Back to nature! Or not? Urban dwellers and their forest in berlin

What type of urban nature do urban dwellers prefer? Contributing to this ongoing discussion, this study presents the results of an internet and on-site field survey on general use and visitation pattern conducted in Grunewald Forest via a questionnaire; this is a 3000 ha area southwest of Berlin, Germany. The questions were developed in close cooperation with the local forestry administration and targeted the uncovering of user-specific needs and climate change-related conflicts. More than 1300 valid answers were analyzed, which made it possible to (1) identify and characterize different visitor groups, (2) identify reasons for an urban forest visit, (3) uncover the needs for infrastructure and information, (4) reflect on the survey methods used. The interesting findings include (I) the reasons for a visit highly coincide with forest-related properties in particular; however, the infrastructure preferences reveal the desire for managed greenspace; and (II) the answers obtained from the field differ significantly from those obtained online in various respects. The differences found suggest that the survey, with both online and on-site answers, is a major advantage for future studies regarding urban green infrastructure use. These results can be fruitfully used to inform urban forest management regarding user needs and create a better forestry information policy in the future.     

The Dickensian Occupational Structure

Twelve of the novels of Charles Dickens provide a sample of 349 characters whose occupational achievement and mobility are investigated. The mobility patterns indicate more inheritance than in the United States. This cannot be accounted for by education, material inheritance, or morality (being a good or bad person). A model of quasi-perfect mobility, taking all diagonal frequencies as given, more closely represents the patterns. Determinants of achievement considered are social origins, number of siblings, education, marital status, morality. The characters from large families do better occupationally than those from small. Education functions primarily to redistribute success. The married are superior to the unmarried, with marriage functioning not as a selective mechanism, but exerting causal impact of its own. The evil are rewarded in this life. The basic path model of the stratification system of Dickens is similar to that of the United States.     

Scale direction effects in agree/disagree and item-specific questions: a comparison of question formats

The effect of the response scale direction on response behavior is a well-known phenomenon in survey research. While there are several approaches to explaining how such response order effects occur, the literature reports mixed evidence. Furthermore, different question formats seem to vary in their susceptibility to these effects. We therefore investigate the occurrence of response order effects in Agree/Disagree (A/D) and Item-Specific (IS) questions. We conducted an experiment among n = 930 students in which we varied the scale direction (decremental vs. incremental) within A/D and IS questions and asked respondents to evaluate the questionnaires. The results reveal response order effects within the A/D but not within the IS question format. Furthermore, respondent’s evaluations suggest that completion of the IS questionnaires requires more consideration than the completion of the A/D questionnaires. Altogether, our findings indicate that IS questions are more robust against response order effects than A/D questions.     

Organisationsentwicklungsorientierte Potenzialeinsch?tzung �C Pr?missen und Gestaltungsprinzipien

While common potential assessment is perceived as a human resource task, today??s organizations need to integrate organizational and human development. The concept of organizational design suggests a conceptual framework to align strategy, structure, processes, human resources, and reward systems to help organizations be innovative and responsive to changes. However there is also a need to innovate potential assessment processes themselves. Thise paper illustrates the interactions among potential assessment and organizational development. This requires understanding the relevance of dynamic roles and distributed leadership, and their impact on the growing need of meta-competences of members of the organization to successfully profile their roles as well as to add value to the entire organizational design. A critical issue pertains to the professional use of tests, including principles of multiple diagnoses and acknowledging the psychodynamic and cultural influences on how to take a test. Thise paper provides practical guidelines on how to design assessment processes, incorporating learning for all participants in team settings, self assessment and shifting from judging towards exploring relationship among managers, participants and assessors. This way of practicing potential assessment turns out to be a powerful approach for both, potential development on the individual level as well as core competence development on organizational level.     

The Impact of the Affordable Care Act Young Adult Provision on Childbearing: Evidence From Tax Data

We use panel U.S. tax data spanning 2008–2013 to study the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) young adult provision on an important demographic outcome: childbearing. The impact is theoretically ambiguous: gaining insurance may increase access to contraceptive services while also reducing the out-of-pocket costs of childbirth. Because employer-reported U.S. Wage and Tax Statements (W-2 forms) record access to employer-provided benefits, we can examine the impact of the coverage expansion by focusing on young adults whose parents have access to benefits. We compare those who are slightly younger than the age threshold with those who are slightly older. Our results suggest that the ACA young adult provision led to a modest decrease in childbearing.     

Life feeling scales for use in German and American samples

This paper describes an effort to construct social life feeling scales (self-determination, trust, future outlook, and so forth) for use in both American and German samples. Unidimensional scales (as defined) based on American respondents were modified as required to meet the same criteria in a German sample. Scales based on the German sample were modified as required to meet the same criteria among the American respondents. These modified scales were combined in order to meet given criteria of unidimensionality in both samples. Although combined scales meet (approximately) criteria of unidimensionality in both samples (German and American), the question of whether the feelings underlying these scales are identical in both populations remains.Financial support for this project was provided by Zentrum für Umfragen, Methoden und Analyzen, and Office of Research and Development, Indiana University.     

Changing places: children of return migrants in Albania and their quest to belong

This study examines the experiences of children of return migrants to Albania following the economic crisis in Europe. Adopting a longitudinal approach in which participants were followed-up after a year and employing participative qualitative research methods, the study investigates how perceptions of local and translocal spaces and social relations interact to shape children’s (aged 7–12 years) sense of belonging to their parents’ homeland. Findings suggest that the children’s initial positioning is influenced by a perceived lack of everyday places of play and unsettled local interactions with peers. The research indicates further that, over time, children actively seek to inhabit and identify with their new surroundings and that meaning-making is shaped by experiences that transcend multiple localities. It documents how children of return migrants attain a sense of belonging via interacting with different physical and social contexts in a complex process which appears simultaneously facilitated and impeded by adults. Overall, the findings of this research suggest that children’s sense of belonging is negotiated in relation to multiple temporal and spatial frames of reference to which children attribute meaning.     

Grenzgänge zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik. Geschlechterkonstruktionen in wissenschaftlichen Eliten

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Value to the Customer of RFID in Service Applications*

This article examines how customer value may be affected by deploying radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies within service environments. Business articles promote operational cost savings and improved inventory management as key benefits of deploying RFID. In response, service firms are using RFID to reengineer service transactions and customer touchpoints. Customers may view these RFID applications to offer both benefits and drawbacks. This article demonstrates that individuals will recognize far more value from RFID service applications than just cost savings and inventory availability. The article analyzes qualitative survey responses on the value gained from RFID to identify a broad list of value objectives—benefits and drawbacks—associated with RFID service applications. The article contributes to academic literature by providing salient value dimensions for return on investment models of service RFID applications and for future empirical analyses of means‐ends and value‐profit chain models. Managers can use the list of dimensions to develop rich business cases for evaluating the benefits and costs from enhancing service operations with RFID. The identified drawbacks also provide managers with a resource for understanding potential risks of RFID applications.