Who Pays for Seniors Housing and Care Communities? Evidence from the Residents Financial Survey

To examine the financial characteristics of residents in assisted living and independent living communities and to see how they currently pay for their care arrangements, we surveyed 2,617 residents in assisted living and independent living communities. We asked them how they pay for their current costs and verified their answers by examining self-reported information on their cost and income. Residents stated that they are largely paying for their community costs independently. Approximately one third of respondents reported using their assets and income to cover their current costs. The data supported the notion that individuals living in assisted living and independent living communities are largely mid- to high-income elderly. However, the cross-sectional analysis showed that length of time in the community was positively associated with paying for their expenses independently out of income, after controlling for many confounders including age, education, and lifetime earnings to try to rule out differential longevity and differential selection over time. Further longitudinal analysis is needed to understand the cause and the implications of the positive correlation between ability to pay one's bills out of income and the length of time in the community before conclusions about spend-down can be made.     

Effects of a Differential Observing Response on Intraverbal Performance of Preschool Children: A Preliminary Investigation

Axe (2008) speculated that some instances of intraverbal responding might be associated with limited or delayed acquisition because they require discrimination of multiple components of verbal stimuli. Past studies suggest that acquisition of responses under control of complex, multicomponent antecedent stimuli (e.g., conditional or compound stimulus control) can be facilitated with the introduction of a differential observing response (DOR; Dube & McIlvane, 1999; Gutowski, Geren, Stromer, & Mackay, 1995). The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of a DOR (i.e., repeating the question) on intraverbal responding with six neurotypical preschool children. Findings included that (a) accuracy of intraverbal performance increased when the experimenter prompted a DOR; (b) 1 of 6 participants overtly emitted the DOR for a second relation in the absence of prompts, which was correlated with increased accuracy; and (c) following mastery, response accuracy was variable for 3 participants. Based on these findings, prompted DORs may offer an effective, if temporary, aid to intraverbal instruction for neurotypical preschool children.     

Algorithms for the minimum non-separating path and the balanced connected bipartition problems on grid graphs

For given a pair of nodes in a graph, the minimum non-separating path problem looks for a minimum weight path between the two nodes such that the remaining graph after removing the path is still connected. The balanced connected bipartition (BCP₂) problem looks for a way to bipartition a graph into two connected subgraphs with their weights as equal as possible. In this paper we present an algorithm in time O(NlogN) for finding a minimum weight non-separating path between two given nodes in a grid graph of N nodes with positive weight. This result leads to a 5/4-approximation algorithm for the BCP₂ problem on grid graphs, which is the currently best ratio achieved in polynomial time. We also developed an exact algorithm for the BCP₂ problem on grid graphs. Based on the exact algorithm and a rounding technique, we show an approximation scheme, which is a fully polynomial time approximation scheme for fixed number of rows.     

Simultaneous Confidence Intervals for the Ratios of Marginal Means of a Multivariate Poisson Distribution

This article computes simultaneous confidence intervals for the ratios of marginal means of a multivariate Poisson distribution. For this, we propose a lognormal approximation technique and a bootstrap method. We demonstrate advantages of the proposed methods over existing ones through a simulation study. To illustrate their applicability to real-world problems, we apply the proposed methods to US data on infectious diseases.     

中国民营企业国际化的绩效分析——基于江浙地区民营企业的问卷调查

本文从现有企业国际化理论的五个视角出发,提炼出影响企业国际化的八个自变量,并根据江浙地区39家民营企业的问卷数据做了计量分析.结果表明,企业家对国内外市场环境差异程度的判断、企业家年龄、企业规模、国际化时间不能明显影响企业国际化绩效;企业家受教育水平对国际化绩效有负效应,但我们并不否认教育的重要性;国际化的经验、企业创建时间和竞争战略对企业国际化绩效影响较大.     

Young Mothers' Time Spent at Work and Time Spent Caring for Children

The association between the time a mother spends at work and in different child care activities is investigated, using data from the 1981 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The mothers who worked on the index day spent almost one hour less time in physical care, one-half hour less time in interactive care, and over two hours less time in passive supervision of their children. The effects of a set of predictors on time use at work, time use in physical care, interactive care, and passive supervision of children were estimated using a covariance structure model. When the effects of these predictors are controlled, the number of hours at work predicts: (a) a small reduction in time spent in interactive care, and (b) larger reductions in time spent in physical care and passive supervision.     

From Face-to-Face to Facebook: The Role of Technology and Social Media in Adoptive Family Relationships with Birth Family Members

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study of 77 individuals in 40 couples (same-sex and heterosexual), who had adopted publically, privately, or internationally, examined parents' engagement with their child's birth family via technology (e.g., texting, e-mail, social media) through the lens of the Couple and Family Technology frame-work (Hertlein & Blumer, 2014 Hertlein, K. M., & Blumer, M. L. C. (2014). The couple and family technology framework. New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). Parents used three approaches to contact: active, passive, and no contact. Regardless of approach, some parents described concerns about boundaries. Couples were generally in agreement in their perspectives on engaging with birth family via technology. Practitioners must be know-ledgeable about management of relationships via technology and help adoptive families set healthy boundaries.     

It's All About Power: Integrating Feminist Family Studies and Family Communication

Feminist family studies bring a framework of power and intersectional analysis to unpack the issue of gender in families. Moving beyond the concept of gender as either benign or simply one of difference between men and women, a feminist perspective offers a way of conceptualizing the multiple contexts in which families are situated and where conflict and care inevitably comingle. A feminist lens has challenged family scholars to investigate and understand individuals, relationships, family structures, communities, and society in more complex and contested ways. We argue that feminist family studies offers insights for the discipline of family communication in order to contextualize the ways in which family dynamics are theorized and studied.     

Couple Resilience to Economic Pressure Over Time and Across Generations

Research suggests that economic stress disrupts perceived romantic relationship quality, yet less is known regarding the direct influence of economic stress on negative behavioral exchanges between partners over time. Another intriguing question concerns the degree to which effective problem solving might protect against this hypothesized association. To address these issues, the authors studied two generations of couples who were assessed approximately 13 years apart (Generation 1: N = 367, Generation 2: N = 311). On average and for both generations, economic pressure predicted relative increases in couples' hostile, contemptuous, and angry behaviors; however, couples who were highly effective problem solvers experienced no increases in these behaviors in response to economic pressure. Less effective problem solvers experienced the steepest increases in hostile behaviors in response to economic pressure. Because these predictive pathways were replicated in both generations of couples, it appears that these stress and resilience processes unfold over time and across generations.