Use of Technology in Delivering Career Services Worldwide

The authors review the trends in the use of computers in the delivery and support of career guidance and counseling identified at the symposium International Perspectives on Career Development. The papers presented emphasized that 20th‐century computer‐based systems continue to be used, mainly delivered via the World Wide Web. These systems are enhanced through audio, video, graphics, strategies to provide needs assessment, and support by cybercounselors or expert system design. The papers also revealed a new trend: the use of elegant Web sites to store and search immense libraries of resources needed by professionals and clients and to facilitate communication and collaboration among professionals in cyberspace. Concerns, issues, and resources related to many areas, including the readiness of clients to use computer‐based systems, were also raised; existing sources of guidelines are noted.     

The econometrics of female labor supply and children

This is a survey of applied econometric research on the effects of children on female labor supply. Reasons for interest in the topic, and a basic model and terminology, are reviewed. Concerns are raised about the possible endogeneity of child status variables, and about the instrumental variables approach for dealing with this problem. Alternative ways of conceptualizing and estimating child status effects are considered, together with selected empirical evidence. Relevant developments from the household demand literature are summarized. Basic issues of model choice are also discussed.     

Ninth-Grade Students' Attitudes Toward Nontraditional Occupations

This study explored how students choose careers, their attitudes toward vocational education, and whether or not they would consider enrolling in a nontraditional vocational education program.     

Partner Choice and the Differential Retreat From Marriage

The contemporary retreat from marriage in the United States has had a differential impact across socioeconomic and racial groups. Here, 1990 marriage rates and propensities for Virginia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin are analyzed regarding (a) the likelihood that persons in different groups ever marry and (b) patterns of partner choice with respect to race and educational level. Marriage remains strong in most race‐education groups but is substantially lower among Blacks and among those with less than 12 years of education. Patterns of partner choice have shifted to show greater symmetry between the educational levels of brides and grooms. Changes have been modest with regard to the level and pattern of interracial (Black‐White) marriage. Marriage is increasingly a union of equals, but a union chosen more by Whites than by Blacks and more by the well educated than by the poorly educated.     

Poland's crisis and East European socialism

Conclusion We began this article by asking whether the Polish crisis is a socialist or a Polish disease. By citing the structural factors, we brought out the common difficulties affecting all East European societies in their political and economic development. These difficulties arose out of the transition from extensive to intensive economic growth and the consequent need to replace political mobilization of the population with their political integration. The structural contradictions occurred together with conjunctural developments in the world economy, the collapse of detente, the post-war demographic explosion, and natural calamities. Poland was least able to cope with these structural and conjunctural dynamics. The result was a society united on a national basis in its conflicts with the Party State apparatus. This conflict was never resolved by Solidarity nor by the subsequent military coup.While Poland and Romania had quite similar structural and conjunctural dynamics, it was only in Poland that the constellation of nation-specific factors yielded a societal reaction of system-threatening character. Looking at the rest of Eastern Europe, we do not see a similar constellation of factors. Rather, the combination of structural, conjunctural, and specific conditions has prevented the deeper contradictions from evolving into Solidarity-type mass movements of the Polish variety. Thus, we believe that the Polish developments will not be replicated in any of the other East European countries in the foreseeable future.Does this mean that the Polish experience is so unique that it is without relevance for the other East European states? On the contrary, the recognition of common structural problems points to fundamental conflicts in all the countries of actually existing socialism. The essence of these conflicts may be the same. It is the ability to identify and deal with them that distinguishes one East European regime from another. This ability varies with the specific and conjunctural factors as applied to each country. While there is little likelihood that the Polish disease will spread, this is partly because the other East European states are beginning to take preventive measures. In other words, they are learning from the Polish experience.There are several indicators that these regimes have learned from the Polish crisis. We can summarize them in the following predictions:First, we believe that state power and the repressive apparatus of the various East European countries will be reinforced and made more effective. This applies not so much to overt shows of force but to more sophisticated methods of social control and repression: e.g., limiting information channels, dispersing dissident groups, giving in to workers protests before they spread, taking practical measures to prevent consumer shortages from getting out of hand, and the like.Second, we can expect that oppositional forces, especially intellectuals, will be increasingly restricted in their ability to formulate and articulate system-threatening demands. The East European states will take any measures - jail, slander, internal deportation, cooptation, forced emigration - to make sure that intellectuals' contact with workers is weakened or at least strictly supervised.Third, we can expect the Eastern European states to take further measures to integrate potential system-threatening movements into the official system. We will see further attempts to improve the access possibilities for those social interests that have up to now been neglected, e.g. in physical and social infrastructures, neglected regions. Moreover, there will be renewed efforts to make the system of political socialization (education, propaganda, culture) more effective. Finally, we can expect anti-corruption campaigns within the State, Party, and industrial bureaucracies as the elites attempt to make these organs more legitimate in the eyes of the population.In recent months there seems to be considerable evidence that the East European regimes have taken all these measures. There have been attempts to re-invigorate the official trade unions. Yuri Andropov's succession was marked by a highly publicized anti-corruption campaign designed to win favor among rank-and-file workers. In Romania there have been exhortations towards more self-sufficiency and self-management, so that individual producers will be less dependent on State retail outlets, and the country less dependent on costly foreign imports. The reduction in East-West trade and decline of detente have also given more leeway for the East European repressive apparatus to crack down on dissidents and oppositional movements.With reduced trade, the economic benefits of detente no longer exist as a restraining factor on the authorities. The West now has reduced influence on domestic politics in East Europe. The combination of integration and repressive measures has so far prevented the structural contradictions from growing into true political crises of the Polish variety. Eastern Europe (and Poland) is remarkably quiet.With the broad enthusiasm fostered in the West by the rise of Solidarity, it is understandable that its brutal demise had generated parallel feelings of disillusionment. It would be erroneous to consider the Polish events as an archetype for Eastern Europe. The problems of East European regimes reflect a general system crisis (economic and political), each country's response depends on specific local conditions and fortuitous conjunctures. If the Polish events are to be understood, they must be explained as a variant in a larger East European context.Having concentrated on the crisis aspects in Poland and Romania should not blind us from the fact that these systems have an amazing ability to reproduce themselves - to muddle through. Actually existing socialism is more than simply brute force. Each of the East European societies exhibits a complex dialectic between the forces of functional stability and the forces of immanent contradictions. As such, in addition to their structural aspects, we must analyze each of these societies in their differing vulnerability to conjunctural events and in their specific political, social, and cultural characters.For those who seek to replace actually existing socialism with a more emancipatory socialism, the Polish crisis constitutes a key point of departure. It should be discussed both in terms of what it means for Poland, and for Eastern Europe. The Polish events provide further evidence that the tasks of social theory reside as much in explaining why societies muddle through as why they fall apart.     

Differential predictors of academic achievement: individual and familial factor interactions with community poverty

We present an analysis of the contexts within which adolescents graduate from high school and enroll in college. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health show that adolescents’ school engagement, maternal academic monitoring, and community poverty significantly interact to explain differences in high school graduation and college enrollment rates (n?=?7100). To examine this association, we performed weighted logistic regression analyses, controlling for gender, race, block level unemployment, and block level median income. Findings suggest that protective factors can help youth overcome the challenges associated with community poverty and achieve academically in low and medium levels of poverty, but that youth in high-poverty contexts may need more resources to reach higher levels of academic attainment.     

LIMITED ASSET MARKET PARTICIPATION AND THE EURO AREA CRISIS: AN EMPIRICAL DSGE MODEL

We estimate a medium‐scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for the Euro area with limited asset market participation (LAMP). Our results suggest that in the recent European Monetary Union years LAMP is particularly sizable (39% during 1993–2012) and important to understand business cycle features. The Bayes factor and the forecasting performance show that the LAMP model is preferred to its representative household counterpart. In the representative agent model the risk premium shock is the main driver of output volatility in order to match consumption correlation with output. In the LAMP model this role is played by the investment‐specific shock, because non‐Ricardian households introduce a Keynesian multiplier effect and raise the correlation between consumption and investments. We also detect the contractionary role of monetary policy shocks during the post‐2007 years. In this period consumption of non‐Ricardian households fell dramatically, but this outcome might have been avoided by a more aggressive policy stance. (JEL C11, C13, C32, E21, E32, E37)     

Teaching Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder to Report Past Behavior With the Use of a Speech-Generating Device

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior -     

Ethnographies of Volunteering: Providing Nuance to the Links Between Volunteering and Development

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper explores how ethnographic approaches to third sector and nonprofit studies allow for context-based...     

Viewing the child as a participant within context

This paper explores tensions between the social nature of learning and the current emphasis upon individual support. The paper contrasts the focus upon context in discussions with parents and practitioners, with the focus upon the individual within formal and informal written documents. The analysis is partly situated within the first author’s experiences as a parent researcher, drawing additionally upon ethnographic research carried out with families involved in early intervention, including an evaluation of over 150 pages of documentation provided by a parent. It identifies the need for assessment and evaluation to focus upon and record the broad range of context that influences learning.