Creating a reference to a complex emergency situation using time series methods: war in Guinea-Bissau 1998-1999

Impacts of complex emergencies or relief interventions have often been evaluated by absolute mortality compared to international standardized mortality rates. A better evaluation would be to compare with local baseline mortality of the affected populations. A projection of population-based survival data into time of emergency or intervention based on information from before the emergency may create a local baseline reference. We find a log-transformed Gaussian time series model where standard errors of the estimated rates are included in the variance to have the best forecasting capacity. However, if time-at-risk during the forecasted period is known then forecasting might be done using a Poisson time series model with overdispersion. Whatever, the standard error of the estimated rates must be included in the variance of the model either in an additive form in a Gaussian model or in a multiplicative form by overdispersion in a Poisson model. Data on which the forecasting is based must be modelled carefully concerning not only calendar-time trends but also periods with excessive frequency of events (epidemics) and seasonal variations to eliminate residual autocorrelation and to make a proper reference for comparison, reflecting changes over time during the emergency. Hence, when modelled properly it is possible to predict a reference to an emergency-affected population based on local conditions. We predicted childhood mortality during the war in Guinea-Bissau 1998-1999. We found an increased mortality in the first half-year of the war and a mortality corresponding to the expected one in the last half-year of the war.     

Danish and Norwegian hospital social workers’ cross-institutional work amidst inter-sectoral restructuring of health and social welfare

Starting in the 2000s, Denmark and Norway have undergone extensive restructuring of their health-related social benefit programmes, including how they are governed. Several reforms have sought to enhance inter-sectoral collaboration. Aiming at ensuring patients’ faster return to work, policy-makers have instituted economic incentives to both individuals and the health and welfare organisations who handle them. Through an institutional logics approach, this paper explores how hospital social workers in these countries are experiencing these changes. The ‘social’ part of post-treatment care and rehabilitation receives more attention in the Norwegian institutional set-up than in the Danish, and whilst challenges are experienced in both countries, in group interviews Danish social workers in particular express concerns about the implications of the accelerated return-to-work focus. In both countries, they report increasing difficulties in ‘making their way through’ the state-municipal bureaucracy. However, by drawing on the formal health knowledge derived from medical settings and the symbolic capital it bestows on them, they often manage to negotiate the work-and-welfare services, thereby transforming the social context for the patients.     

Asymptotic Theory of Outlier Detection Algorithms for Linear Time Series Regression Models

Outlier detection algorithms are intimately connected with robust statistics that down‐weight some observations to zero. We define a number of outlier detection algorithms related to the Huber‐skip and least trimmed squares estimators, including the one‐step Huber‐skip estimator and the forward search. Next, we review a recently developed asymptotic theory of these. Finally, we analyse the gauge, the fraction of wrongly detected outliers, for a number of outlier detection algorithms and establish an asymptotic normal and a Poisson theory for the gauge.     

Populist political right opinions and political trust among Norwegian youth

Recent decades have seen the growth of various strands of right-wing populist political orientations, where populism and critique of immigration policies have been central. These ideological developments have caused concern for the legitimacy of social and political institutions. The question explored in this paper, based on Norwegian survey data, is ‘Which types of right political orientations exist among young people, and how do these political attitudes affect trust in social and political institutions?’ The results reveal the existence of both a populist ‘new right’ political orientation similar to the ideology of the Progress Party and a nativist ideology. The new right orientation contains two sets of variables: (i) economic liberalism/state scepticism and (ii) nationalist values. For trust in political institutions, the emerging picture is complex because the nationalist dimension of both the populist orientation and the nativist ideological orientation implies a high level of trust in political institutions. To the extent the new right political orientations causes mistrust, it seems to come from the liberal economic, anti-statist values included in this ideology. Based on these findings, future researchers should distinguish more clearly between the ideological dimensions going into populist political right orientations and the relationship between attitudes and more practical implications of such ideologies.     

How to Be a Good Alcoholic

Alcoholism is not one singular thing. It takes many forms, some more dignified and less destructive than others. This article explores how people drinking in the early hours of the day in bars present themselves and their relationship with alcohol and alcoholism. By means of ethnographic data, I analyze their strategies in dealing with the deviant use of alcohol. I find that the early morning drinkers use distinctions along three dimensions: managing drunkenness, taking breaks from drinking, and claiming certain motives for drinking. These distinctions are used in order to position oneself on a normative scale of different types of alcoholics.     

Workplace resources to improve both employee well-being and performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of employees in gaining and maintaining competitive advantage. The happy worker–productive worker thesis suggests that workers who experience high levels of well-being also perform well and vice versa; however, organisations need to know how to ensure such happy and productive workers. The present review and meta-analysis identifies workplace resources at the individual, the group, the leader, and the organisational levels that are related to both employee well-being and organisational performance. We examine which types of resources are most important in predicting both employee well-being and performance. We identified 84 quantitative studies published in print and online from 2003 to November 2015. Resources at either of the four levels were related to both employee well-being and performance. We found no significant differences in employee well-being and organisational performance between the four levels of workplace resources, suggesting that interventions may focus on any of these levels. Cross-sectional studies showed stronger relationships with well-being and performance than longitudinal studies. Studies using objective performance ratings provided weaker relationships between resources and performance than self-rated and leader/third-party-rated studies.     

Psychodynamic Couple Therapy: A Practical Synthesis

This essay reviews the most significant contributions of psychodynamic thought to the field of couple therapy. It distills the work of numerous clinicians and researchers who, though writing from diverse perspectives, share fundamental assumptions and concerns. Rather than emphasizing differences between schools of thought, this paper mines their best contributions in a discussion of five central therapeutic targets: underlying issues, divergent subjective experiences, transferences, projective identification, and acceptance. Two detailed cases illustrate the benefits and techniques for targeting these five therapeutic domains. Video Abstract is found in the online version of the article .     

Contingent Eclecticism

For more than a century, methodological diversity within the social sciences has been the source of recurrent paradigm wars, and no obvious winner seems to be in sight. The aim of this article is to explore the contingencies underlying this diversity. It is argued that the shared condition of complexity forces us to adopt a pragmatic perspective from which even relevant ontological and epistemological assumptions should be thought of as contextual rather than absolute. In particular, the extent to which social causality is perceived as stable and universal vs. dynamic and contextual and the extent to which research‐related reflexivity is an issue appear to set apart the different approaches. Towards the end of the article examples of methodological fit and misfit are provided to illustrate the relevancy of the “contingent eclecticism” observed in practice.     

Species richness in urban parks and its drivers: A review of empirical evidence

There is growing recognition of urban areas as hosts for innovative ways to conserve and promote biodiversity. Parks, as one specific type of urban green space, constitute particularly important biodiversity hotspots in the cityscape. We reviewed empirical findings on the species richness in urban parks across all species groups that have been studied. The aim was to assess and discuss the overall species richness of urban parks, its community attributes and drivers. Search and subsequent selection process resulted in 62 papers from 25 different countries. For all examined species groups, the findings consistently show that parks are among the most species rich types of urban green spaces, but also that exotics constitute large shares, especially of plant species. Key ecological theories like the gradient approach and the island habitat ecological theory, and fundamental ecological relationships such as the species-area relationship are valid despite the manipulated ‘nature’ of parks and the surrounding urban matrix. Most studies surveyed large number of parks and applied ‘multi-scale’ approaches in tests of confounding variables, providing methodological strength. While matrix effects are consistently found to affect species richness negatively, the diversity of habitats and microhabitat heterogeneity contained in urban parks appears as the most decisive factor for the overall species richness. However, a constraint of research to date is the limitation of individual studies to one or a few species groups, rarely bridging between flora and fauna. Adopting ‘multi-species group’ approaches in future research is needed to further advance the understanding of the overall biodiversity of urban parks, and its drivers.     

Empowered and self-managing users in methadone treatment?

Empowerment is a keyword in treatment. Users should have the means and possibilities to influence their treatment and become self-managing. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Danish methadone treatment project, we find that the practices of users and staff are often not carried out in accordance with governmental intentions. We identify a gap between the official notions of treatment and practices. We analyse the notions and practices of empowerment by applying two analytical perspectives. First, we apply a constructionist perspective in which empowerment is analysed as wanting to set users ‘free’ but also as ways to govern. We elaborate the analysis by applying a more practice-oriented focus. Drawing on this perspective, we analyse the ways in which staff and users constantly produce, construct and negotiate institutional practices that differ from the governmental intentions for treatment.