The Role of Financial Fragility and Financial Control for Well-Being

Social Indicators Research - Financial fragility is recognized as a substantial issue for individual well-being. Various estimates show that between 46 and 59% of American adults are financially...     

Spatial Distribution of Flood Risk and Quality of Spatial Management: Case Study in Odra Valley,Poland

This article presents methodological solutions aimed at presenting the spatial distribution of flood risk and quality of spatial management (land use), indicating both those areas used reasonably and those requiring modification. The purpose was to identify key risk areas and risk‐free areas from the point of view of human security and activity on the floodplains, based on the examples of the vicinities of Wroclaw and Raciborz in the Odra Valley, Poland. Due to recent climate change, Poland has suffered the effects of severe flooding (e.g., 1997, 2001, 2010). The analyses conducted were motivated by the European Parliament and Council's recently implemented Directive 2007/60/WE, as well as by the demand for studies for local spatial planning. The analysis indicates that reasonably developed areas do not account for the majority of those studied, making up 36% of the Wroclaw area and 15% of the Raciborz area.     

A systematic review of education for the prevention of HIV/AIDS among older adults

Through a comprehensive literature search, the authors of this systematic review identified 21 articles focused on primary prevention of HIV/AIDS for adults aged 50 and over. Three major challenges to providing HIV/AIDS education for older adults include health professionals' ageism, older adults' reluctance to discuss sexuality, and their misconception of their HIV risk. Clinical guidelines for social workers, nurses, and physicians identified the importance of sharing information and assessing risk, considering cultural diversity, and devising creative delivery strategies. Three models of HIV/AIDS education include group education programs delivered by social workers or other health professionals, peer education models, and one-on-one early intervention models including HIV/AIDS testing. Additional outreach and research on HIV/AIDS prevention among older adults is needed.     

Knowledge transfer of the Western concept of quality

This paper addresses one of the issues in contemporary globalization theory: the extent to which there is 'one best way' in which business can be conducted and organizations managed. It uses Czarniawska's 'travels of ideas' model as an organizing framework to present and understand how the concept of 'quality', so important in contemporary approaches to manufacturing and services, and their management, travelled to, and impinged on, a newly opened vehicle assembly plant in Poland. The extent to which new meanings were mutually created in the process of translation is discussed, using ethnographic reporting and analysis techniques commonly used in diffusion research. Parallels between the process of translation as an idea becomes embedded into a new cultural location and the processes which contemporary research has identified as important to organizational learning are briefly discussed in conclusion.     

Probabilistic Inversion in Priority Setting of Emerging Zoonoses

This article presents methodology of applying probabilistic inversion in combination with expert judgment in priority setting problem. Experts rank scenarios according to severity. A linear multi‐criteria analysis model underlying the expert preferences is posited. Using probabilistic inversion, a distribution over attribute weights is found that optimally reproduces the expert rankings. This model is validated in three ways. First, consistency of expert rankings is checked, second, a complete model fitted using all expert data is found to adequately reproduce observed expert rankings, and third, the model is fitted to subsets of the expert data and used to predict rankings in out‐of‐sample expert data.     

Multidimensional approach to helping emotionally abused and neglected children and abusive parents

Emotional abuse is notoriously difficult to define and, thus, to assess and operationalise for intervention purposes. This paper addresses these issues and emphasises the heterogeneous nature of emotional maltreatment, a fact that demands a multi-level, multidimensional approach to intervention. Some of the available methods for tackling the various facets of a complex social and personal problem will be outlined and discussed. Social work and other professionals involved in child care protection work may find the material provided here helpful when working with these children and families. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The outcomes of a longitudinal study of non‐organic failure‐to‐thrive

Individuals who had failed‐to‐thrive for non‐organic reasons received psychosocial intervention which was tailor‐made to their particular needs during childhood. Their progress was followed up over 20 years later, including their physical growth and social and cognitive functioning. Not all clients showed the same outcomes. The quality of the parental relationship and the reason for the growth‐faltering were found to be related to the outcomes at 20 years. Unless they experienced a positive and sustained change in their life or circumstances, individuals who had experienced abuse showed poorer outcomes than those whose growth‐faltering had been thought due to neglect, lack of parenting or feeding dif?culties. Abuse tended to be a contributing factor to growth‐faltering more frequently in families where the parents were observed to have a poor relationship with each other. However, a signi?cant change in the quality of care given to the child and the emotional environment experienced by them resulted in positive outcomes 20 years later despite experiencing abuse during childhood. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Continuing Legacy of the Communist Legacy? The development of family policies in Poland and the Czech Republic

This article compares family policies in Poland and the CzechRepublic in order to explain why the two countries have differentpolicies. Previous studies are right to claim that post-communistfamily policies are basically going in a refamilialist directionthat gives mothers a greater incentive to return to the home,but they tend to neglect the important differences that existbetween countries. Although previous studies were correct toemphasize the role of the anti-feminist communist legacy inexplaining this trend toward re-famialilization, it is a country'seconomic-institutional legacy that goes the farthest in explainingthe differences in policies.     

The “ugly” face of social investment? The politics of childcare in Central and Eastern Europe

In this article, we aim to understand the development dynamics of a specific area of social investment (SI), that is, childcare policies, in the context of postcommunist politics and the recent right-wing turn that took place in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. This article identifies varieties of channels for promoting SI. First, in taking the perspective of the “mixed economy of welfare,” we argue that attempts made to introduce elements of SI to the childcare policies involved various leading roles available for either the private sector or state/public domain. Second, it is important to distinguish between implicit/unintended and explicit/intended projects both in relation to cases in which SI strategy is applied via marketization/privatization and when it involves a government-led project. Third, we take into account the politics of SI implementation that might involve applying certain principles central to policy concepts (such as “investment”) in justifying policy instruments incompatible with original ideas. Although arguments about SI have been extensively used by Eastern European leaders, their goal has been to justify welfare reforms that were implicitly or explicitly directed towards the middle class while excluding the “nondeserving” often based on ethnic identity. We characterize Poland as a case of “implicit marketization,” the Czech Republic as a case of “explicit privatization,” and the Hungarian version of SI as a case of “explicit public dualization.” In this, we show that in some cases, the implementation of SI approaches by right-wing populist parties might rear its “ugly” head.     

The Index of Household Financial Condition,Combining Subjective and Objective Indicators: An Appraisal of Italian Households

With data from the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth, we present an Index of Household Financial Condition and quantify with it the position of households between 2004 and 2010. The Index of Household Financial Condition is composed of subjective and objective indicators, which enable to capture differently the existing uncertainty concerning the future development of a household’s financial situation. We show with a measurement model based on multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) that the proposed Index is two-dimensional and comprises financial position and financial prudence. Through application of the MGCFA, we show that the interrelations between the indicators had not changed at four measurement occasions (2004–2010), and thus the proposed set comprises a coherent and time-invariant framework for measuring two dimensions of the latent concept: financial condition. Established measurement invariance in the MGCFA framework allows an assessment of trend in financial position and financial prudence of Italian households. We show that the financial position of Italian households improved in the period 2004–2006 and later declined. Improvement of the financial prudence was observed, however, till 2008. Finally, we incorporate a set of socioeconomic features of Italian households into a structural equation model. With the provided set of indicators, we find positive relation between age and both financial position and prudence, but also we show the positive impact of white-collar jobs on scores in each of the dimensions of the financial condition.