable. In essence, it is a bias that drives an individual to answer in a way that makes them look more favorable to the experimenter. This bias can take many forms. Some individuals may over-report good behavior, while others may under-report bad, or undesirable behavior. A critical aspect of how this bias can come to affect the responses of participants relates to the norms of the society in which the research is taking place. For example, social desirability bias could play a large role if conducting research about an individual's tendency to use drugs. Those in a community where drug use is seen as acceptable or popular may exaggerate their own drug use, whereas those from a community where drug use is looked down upon may choose to under-report their own use. This type of bias is much more prevalent in questions that draw on a subject's opinion, like when asking a participant to evaluate or rate something, because there generally is not one correct answer, and the respondent has multiple ways they could answer the question. Overall, this bias can be very problematic for self-report researchers, especially if the topic they are looking at is controversial. The distortions created by respondents answering in a socially desirable manner can have profound effects on the validity of self-report research. Without being able to control for or deal with this bias, researchers are unable to determine if the effects they are measuring are due to individual differences, or from a desire to conform to the societal norms present in the population they are studying. Therefore, researchers strive to employ strategies aimed at mitigating social desirability bias so that they can draw valid conclusions from their research.

Several strategies exist to limit the effect of social desirability bias. In 1985, Anton Nederhof compiled a list of techniques and methodological strategies for researchers to use to mitigate the effects of social desirability bias in their studies. Most of these strategies involve deceiving the subject, or are related to the way questions in surveys and questionnaires are presented to those in a study. A condensed list of seven of the strategies are listed below:
 * Ballot-box method: This method allows a subject to anonymously self-complete a questionnaire and submit it to a locked "ballot box", thereby concealing their responses from an interviewer and affording the participant an additional layer of assured concealment from perceived social repercussion.
 * Forced-choice items: This technique hopes to generate questions that are equal in desirability to prevent a socially desirable response in one direction or another.
 * Neutral questions: The goal of this strategy is to use questions that are rated as neutral by a wide range of participants so that socially desirable responding does not apply.
 * Randomized response technique: This technique allows participants to answer a question that is randomly selected from a set of questions. The researcher in this technique does not know which question the subject responds to, so subjects are more likely to answer truthfully. Researchers can then use statistics to interpret the anonymous data.
 * Self-administered questionnaires: This strategy involves isolating the participant before they begin answering the survey or questionnaire to hopefully remove any social cues the researcher may present to the participant.
 * Bogus-pipeline: This technique involves a form of deception, where researchers convince a subject through a series of rigged demonstrations that a machine can accurately determine if a participant is being truthful when responding to certain questions. After the participant completes the survey or questionnaire, they are debriefed. This is a rare technique, and does not see much use because of the cost, time commitment and because it is a one-use only technique for each participant.
 * Selection interviewers: This strategy allows participants to select the person or persons who will be conducting the interview or presiding over the experiment. This, in the hope that with a higher degree of rapport, subjects will be more likely to answer honestly.
 * Proxy subjects: Instead of asking a person directly, this strategy questions someone who is close to or knows the target individual well. This technique is generally limited to questions about behavior, and is not adequate for asking about attitudes or beliefs.

The degree of effectiveness for each of these techniques or strategies differs depending on the situation and the question asked. In order to be the most successful in reducing social desirability bias in a wide range of situations, it has been suggested that researchers utilize a combination of these techniques to have the best chance at mitigating the effects of social desirability bias. Validations are not made on a "more is better" assumption (higher stated prevalence of the behavior of interest) when selecting the best method for reducing SDB as this is a "weak validation" that does not always guarantee the best results. Instead, ground "truthed" comparisons of observed data to stated data should reveal the most accurate method.

Related terminology

 * Non-response bias is not the opposite of response bias and is not a type of cognitive bias: it occurs in a statistical survey if those who respond to the survey differ in the outcome variable.
 * Response rate is not a cognitive bias, but rather refers to a ratio of those who complete the survey and those who do not.

Highly vulnerable areas
Some areas or topics that are highly vulnerable to the various types of response bias include:
 * alcoholism
 * self-reporting in mental illness, especially depression

title: Response bias


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Coalition (Australia)

The Liberal–National Coalition, commonly known simply as the Coalition or the LNP, is an alliance of centre-right to right-wing political parties that forms one of the two major groupings in Australian federal politics. The two partners in the Coalition are the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party of Australia (the latter previously known as the Country Party and the National Country Party). Its main opponent is the Australian Labor Party (ALP); the two forces are often regarded as operating in a two-party system. The Coalition was last in government from 2013 to 2022. The group is led by Peter Dutton, who succeeded Scott Morrison after the 2022 federal election.

The two parties in the Coalition have different geographical voter bases, with the Liberals – the larger party – drawing most of their vote from urban areas and the Nationals operating almost exclusively in rural and regional areas. They occupy a broadly similar place on the right of the political spectrum. The partnership between the two current parties dates back to 1946, shortly after the Liberal Party was formed, and has continued almost uninterrupted since then. The Country Party also maintained similar alliances with the Liberal Party's predecessors, the United Australia Party and Nationalist Party, and similar parties at state level. The first such federal arrangement was formed in 1923, as a solution to the hung parliament that resulted from the 1922 federal election.

The Liberals and Nationals maintain separate organisational wings and separate parliamentary parties, but co-operate in various ways determined by a mixture of formal agreements and informal conventions. There is a single Coalition frontbench, both in government and in opposition, with each party receiving a proportionate number of positions. By convention, the leader of the Liberal Party serves as the overall leader, serving as prime minister when the Coalition is in government and leader of the opposition when the Coalition is in opposition. The leader of the National Party becomes the deputy prime minister during periods of Coalition government. The two parties co-operate on their federal election campaigns, run joint Senate tickets in most states, and generally avoid running candidates against each other in the House of Representatives.

A merger of the Liberals and Nationals has been suggested on a number of occasions, but has never become a serious proposition. The relationship between the two parties varies at state and territory level. The situation in New South Wales and Victoria broadly mirrors that at federal level, while in Western Australia the parties are much more independent of each other. In the Northern Territory the territorial parties merged in 1974 to form the Country Liberal Party (CLP), and in 2008 the Queensland state-level parties merged, forming the Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP). LNP and CLP members elected to federal parliament do not form separate parliamentary parties, joining either the Liberals or Nationals. In South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT, the Nationals have no sitting MPs and little or no organisational presence.

History
The origins of the Coalition date back to the 1922 federal election, when the Nationalist Party, the main middle-class non-Labor party of the time, lost the absolute majority it had held since its formation in 1917. The Nationalists could only stay in office with the support of the two-year-old Country Party. It soon became apparent that a confidence and supply agreement would not be enough to keep the Nationalists in office.

However, Country Party leader Earle Page had never trusted the Nationalist Prime Minister, Billy Hughes. Indeed, the Country Party had been formed in part due to discontent with Hughes' rural policy. Page not only let it be known that he would not serve under Hughes, but demanded Hughes' resignation before he would even consider coalition talks. Hughes resigned, and Page then entered negotiations with the new Nationalist leader, Stanley Bruce. The Country Party's terms were unusually stiff for a prospective junior partner in a Westminster system (and especially so for a relatively new party) – five seats in an 11-member cabinet, as well as the Treasurer's post and second rank in the ministry for Page. Nonetheless, Bruce agreed rather than force a new election. Since then, the leader of the Country Party, which evolved into the National Party, has ranked second in nearly all non-Labor governments, a status formalised in 1967 when the post of Deputy Prime Minister was formally created to denote Country leader John McEwen's status as the number-two man in the government.

The Nationalist–Country Coalition was reelected twice, and continued in office until its defeat in 1929.

The Country Party and the Nationalists' successor party, the United Australia Party, fought the 1931 federal election with a joint Senate ticket, though they ran separate House tickets. The UAP came up only four seats short of a majority in its own right. The Emergency Committee of South Australia, which stood for the UAP and Country Party in South Australia, joined the UAP party room, giving the UAP enough support to rule alone. However, the parties once again joined in a full Coalition government following the 1934 federal election.

After the death of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons in April 1939, Page was appointed as his successor on an interim basis, pending the new election of a new UAP leader. Despite Page's misgivings, the UAP elected Robert Menzies – who was known to dislike the Country Party. Page subsequently made a vitriolic speech in parliament attacking Menzies's character, and withdrew his party from the coalition – the most recent occasion on which the coalition has been broken while in government. However, a number of Page's colleagues disagreed with his stance, and he resigned as leader in September 1939. He was replaced by Archie Cameron, and after months of negotiations the coalition was revived in March 1940, with five Country MPs joining the second Menzies ministry.

After losing eight seats at the 1940 federal election, the Coalition was plunged into minority government for the first time in its history. Archie Cameron was an immediate victim of the election result, being replaced by Arthur Fadden and later defecting to the UAP. Menzies increasingly struggled to balance his management of Australia's war effort with domestic concerns, and his party began to rebel against him. However, the UAP was bereft of leadership despite having been in power for a decade. With this in mind, in August 1941 the Coalition collectively decided that Fadden and Menzies should swap positions, with Menzies becoming Minister for Defence Co-ordination and Fadden becoming prime minister. It was the first and only occasion on which the Coalition was led by the leader of the junior party. However, the Fadden government only lasted a few months before losing a confidence motion and being replaced by the Labor Party in the form of the Curtin government.

After the demise of the Fadden government, the Coalition voted to continue on under his leadership in opposition. Menzies had opposed this, and resigned as UAP leader, to be replaced by the ageing Billy Hughes. Up until the 1943 election, the Coalition effectively operated as a single unit, with separate party meetings being extremely rare. However, the landslide defeat it suffered – under Fadden as opposition leader – led to an immediate change in strategy. The UAP voted to break off its ties with the Country Party in opposition, and re-elected Menzies as its leader. This is the most recent occasion on which the senior partner in the Coalition has opted to withdraw.

The UAP was folded into the Liberal Party in 1945, with Menzies as leader. In the lead-up to the 1946 federal election, Menzies renewed the Coalition with the Country Party, which was still led by Fadden. They won the 1949 federal election as a Coalition, and stayed in office for a record 23 years. Since 1946, the Coalition has remained intact with two exceptions, both in opposition. The parties decided not to form a coalition opposition following their defeat in 1972, but went into the 1974 federal election as a Coalition. The Coalition remained together upon entering opposition in 1983 federal election. The Coalition suffered another break, related to the "Joh for Canberra" campaign, from April to August 1987, the rift healing after the 1987 federal election.

The solidity of the Coalition is so strong that when the Liberals won parliamentary majorities in their own right in the 1975, 1977 and 1996 federal elections, the Coalition was retained.

In the 2007 federal election, the Coalition lost to the Labor Party and went into opposition. The Coalition regained office in the 2013 federal election as a majority government. In October 2018, the Coalition went into minority government for the second time in its history, when the seat of Wentworth was won by Independent Kerryn Phelps in the by-election. The by-election was triggered by the resignation of incumbent Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull, who was ousted as Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader during a spill motion earlier in August 2018. The coalition formed majority government again following the 2019 federal election. In the 2022 Australian federal election, the Coalition lost to the Labor Party and returned to opposition.

Suggestions to merge
In March 1973, former Prime Minister William McMahon publicly announced his support for a merger. McMahon reiterated his view after Labor won the 1974 election, and Billy Snedden, his successor as leader of the Liberal Party, also stated that he favoured a merger.

During the 1980s, former Nationals MP Peter Nixon reviewed the party and "concluded it should seriously consider amalgamating with the Liberals". Former Nationals leader Doug Anthony wrote not long afterward, "Any objective and rational National Party member who read this report would have to accept that amalgamation was the only realistic course. Regrettably, there are still too many who don't want to read it and who don't want to face reality, that the role of a specialist party looking after the needs of rural people is in decline." Nationals leader Ian Sinclair publicly rejected calls for a merger, citing the incompatibility of the National Party's conservatism and the "small-l liberal" wing of the Liberal Party.

In July 1989, Senator Fred Chaney, the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, stated his tentative support for a merger, but noted that it could not be led by politicians and should come from the grassroots.

In the wake of their 2007 federal election loss, there was again talk of a merger in 2007 and 2008, as a result of a shrinking National Party vote. It was argued that the decline in the National vote is linked to a declining rural population, and National Party policies have become increasingly similar to those of the Liberal Party. However no merger took place outside of Queensland.

Electoral organisation
Coalition arrangements are facilitated by Australia's preferential voting systems which enable Liberals and Nationals to compete locally in "three-cornered-contests", with the Australian Labor Party (ALP), while exchanging preferences in elections. Such contests would weaken their prospects under first-past-the-post voting. From time to time, friction is caused by the fact that the Liberal and National candidates are campaigning against each other, without long-term damage to the relationship.

Indeed, the whole point of introducing preferential voting was to allow safe spoiler-free, three-cornered contests. It was a government of the Nationalist Party, a forerunner to the modern Liberal Party which introduced the legislation, following Labor's unexpected win at the 1918 Swan by-election where the conservative vote split. Two months later, the Corangamite by-election held under preferential voting caused the initially leading ALP candidate to lose after some lower-placed candidates' preferences had been distributed.

As a result of variations on the preferential voting system used in every state and territory, the Coalition has been able to thrive, wherever both its member parties have both been active. The preferential voting system has allowed the Liberal and National parties to compete and co-operate at the same time. By contrast, a variation of the preferential system known as optional preferential voting has proven a significant handicap to coalition co-operation in Queensland and New South Wales, because significant numbers of voters do not express all useful preferences.

Nomenclature
Due to a disciplined coalition between the parties and their predecessors being in existence for almost 100 years with only a few brief cessations within a parliamentary system, most commentators and the general public often refer to the Coalition as if it were a single party. Polling and electoral results contain a two-party-preferred (TPP) vote which is based on Labor and the Coalition. The Australian Electoral Commission has distinguished between "traditional" (Coalition/Labor) two-party-preferred (TPP/2PP) contests, and "non-traditional" (Independent, Greens, Liberal vs National) two-candidate-preferred (TCP/2CP) contests. At the 2010 federal election, all eight seats which resulted in a two-candidate-preferred result were re-counted to also express a statistical-only "traditional" two-party-preferred result.

Electorate
As of 2022, the biggest voting blocs of the Coalition are men, the Greatest Generation (people born between 1901–1927), the middle class (as opposed to the working class), who make between A$45,001–A$80,000 per year, and have a non-tertiary qualification or no educational qualification. Homeowners vote more for the Coalition than any other party, and the State of Queensland is its biggest electorate by two-party-preferred vote percentage (though by primary vote, Tasmania is the state with the highest Coalition vote).

The Coalition also gathers significant support from Australians in regional, rural and remote areas, whilst lacking significant support in most parts of the capital cities. However, there are regions of capital cities that do still vote for the Coalition; such as the Hills District and Sutherland and most of the Eastern Suburbs and Northern Suburbs of Sydney; some areas of Melbourne's east and northeast; many areas of Brisbane and Perth; and the southern part of Darwin.

The Coalition has below-average support among Indian and Muslim voters. Historically, Chinese Australians have voted for the Coalition over Labor, due to a perception that Liberal Party was more business-oriented than Labor. However, this has declined in recent years. In the 2022 Australian federal election, electorates with a higher concentration of Chinese-Australian voters experienced larger swings against the Coalition compared to other electorates; in the top 15 seats by Chinese ancestry, the swing against the Coalition on a two-party-preferred basis was 6.6 per cent, compared to 3.7 per cent in other seats. This resulted in the Liberal Party losing many federal seats with large Chinese communities in 2022 to Labor (losing Bennelong and Reid in Sydney and Chisholm in Melbourne to Labor and Kooyong in Melbourne to a teal independent), as well as losing Aston in 2023, which was the first time in over a century in which the government won a seat off the opposition in a by-election. In the 2023 New South Wales state election, the top 10 electorates in terms of Chinese ancestry all saw big swings to Labor. However, the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party managed to hold many state seats with large Chinese communities (such as the Sydney seats of Drummoyne, Epping, Holsworthy, Lane Cove, Miranda, Oatley and Ryde).

New South Wales
A Coalition between the Liberal (and predecessors) and National parties has existed without interruption in New South Wales since 1927. Predecessors of the NSW Liberal Party, including the UAP, Nationalist Party and the Democratic Party, maintained a coalition with the Country Party (old name of National Party).

The Liberal Party is led by Mark Speakman and the National Party by Dugald Saunders. The Coalition won the 2011 state election in a massive swing under Barry O'Farrell, the 2015 election with a reduced majority under Mike Baird, and the 2019 election under Gladys Berejiklian. The Coalition led by Dominic Perrottet lost the 2023 state election and is in opposition since.

New South Wales is the only state where the non-Labor Coalition has never broken, and yet has also never merged. This remained the case even in 2011, when the Liberals won a majority in their own right but still retained the Coalition. On 10 September 2020, the Nationals threatened to move to the crossbench over a dispute regarding koala protection laws, but the issue was resolved the next day and the Nationals remained in the Coalition.

Queensland
Due to Brisbane having a much smaller share of Queensland's population compared to the other state capitals, Queensland is the only state in which the Nationals have consistently been the stronger non-Labor party. The Nationals were the senior partner in the non-Labor Coalition from 1925 until the Coalition was broken in 1983. At an election held two months later, the Nationals under Joh Bjelke-Petersen came up one seat short of a majority, but later gained a majority when two Liberal MLAs crossed the floor to join the Nationals. The Nationals then governed in their own right until 1989. The Coalition was renewed in 1991, and won power under Rob Borbidge from 1996 to 1998.

The Queensland Liberals and Nationals had contested separately for the Senate in federal elections until the 2007 election, when they ran a join Senate ticket for the first time in 30 years. In 2008, the two parties agreed to merge, forming the Liberal National Party (LNP), under the leadership of former National Lawrence Springborg. Although it is dominated by former Nationals, it has full voting rights within the Liberal Party and observer status within the National Party. Springborg stood down in 2009, and was succeeded by former Liberal John-Paul Langbroek. The LNP won an overwhelming majority government in the 2012 state election under the leadership of former Liberal Campbell Newman, who had taken over from Langbroek a year earlier. However, it lost power in 2015, and Springborg returned to the leadership, only to lose a challenge by former Liberal Tim Nicholls in May 2016. Following another loss in the 2017 election, Nicholls stood down as LNP party leader and was succeeded by Deb Frecklington, who holds the ancestrally National seat of Nanango, Bjelke-Petersen's old seat.

At the federal level, 15 LNP MPs sit with the Liberals, including federal Liberal leader Peter Dutton; six sit with the Nationals, including federal Nationals leader David Littleproud. LNP Senator Matt Canavan sits with the Nationals, while the LNP's four other senators sit with the Liberals. The highest-profile LNP MP in recent years has been former federal Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss. The LNP has an informal agreement with its federal counterparts as to which party room in which LNP members will sit. Incumbent MPs retain their previous federal affiliations, whereas members who win seats from the ALP that previously belonged to the Coalition will sit with the previous member's party. An amicable division of seats was decided upon for new seats or seats that have never been won by the Coalition. In practice, all LNP MPs from Brisbane and most LNP MPs from the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast sit with the Liberals, while those from rural seats usually sit with the Nationals.

South Australia
The state branch of the Country Party merged with the Liberal Federation, the state branch of the UAP, in 1932 to form the Liberal and Country League. It later became the state division of the Liberal Party when the latter was formed in 1945. A separate Country Party (later Nationals SA) was revived in 1963, though the main non-Labor party in South Australia continued to use the LCL name until it was also renamed to the Liberal Party in 1974. The revived SA Nationals have never been successful in South Australia, due to the state's highly centralised population (some three-quarters of the population lives in Adelaide) and the Liberals' strong support in rural areas that would tilt National in most of the rest of Australia. The party's current incarnation has only elected two representatives: Peter Blacker from 1973 to 1993, and Karlene Maywald from 1997 to 2010.

From 2004 to 2010, Maywald was a Minister in the Rann Labor government, before losing her seat at the 2010 South Australian state election, thereby informally creating a Labor-National coalition in South Australia. The National Party, at the time, rejected the notion that it was in a coalition with Labor at the state level. State National Party President John Venus told journalists, "We (The Nationals) are not in coalition with the Labor Party, we aren't in coalition with the Liberals, we are definitely not in coalition with anyone. We stand alone in South Australia as an independent party." Flinders University political scientist Haydon Manning disagreed, saying that it is "churlish to describe the government as anything but a coalition". The party did not run candidates at the 2010 federal election, but ran one candidate in the seat of Barker and two for the Senate at the 2013 election. The Nationals candidate for Barker and several other Coalition figures assured electors that any Nationals elected from South Australia would be part of the Coalition, after comments from the Liberal candidate to the contrary.

Tasmania
The National Party has never done well in Tasmania, even though its first leader, William McWilliams, was a Tasmanian. It has elected only two other lower house members. A Tasmania branch of the then-Country Party was formed in 1922 and briefly held the balance of power, but merged with the Nationalists in 1924. It was refounded in 1962, but never gained much ground. In 1969, Liberal MHA Kevin Lyons, the son of former Prime Minister Lyons, pulled together most of the Tasmanian Country Party into the Centre Party, which held the balance of power in that year's state election. It threw its support to the Liberals, and Lyons – the Centre Party's lone MHA – became Deputy Premier. The Liberal–Centre alliance fell apart in 1972, forcing an early election. In 1975, what remained of the Centre Party became the Tasmanian chapter of what was by now the National Country Party before fading away completely. A Tasmanian National Party branch was briefly revived in the 1990s before it too disappeared, leaving the Liberal Party as the sole major non-Labor party in the state. In 2018, Senator Steve Martin, formerly of the Jacqui Lambie Network, joined the Nationals, becoming the party's first federal member from Tasmania in either chamber in 90 years. However, Martin lost his bid for a new term.

Victoria
A Coalition between the Liberal and National parties exists in Victoria. The Liberal Party is led by John Pesutto and the National Party by Peter Walsh.

The Country Party was the stronger coalition partner on multiple occasions from the 1920s through to the 1950s, and Country leaders served as Premier of Victoria on five separate occasions. However, the relationship between the two parties was somewhat strained for most of the second half of the 20th century. In 1948, the coalition was broken when the Liberal leader and Premier Thomas Hollway sacked Country leader John McDonald as Deputy Premier. In March 1949, the Liberals renamed themselves the Liberal and Country Party as part of an effort to merge the two non-Labor parties in Victoria. However, McDonald saw this as an attempted Liberal takeover of the Country Party, and the Country Party turned the proposed merger down. As a result, both parties competed against each other and fought elections separately from 1952 to 1989. The presence of John McEwen, a Victorian, as number-two man in the federal government from 1958 to 1971 (including a brief stint as interim Prime Minister) did little to change this.

The Liberals and Nationals reached a Coalition agreement in 1990. They fought and won the 1992 and 1996 elections as a Coalition under the leadership of Jeff Kennett. Although the Liberals won enough seats to govern alone, Kennett retained the Nationals in his government. When Peter Ryan became leader of the Nationals shortly after the Kennett government's 1999 election defeat, he terminated the Coalition agreement and led the Nationals into the 2002 and 2006 elections separately from the Liberals. However, the Coalition agreement was renewed in 2008 and the Victorian Liberal and National parties went into the 2010 election as a Coalition. The Coalition ended up winning the 2010 election with a one-seat margin under the leadership of Ted Baillieu, who resigned in 2013 and was succeeded by Denis Napthine. The Coalition lost power at the 2014 election. The Coalition arrangement was maintained while the two parties were in opposition.

According to The Age, between November 2018 and November 2021, the Coalition's Legislative Council members voted with the Andrews Government's position 28.9% of the time; of the parties in the Legislative Council, only the Liberal Democratic Party had a lower figure (22.1%).

Western Australia
The Country Party was the stronger coalition partner from the 1933 state election to the 1947 state election, although the Coalition did not form government during this period. Western Australia has never had a premier from the Country/National Party.

In May 1949, the Liberal and Country League was formed to attempt to merge Country Party (then called County Democratic League or CDL) and Liberal Party together. This did not eventuate and the CDL did not join the new party.

The National Party was in Coalition with the Liberal Party government from 1993 to 2001 (see Hendy Cowan), but the Coalition was subsequently broken. In 2008, the Liberals under Colin Barnett, the Nationals under Brendon Grylls, and independent John Bowler formed a minority government after the 2008 election. However, it was not characterised as a "traditional coalition", with limited cabinet collective responsibility for National cabinet members. Tony Crook was elected as the WA Nationals candidate for the seat of O'Connor at the 2010 federal election. Although some reports initially counted Crook as a National MP, and thus part of the Coalition, Crook sat as a crossbencher.

The Liberals won enough seats for a majority in their own right in the 2013 state election, but Barnett had announced before the election that he would retain the coalition with the Nationals. However, Barnett would have likely had to keep the Nationals in his government in any event. According to the ABC's Antony Green, the rural weighting in the Legislative Council all but forces the WA Liberals to depend on National support even when the Liberals have enough support to govern alone. The Barnett government was heavily defeated at the 2017 state election, and the two parties went their separate ways with Liberal Party being the sole opposition party.

In the 2021 election, the Liberal Party ended up winning fewer seats than the National Party, headed by Mia Davies, with the National Party gaining opposition status and Davies becoming the first Nationals opposition leader since 1947. Following the election, the Liberal Party and Nationals Party entered into a formal alliance to form opposition, with National Party being the senior party and the Liberal Party being the junior party in the alliance. Shadow ministerial positions were also held by parliamentary members of both parties. This was similar to the agreements between both parties when they were in government following the 2008 and 2013 elections. Similar to the 2008 and 2013 agreements, the deputy leader of the senior party, Nationals deputy leader Shane Love, was the deputy opposition leader, instead of the leader of the junior party, Liberal Party leader David Honey. Under the alliance, each party maintained their independence, and could speak out on issues when there was a disagreement with their partner.

Territories

 * Australian Capital Territory: The National Party is not affiliated in the Australian Capital Territory, leaving the Liberal Party as the sole major non-Labor party in the territory.
 * Northern Territory: The two parties' branches in the Northern Territory merged in 1974, forming the Country Liberal Party. The CLP governed the Territory from 1974 to 2001 and from 2012 to 2016. The CLP retains full voting rights within the federal National Party, and has observer status with the federal Liberal Party. The CLP directs its federal members of the House and Senate whether to sit with the federal Liberals or Nationals. In practice, since the mid-1980s, CLP House members have sat with the Liberals while CLP Senators sit with the Nationals. For example, Natasha Griggs sat with the Liberals when she held the Darwin-area seat of Solomon from 2010 to 2016. CLP Senator Nigel Scullion was the leader of the Nationals in the Senate from 2007 to 2008, when he was succeeded by Barnaby Joyce. He was the federal deputy leader of the Nationals, alongside Truss, from 2007 to 2013. Joyce became federal Nationals deputy leader after his successful transition to the House of Representatives at the 2013 election, and Scullion returned as the Nationals Senate leader.

title: Coalition (Australia)


text:
Monocrete construction

Monocrete is a building construction method utilising modular bolt-together pre-cast concrete wall panels.

Monocrete construction was widely used in the construction of government housing in the 1940s and 1950s in Canberra, Australia. The expansion of the new capital was exceeding the ability of the Government to build houses, so alternative construction methods were investigated.

The Canberra monocrete homes are built on brick piers and surrounding brick footing. All of the walls are of monocrete construction including interior ones. They are precast with steel windows and door frames set directly into the concrete. Steel plates in the ceiling space bolt the individual wall panels together. The floor and roof are of normal construction - wood and tile respectively. The gaps between the wall panels are filled with a flexible gap-filling compound and covered with tape on the interior. It has been suggested that the panels tend to move separately to one another, opening up cracks in between them, and that the houses also tend to be susceptible to condensation build up and mold growth on the inside of the walls.

A similar technique is used in the construction of some modern commercial buildings.

title: Monocrete construction


text:
Southern Musical Convention

The Southern Musical Convention was the first Sacred Harp musical convention, organized by B. F. White and others in 1845. It was formed at Huntersville in Upson County, Georgia.

From its founding until 1867, White's The Sacred Harp was the "textbook" of the convention. It was a collection of songs notated by shape notes and featuring four-part harmonies. Shape-note singing had been taught by preachers and missionaries during the second Great Awakening, as a way of evangelizing to people on the frontier and in rural areas. They would collect at camp meetings and spend considerable time singing these hymns. The shape notes were an eight-note system used as an easy way to teach people melodies and harmonies for singing sacred music.

After 1867, the Convention adopted a policy of using other song books. It gradually had less influence in the history of Sacred Harp. Under White's leadership, the Southern Musical Convention sponsored three revisions of the Sacred Harp (1850, 1859, 1869). The 1849-1850 committee consisted of B. F. White, Leonard P. Breedlove, E. L. King, Joel King, R. F. M. Mann, A. Ogletree, S. R. Pennick and J. R. Turner. The second revision committee of the Sacred Harp in 1858-1859 consisted of B. F. White, R. F. Ball, J. T. Edmunds, A. Ogletree, E. T. Pound, J. P Reese, T. Waller, and A. S. Webster. The Southern Musical Convention selected White, Edmund Dumas, R. F. M. Mann, Absalom Ogletree and Marion Patrick as the committee to revise the Sacred Harp in 1869–1870.

Not only did the convention provide a gathering for vocal musicians, but it also created an authoritative body to approve of teachers for singing schools. In January 1852, the Convention authorized a newspaper, The Organ, which was published at Hamilton, Georgia the county seat of Harris County. B. F. White was "Superintendent" of the publication.

The Southern Musical Convention supplied the pattern for many subsequent Sacred Harp musical organizations. These included the two oldest existing Sacred Harp Conventions: the Chattahoochee Musical Convention and the East Texas Musical Convention.

title: Southern Musical Convention


text:
Miss Australia

Miss Australia was an Australian beauty pageant held from 1908 until 2000. It was replaced by Miss World Australia from 2002, and Miss Universe Australia from 2004. From 1926 to 1991 the program operated as the Miss Australia Quest, after which the name was changed to the Miss Australia Awards to reflect changing community attitudes.

From 1954, the contest was associated with the Spastic Centres of Australia. The winner of Miss Australia raised money for the centres through her family and friends, raising money for children and adults with cerebral palsy. The Miss Australia Quest was sponsored and organised from 1954 until the early 1960s by the lingerie manufacturer, Hickory, until Dowd Associates transferred ownership to the Australian Cerebral Palsy Association in 1963.

The pearl-encrusted Miss Australia crown was worn by titleholders from 1965 to 1991. The crown was hand-crafted in silver and blue velvet, and decorated with more than 800 pearls. Designed by Melbourne artist Ernest Booth and manufactured in Japan, the crown was presented to the Miss Australia Quest in 1965 by Toyomoto Australia Pty Ltd. The crown was last used in 1991, and is held at the National Museum of Australia.

History
The first Miss Australia contest was held in 1908 as a one-off event sponsored through the Lone Hand, with entrants from New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. The winner was Alice Buckridge from Victoria. The primary purpose of the contest was "to attract customers: whether they were newspaper readers, patrons at an amusement venue or visitors to a country fair" (Saunders and Ustinoff, 2005:4)

The Miss Australia contests of 1926 and 1927 were sponsored by Smith's Weekly magazine and Union Theatres, with heats from each State, and were straightforward beauty contests, judged by an anonymous panel from the staff of the magazine and associated publications. Miss Australia 1937 was again sponsored by Smith's Weekly and again had heats in each State, but judging criteria were far broader, and the judging panel comprised prominent women. The prizes for the first two centred around screen tests and an escorted trip to the movie capitals of America. The 1937 prize was a chaperoned first-class travel world tour which included London for the Coronation season. Smith's Weekly was not involved in later Quests.

In 1953, the contest was revised by Bernard J. Dowd to promote the American Hickory lingerie that he marketed in Australia. A panel of Hickory-appointed judges in each state selected a winner based on photos sent it by young women, and then a national panel of Hickory-appointed judges chose the winner, Miss Australia.

In 1954, Colin Clay of the Queensland Spastic Welfare League asked Hickory if the Miss Australia competition could be used as a fundraiser for the league. Hickory agreed and from then on the contestants raised money for the league. Each state branch of the league would conduct its own contest to find a state winner, known as Miss Queensland, Miss New South Wales, etc, based on traditional "beauty contest" critieria. They would also award Miss Queensland Charity Queen, Miss New South Wales Charity Queesland, etc to the young woman who raised the most money in each state. The state finalists would then compete in the national competition for Miss Australia and Miss Australia Charity Queen.

In 1963, Dowd assigned all rights to the contest to the League.

Titleholders

 * 1908 – Alice Buckridge
 * 1926 – Beryl Mills† of Geraldton, Western Australia
 * 1927 – Phyllis Von Alwyn of Launceston, Tasmania
 * 1937 – Sheila Martin of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales
 * 1946 – Rhonda Kelly
 * 1947 – Judy Gainford
 * 1948 – Beryl James
 * 1949 – Margaret Hughes
 * 1950 – 1952 No Miss Australia as a result of the dispute between Miss Australia 1949 and her chaperon.
 * 1953 – Maxine Morgan
 * 1954 – Shirley Bliss
 * 1955 – Maureen Kistle
 * 1956 – June Finlayson
 * 1957 – Helen Wood
 * 1958 – Pam Mackay
 * 1959 – Joan Stanbury
 * 1960 – Rosemary Fenton
 * 1961 – Tania Verstak
 * 1962 – Tricia Reschke
 * 1964 – Jan Taylor
 * 1965 – Carole Jackson
 * 1966 – Sue Gallie
 * 1967 – Margaret Rohan
 * 1968 – Helen Newton
 * 1969 – Suzanne McClelland
 * 1970 – Rhonda Iffland
 * 1971 – June Wright
 * 1972 - Krystyna Sztanska (Miss Victoria International)
 * 1972 – Gay Walker
 * 1973 – Michelle Downes
 * 1974 – Randy Baker
 * 1975 – Kerry Doyle
 * 1976 – Sharon Betty
 * 1977 – Francene Maras
 * 1978 – Gloria Krope
 * 1979 – Anne Sneddon
 * 1980 – Eleanor Morton
 * 1981 – Melissa Hannan / Leanne Dick
 * 1982 – Jenny Coupland
 * 1983 – Lisa Cornelius
 * 1984 – Maryanne Koznjak
 * 1985 – Maria Ridley
 * 1986 – Tracey Pearson
 * 1987 – Judi Green
 * 1988 – Caroline Lumley
 * 1989 – Lea Dickson
 * 1990 – Rebecca Noble
 * 1991 – Helena Wayth
 * 1992 – Suzanne Lee
 * 1993 – Joanne Dick
 * 1994 – Jane Bargwanna
 * 1995 – Margaret Tierney
 * 1996 – Suzanne Haward
 * 1997 – Tracy Secombe
 * 1998 – Suellen Fuller
 * 1999 – Kathryn Hay
 * 2000 – Sheree Primer

Miss Australia at International pageants
Australia is now represented by either Miss Universe Australia or Miss World Australia:

 * 1952 – Leah MacCartney
 * 1953 – Maxine Morgan (4th RU)
 * 1954 – Shirley Bliss
 * 1955 – no (Universe), Beverly Prowse (World Miss – semi-finalist)
 * 1956 – no (Universe)
 * 1957 – no (Universe), June Finlayson (Miss World)
 * 1958 – Astrid Tanda Lindholm
 * 1959 – no (Universe)
 * 1960 – no (Universe)
 * 1961 – no (Universe)
 * 1962 – no (Universe)
 * 1963 – no (Universe)
 * 1964 – Maria Luyben
 * 1965 – Pauline Verey (Miss Universe – semi-finalist), Jan Rennison (Miss World)
 * 1966 – no (Universe)
 * 1967 – no (Universe), Judy Lockey (Miss World)
 * 1968 – Lauren Jones (Miss Universe), Penelope Plummer (Miss World 1968)
 * 1969 – Joanne Barret (Miss Universe 2nd RU), Stefane Meurer (Miss World)
 * 1970 – Joan Lydia Zealand (Miss Universe-2nd RU), Valli Kemp (Miss World-Semi-finalist)
 * 1971 – Tony Suzanne Rayward (Miss Universe-1st RU), Valerie Roberts (Miss World-Semi-finalist)
 * 1972 – Kerry Anne Wells (Miss Universe 1972), Belinda Green (Miss World 1972)
 * 1973 – Susan Mainwaring (Miss Universe), Virginia Radinas (World)
 * 1974 – Yasmin May Nagy (Miss Universe-Semi-finalist), Gail Margaret Petith (World-3rd RU)
 * 1975 – Jennifer Matthews(Miss Universe), Anne Davidson (World-Semi-finalist)
 * 1976 – Julie Anne Ismay (Miss Universe-4th RU), Karen Jo Pini (Miss World-1st RU)
 * 1977 – Jill Maree Minahan(Miss Universe), Jaye-Leanne Hopewell (Miss World – finalist)
 * 1978 – Beverly Frances Pinder (Miss Universe),Denise Ellen Coward (Miss World – 2nd RU)
 * 1979 – Kerry Dunderdale (Miss Universe), Jodie Anne Day (Miss World – 3rd RU)
 * 1980 – Katrina Judith Rose Redina (Miss Universe), Linda Leigh Shepherd (Miss World)
 * 1981 – Karen Sang (Miss Universe Australia), Melissa Hannan (Miss World – finalist & Queen of Oceania)
 * 1982 – Lou-Anne Caroline Ronchi(Miss Universe & Miss International – semi-finalist), Catherine Anne Morris (Miss World – semi-finalist & Queen of Oceania)
 * 1983 – Simone Cox (Universe), Tanya Bowe (Miss World, Queen of Oceania)
 * 1984 – Donna Thelma Rudrum (Miss Universe), Lou-Anne Caroline Ronchi(Miss World – 2nd RU)
 * 1985 – Elizabeth Rowly (Miss Universe), Angelina Nasso (Miss World)
 * 1986 – Lucinda Bucat (Miss Universe & Miss International 86), Stephanie Eleanor Andrews (Miss World)
 * 1987 – Jennine Susan Leonarder(Miss Universe), Vanessa Gibson (Miss International – semi-finalist), Donna Thelma Rudrum (Miss World)
 * 1988 – Vanessa Gibson (Miss Universe), Catherine Bushell (Miss World – Semi-finalist & Queen of Oceania)
 * 1989 – Karen Wenden (Miss Universe, Miss Photogenic), Natalie McCurry (Semi-finalist & Queen of Oceania)
 * 1990 – Charmaine Ware (Miss Universe), Karina Brown (Miss World)
 * 1991 – no (Universe), Leanne Buckle (Miss World-1st RU & Queen of Oceania)
 * 1992 – Georgina Denahy (Miss Universe-Semi-finalist), Rebecca Simic (Miss World)
 * 1993 – Voni Delfos (Miss Universe-finalist) Karen Ann Carwin (Miss World)
 * 1994 – Michelle van Eimeren (Miss Universe), Skye Edwards (Miss World)
 * 1995 – Jacqueline Shooter (Miss Universe), Melissa Porter (Miss World – semi-finalist)
 * 1996 – Jodie McMullen (Miss Universe), Nicole Smith (Miss World)
 * 1997 – Laura Csortan (Miss Universe-, Miss Amity & Miss world – semi-finalist)
 * 1998 – Renee Henderson (Miss Universe), Sarah Jane St.Clair (Miss World)
 * 1999 – Michelle Shead (Miss Universe), Kathryn Hay (Miss World)
 * 2000 – Samantha Frost (Miss Universe), Renee Henderson (Miss World)
 * 2001 – no (Miss Universe), Eva Milic (Miss World), Christy Anderson (Miss Earth)
 * 2002 – Sarah Davies (Miss Universe), Nicole Gazal (Miss Australia World – semi-finalist), Ineke Candice Leffers (Miss Earth)
 * 2003 – Ashlea Talbot (Miss Universe), Olivia Stratton (Miss Australia World – winner; Miss World People's Choice), Shivaune Christina Field(Miss Earth)
 * 2004 – Jennifer Hawkins (Miss Universe 2004), Sarah Davies (Miss Australia World – semi-finalist), Alethea Lindsay (Miss World Australia runner up), Shenevelle Dickson (Miss Earth – finalist)
 * 2005 – Michelle Guy (Miss Universe), Alethea Lindsay (Miss Universe Australia runner up), Denae Brunow (Miss Australia World), Ann Maree Bowdler (Miss Earth)
 * 2006 – Erin McNaught (Miss Universe), Sabrina Houssami (Miss Australia World – 2nd runner up, Miss Asia Pacific World), Victoria Winter (Miss Earth)
 * 2007 – Kimberley Busteed (Miss Universe), Caroline Pemberton (Miss Australia World), Victoria Stewart (Miss Earth)
 * 2008 – Laura Dundovic (Miss Universe- top 10 finalist), Katie Richardson (Miss Australia World), Rachael Smith (Miss Earth),
 * 2009 – Rachael Finch (Universe – 3rd runner up), Sophie Lavers (Miss Australia World – Miss World Talent 2009 3rd runner up)
 * 2010 – Jesinta Franklin (Universe – 2nd Runner up), Ashleigh Francis (Miss Australia World)
 * 2011 – Scherri-Lee Biggs (Universe – top 10 finalists), Amber Greasley (Miss World Australia – Miss World quarter finalist)
 * 2012 – Renae Ayris (Universe – 3rd Runner up), Jessica Kahawaty (Miss Australia World – Miss World 2nd runner up)
 * 2013 – Olivia Wells (Miss Universe), Erin Holland (Miss World Australia – Miss World Oceania), Kelly Louise Maguire (Miss Grand Australia- Miss Grand International 4th runner up).
 * 2014 – Tegan Martin, (Universe – top 10 finalists); Courtney Thorpe (Miss World Australia – Miss World Oceania – top 5); Renera Thompson (Miss Grand Australia- Miss Grand International 3rd runner up).
 * 2015 – Monika Radulovic, (Universe – top 5 finalists); Tess Alexander (Miss World Australia – Miss World Oceania – top 11); Claire Elizabeth Parker (Miss Grand Australia- Miss Grand International Winner).
 * 2016 – Caris Tiivel (Miss Universe), Madeline Cowe (Miss World Australia – Top 20); Dani Fitch (Miss Grand Australia- Miss Grand International Top 20 finalist)

Australia at Miss Global
Color keys : Declared as Winner

Exhibition
In 2007, a National Museum of Australia exhibition, Miss Australia: A Nation's Quest, told the stories of titleholders, volunteers, fundraisers and sponsors involved in the Miss Australia Quest. Historic dresses, trophies and crowns were also included in the exhibition.

title: Miss Australia


text:
Talk:România liberă

Am I correct that this is the same publication that Corneliu Vadim Tudor edited during the 1970s? The article on Tudor says he edited România Liberă, but calls it a "magazine". I am wondering if this is an error in the article on Tudor, or if there was a weekly magazine as part of the newspaper or what?

Also, I'd expect that there is a good story (which I don't know) about the transition of România Liberă at the end of the Communist era. -- Jmabel 02:47, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Romania libera front page.png
Image:Romania libera front page.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 19:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Romania libera.png
Image:Romania libera.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 19:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Inconsistency in dates?
Infobox says this paper was founded 1877, but the text says 1943. Why the inconsistency? 0x0077BE (talk) 19:01, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * There was a newspaper with this name founded in 1877 that died by 1890. The current newspaper has no connection with it, being the direct successor of a WW2 underground paper that for over 50 years never claimed the history of the 1877-1890 instance... In recent years the newspaper's marketing strategists decided to appropriate also that part of history (mainly because the actual origins don't fit the current editorial position). This decision was also enforced on Wikipedia by SPI . I am going to repair the article in order to make it compatible with verifiable historical facts.Anonimu (talk) 19:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:România liberă


text:
Talk:Koʻolau Range

Will the person who keeps adding in stuff about the caldera floor and La‘ie please either read-up on the geology of O‘ahu or provide credible sources. These additions are not facts supported by geologists, covering a subject well known since at least as far back as the 1920-30's.

3rd reference not working
title — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cpt5mann (talk • contribs) 08:02, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Koʻolau Range


text:
List of NJ Transit railroad stations

NJ Transit Rail Operations provides passenger service on 12 lines at a total of 166 stations, some operated in conjunction with Amtrak and Metro-North Railroad (MNR).

NJ Transit Rail Operations (NJTR) was established by NJ Transit (NJT) to run commuter rail operations in New Jersey. In January 1983 it took over operation from Conrail, which itself had been formed in 1976 through the merger of a number of financially troubled railroads and had been operating commuter railroad service under contract from the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT). Soon after its creation, NJT commissioned a survey of operating stations, 53 of which were eventually nominated and listed on the state and federal registers of historic places in 1984. Since 2009, NJT is a stakeholder in the state's "smart growth" transit-oriented development initiatives, its transit hubs forming the basis for transit villages.

The regional rail network, which serves the northern and central parts of New Jersey and Rockland and Orange counties in New York, radiates from Hoboken Terminal in Hoboken, Pennsylvania Station in Midtown Manhattan, and Pennsylvania Station in Newark. Lines intersect at Secaucus Junction. Service from Atlantic City to Center City, Philadelphia is provided by one line separate from the rest of the NJT system, though SEPTA Regional Rail service connects Philadelphia and Trenton. Amtrak provides service in New Jersey along the Northeast Corridor (NEC) between Newark and Trenton and at intermediate points.

Since its inception, NJT has closed several stations and opened new ones reflecting infrastructure improvements and discontinuance or additions in service. Some station locations, not listed here, became part of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail and the River Line, both of which were largely built along existing railroad rights-of-way. New and re-opened stations are being built or proposed along planned expansions and extensions, notably the Lackawanna Cut-Off, which is under reconstruction. Restoration of passenger service along the West Trenton Line, Monmouth-Ocean-Middlesex project right-of-ways, and the Raritan Valley/Lehigh Line, which include the reactivation/construction of new stations, have all been considered but not advanced.

Historic register listings
In 1981, NJT commissioned the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) to conduct a study of 112 train stations under its jurisdiction built before World War II that were still in operation. Many of thematic nomination stations are listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places (ID#5080) on March 17, 1984. The SHPO recommended that fifty-three stations, some of which had already been listed, be included in a thematic nomination for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Forty stations were added on June 22, 1984 and the remainder added on September 29, 1984. (#64000496) Most were along former lines and heritage railroads that had become part of NJT, while West Trenton Station is used by SEPTA.

The oldest station building, built in 1868 at the Ramsey-Main Street station, was not listed. The oldest active station to be listed on NRHP was Hackensack's 1869-built Anderson Street station, until it was destroyed in a fire and explosion in 2009, and thus was delisted. Proposals to revive service on the West Trenton Line and Lackawanna Cut-Off include the re-use of some listed stations in both New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania.

Two significant individually-listed historic stations include Newark Pennsylvania Station and Hoboken Terminal, both of which are major stations that also serve as terminals for light rail, PATH subway trains, and in the case of Hoboken, ferries across the Hudson River to Pier 11 at Wall Street and the Battery Park City Ferry Terminal.

Transit villages
The NJDOT established the Transit Village Initiative in 1999 to promote transit-oriented development (TOD), offering multi-agency assistance and grants to municipalities for projects which fulfill certain conditions to promote higher density development and use of public transportation within a 1 mile radius of a transit hub, specifying appropriate mixed land-use strategy, available property, station-area management, and commitment to affordable housing, job growth/maintenance, and cultural activities. Transit village development must also preserve the architectural integrity of historically significant buildings and the landscape. , the state had made 30 transit village designations, many of which are centered around "Main Street" or central business district train stations. Since 2008, there has been significant population growth and increased ridership in neighborhoods around stations.

Operated by others
Metro-North Railroad's West-of-Hudson service is operated by NJ Transit. NJ Transit owns the Pascack Valley Line right-of-way (ROW) and stations, which are leased to Metro-North. On the Port Jervis Line north of Suffern, Metro-North owns or leases the ROW under an agreement with Norfolk Southern Railway and operates the stations. Two SEPTA Regional Rail lines terminate at stations in New Jersey, one of which is not served NJ Transit.

NJ Transit and Metro-North also operated a joint Train to the Game service for football games at the Meadowlands Sports Complex with stops at New Haven, West Haven, Bridgeport, Fairfield, Fairfield Metro, Westport, South Norwalk, Darien, Stamford, Greenwich, Rye, and Larchmont on the New Haven Line.

Proposed and future stations
Between 2008 and 2016, New Jersey Transit added four infill stations on existing lines. , one additional infill station is planned.

Several other lines are proposed for restoration. Parts of the Lackawanna Cut-Off Restoration Project in New Jersey have been implemented and there are proposals to extend the line west and into northeastern Pennsylvania. Restoration of service along the West Trenton Line between West Trenton (with connecting service to SEPTA's West Trenton Line) and Bridgewater where it would junction with the Raritan Valley Line (RVL) has been proposed, but not advanced. Extension of the Raritan Valley Line in connection with the Lehigh Line into Lehigh County, Pennsylvania has also been considered.

Former stations
NJ Transit has closed numerous stations since its inception due to realignments in service or low ridership.

title: List of NJ Transit railroad stations