Some people are born as men, but feel like a woman; some feel like both a man and a woman; and some feel neither man nor woman. Similarly, there are people who are born as women, but feel like a men, ...etcetera. For these people, their birth gender and gender identity do not (completely) correspond. The Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP) studied the lives of these so-called transgender persons. 459 transgender persons filled out an online questionnaire between September 2011 and April 2012. Half the respondents knew before the age of 10 that their gender identity did not correspond with their birth gender. Almost a third of the respondents are still (mainly) living in the closet. Negative reactions are quite common. And compared with the rest of the Dutch population, transgender persons are much more often declared unfit for work and suffer much more often from mental health problems.
Much empirical research has demonstrated correlations between Total Quality Management and performance, usually within companies. This article focuses on schools for secondary education in the ...Netherlands. It researched whether the assessment of their quality management systems by the Inspectorate of Education can predict future financial and operational (educational) performance. This led to the following conclusions. The present method of assessment of the inspectorate covers only three of six relevant dimensions of an assessment model like the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence Framework. Especially the Human Resource Focus is lacking from the assessments. Perhaps because of that, the usefulness of the assessment for the prediction of future results, is limited. Financial results cannot be predicted in this way. With regard to educational results, only the systematic analysis of students' results has some predictive power.
In the Netherlands penal interventions aimed at the reduction of recidivism are progressively executed according to the 'what works' approach, a research tradition that tries to articulate the ...conditions under which penal interventions can be effective in preventing offenders to relapse into crime. The ideas on 'what works' originate from international studies, but what about the Dutch research itself? Which interventions have proved to be successful in the Netherlands and which have had adverse results? The WODC has carried out a meta-analysis of all relevant studies that have been published in the Netherlands and the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium since the early seventies of the previous century. 141 evaluations were identified, 83 of which contained some sort of comparison with a control group. Results indicate that programmes aimed at adult offenders were more successful than interventions for youth and young adults. Programmes based on the idea of rehabilitation appeared to have been more successful than sanctions based on deterrence.
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