Adaptation of the short version of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-12) into Spanish / Adaptación al español de la versión reducida del Cuestionario de Capital Psicológico (PCQ-12)

Psychological capital (PsyCap) has been a topic of increasing interest in the last decade. However, there is a lack of validated instruments in Spanish to map PsyCap and its consequences for individuals’ well-being. Consequently, the goal of this study is to adapt the 12-item short version of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-12) to the Spanish context by analysing its internal consistency and reliability, factor solution and external validity. Results indicated that the PCQ-12 exhibited good Cronbach’s alpha (.87) and omega coefficient (.93) values in a sample from a vehicle inspection company (n = 798). As expected, results also revealed that a second-order factor structure provided the best fit. Moreover, PsyCap is associated with increased job engagement (β = .579; R²_adjusted = .333), decreased job burnout (β = ?.409; R²_adjusted = .166), and lower psychological distress (β = ?.349; R²_adjusted = .121) (all p < .01), which provided additional support for using the PCQ-12 in the Spanish context. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Discussion on the paper “On simulation and properties of the stable law” by L. Devroye and L. James

We congratulate the authors for the interesting paper. The reading has been really pleasant and instructive. We discuss briefly only some of the interesting results given in Devroye and James (Stat Methods Appl 2014) with particular attention to evolution problems. The contribution of the results collected in the paper is useful in a more wide class of applications in many areas of applied mathematics.     

Defining and measuring poverty in the nonmetropolitan United States using the survey of income and program Participation

Because the poor historically have been more prevalent in nonmetropolitan than metropolitan areas in the United States, issues related to poverty (including its definition and measurement) are important to nonmetropolitan people. This study uses the unique monthly data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to define poverty in different ways. How poverty is defined affects both the measured extent of nonmetropolitan poverty and the groups who are included among the nonmetropolitan poor. Regardless of how poverty is measured, however, nonmetropolitan areas have disproportionately more poor than metropolitan areas. In addition, the nonmetropolitan poor are more likely to be white, aged, disabled, and members of married-couple households than the metropolitan poor under all definitions considered. None of the definitions examined is intrinsically superior. The choice of a definition to use depends largely on the research problem under consideration.     

Wozu keine Wertsch?tzung?

The article follows the question why it is likely to find the request for more appreciation in most organizations, while everybody seems to agree that amelioration in this regard would be of help. To find an answer it uses empirical data to illustrate what most employees actually mean when they formulate their request for appreciation. This analysis offers some reasons why appreciation is less likely in organizations and gives first hints to reframings and questions that could be of help in coaching and supervision processes. It is followed by an interpretation of the communicated lack of appreciation based on social systems theory. It will reveal the benefit of this apparently unsolvable bad state of affairs and draws further consequences for coaching and consulting.     

The impact of Serbian public relations on economic indices

This study presents the research results whose aim was to examine and define dependences and the impact of public relations on business effects (economic indices are taken as representatives of business effects). Serbian companies were the object of this research. The data were collected by polling 100 managers from 100 companies. Multivariate regression and correlation were applied in order to determine the observed dependences. The research results confirm the existence of a significant direct relation between public relations and economic indices.     

On vertex-parity edge-colorings

A vertex signature \(\pi \) of a finite graph G is any mapping \(\pi \,{:}\,V(G)\rightarrow \{0,1\}\). An edge-coloring of G is said to be vertex-parity for the pair \((G,\pi )\) if for every vertex v each color used on the edges incident to v appears in parity accordance with \(\pi \), i.e. an even or odd number of times depending on whether \(\pi (v)\) equals 0 or 1, respectively. The minimum number of colors for which \((G,\pi )\) admits such an edge-coloring is denoted by \(\chi '_p(G,\pi )\). We characterize the existence and prove that \(\chi '_p(G,\pi )\) is at most 6. Furthermore, we give a structural characterization of the pairs \((G,\pi )\) for which \(\chi '_p(G,\pi )=5\) and \(\chi '_p(G,\pi )=6\). In the last part of the paper, we consider a weaker version of the coloring, where it suffices that at every vertex, at least one color appears in parity accordance with \(\pi \). We show that the corresponding chromatic index is at most 3 and give a complete characterization for it.     

Evaluating positive leadership: pilot study on the psychometric properties of a reduced version of the Positive Leadership Assessment Scale / Evaluando el liderazgo positivo: estudio piloto de las propiedades psicométricas de una versión reducida del Positive Leadership Assessment Scale

Positive leadership is considered a fundamental factor which contributes significantly to the development of healthy organizations. Positive leadership has been address via other leadership models, primarily transformational and authentic leadership, with which some affinities have been established. Although there is a large body of literature on positive leadership, especially related to its practical aspects, the construct is not properly delimited and there are only a few relevant contributions on how to measure it. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a pilot study to examine the psychometric properties of a reduced version of the PLAS (Positive Leadership Assessment Scale). Results from a confirmatory factorial analysis show that a five-correlated factors model achieves a good fit with the empirical data (on a sample of Spanish students). Likewise, this study also offers a range of evidence of validity, showing a relationship with the constructs of both transformational and authentic leadership and engagement.