Re‐framing the Analysis: A 3‐dimensional Perspective of Prisoners’ Children's Well‐being

This article highlights three dimensions to understanding children's well‐being during and after parental imprisonment which have not been fully explored in current research. A consideration of ‘time’ reveals the importance of children's past experiences and their anticipated futures. A focus on ‘space’ highlights the impact of new or altered environmental dynamics. A study of ‘agency’ illuminates how children cope within structural, material and social confines which intensify vulnerability and dependency. This integrated perspective reveals important differences in individual children's experiences and commonalities in broader systemic and social constraints on prisoners’ children. The paper analyses data from a prospective longitudinal study of 35 prisoners’ children during and after their (step) father's imprisonment to illustrate the arguments.     

A majorization comparison of apportionment methods in proportional representation

From the inception of the proportional representation movement it has been an issue whether larger parties are favored at the expense of smaller parties in one apportionment of seats as compared to another apportionment. A number of methods have been proposed and are used in countries with a proportional representation system. These apportionment methods exhibit a regularity of order, as discussed in the present paper, that captures the preferential treatment of larger versus smaller parties. This order, namely majorization, permits the comparison of seat allocations in two apportionments. For divisor methods, we show that one method is majorized by another method if and only if their signpost ratios are increasing. This criterion is satisfied for the divisor methods with power-mean rounding, and for the divisor methods with stationary rounding. Majorization places the five traditional apportionment methods in the order as they are known to favor larger parties over smaller parties: Adams, Dean, Hill, Webster, and Jefferson. Received: 5 August 2000/Accepted: 24 October 2001     

Older disabled workers' perceptions of volunteering

The activity of volunteering is readily available to, and undertaken by, able-bodied people in Australia and is recognized as a valuable social pursuit, particularly among citizens of retirement age. Despite the known benefits of volunteering, however, there are few reports of disabled people participating as volunteers and little is understood of their experiences or perceptions of volunteering. The aim of this study was to explore how older workers within supported employment settings perceived the opportunities for and barriers to volunteering. Fourteen people with long-standing impairments participated in this small qualitative study. Overall the participants were positive about volunteering, but noted they might require support to volunteer successfully. Drawing upon the participants' views, recommendations are made for developing training. Disabled workers facing retirement need to be supported to have opportunities for active participation in the community as volunteers if so desired.     

The expressive and communicative functions of preschool children's smiles in an achievement-situation

Two studies examined how different social contexts determine whether preschoolers' smiles in an achievement-game serve an expressive function indicating success versus failure experiences and/or a communicative function. Facial behavior was coded with the Facial Action Coding System. Unexpectedly, in Study 1 children (N=19) smiled more often after failure than after success. Study 2 investigated the influence of face-to-face contact with the experimenter on preschoolers' smiles (N=20). However, there were no differences between success and failure, but with face-to-face contact subjects exhibited more smiles than without. Features of the social situation that are supposed to determine the predominance of the communicative or expressive function of a smile are discussed.We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Detlef Friedrich and Katja Johann in the data collection and Signe Preuschoft in coding and analyzing the data.     

Economics of Radiation Protection: Equity Considerations

In order to implement cost-benefit analysis of protective actions to reduce radiological exposures, one needs to attribute a monetary value to the avoided exposure. Recently, the International Commission on Radiological Protection has stressed the need to take into consideration not only the collective exposure to ionising radiation but also its dispersion in the population. In this paper, by using some well known and some recent results in the economics of uncertainty, we discuss how to integrate these recommendations in the valuation of the benefit of protection.