Well-being and ill-being: Different dimensions?

This paper presents evidence for regarding well-being and ill-being as distinct, although not orthogonal dimensions. It is suggested that well-being and ill-being may be like measures of quantitative and verbal ability in intelligence tests. For some purposes (e.g. for admitting students to particular courses of study) it may be sensible to use only one of the measures. For other purposes a combined measure-I.Q.-is appropriate. In this study we employ Indices of Well-Being and Ill-Being and a combined measure, Balance of Well-Being and Ill-Being. Using data from the first wave (1981) of an Australian panel study (N=942), four measures of well-being and three measures of ill-being were factor analysed, confirming the existence of distinct dimensions. The value of the distinctions was underlined by findings indicating that well-being and ill-being have different correlates and causes. Wellbeing depends more than ill-being on the personality traits of extraversion and optimism, and also on the existence of supportive social networks. Ill-being is more strongly related to SES, poor health and low scoring on the trait “personal competence”,. Overall, however, it was found that more variance can be accounted for in the Balance of Well-Being and Ill-Being Index than in the separate indices of Well-Being and Ill-Being.     

Women’s experience of midwife-led counselling and its influence on childbirth fear: A qualitative study

Background

Women with childbirth fear have been offered counseling by experienced midwives in Sweden for decades without evidence for its effectiveness, in terms of decrease in childbirth fear. Women are usually satisfied with the counselling. However, there is a lack of qualitative data regarding women’s views about counselling for childbirth fear.

The Swing of the Regulatory Pendulum in Europe: From Precautionary Principle to (Regulatory) Impact Analysis

Regulation in Europe is currently driven by three distinct, yet not entirely unrelated factors. These are competitiveness, sustainable development and governance. Increasingly these factors influence both the need for, and concepts of, what the European Commission (the Commission) refers to as “better regulation.” To ensure better regulation, two regulatory philosophies have been put forward, namely the precautionary principle and impact assessment.^1,2 In this paper, I first briefly describe the current drivers of better regulation. Then I examine the use of these two regulatory philosophies in helping to achieve better regulation. In the final section I offer some speculations on the future development of European Union (EU) regulation. Will elements of the Commission and the EU member states operate in an even more precautionary environment, or will the implementation of the precautionary principle be seen as too costly, forcing regulators to resort to an even greater use of impact analysis?     

Privatisation as professionalisation? Attitudes,motives and achievements among Swedish social workers

The purpose of this article is to discuss the relationship between privatisation and professionalisation in social work. In social services, privatisation is often seen as a politically planned (policy-driven) process as part of liberalisation strategies for market orientation of the welfare state. However, there are several reasons to believe that there is also a process of spontaneous privatisation (sometimes driven by demand), where professionals go private and provide various types of services to local welfare authorities. In this article, our aim is to explore the extent, impact and consequences of such profession-driven privatisation and to discuss whether privatisation is a strategy for professionalisation.

This article investigates: (1) attitudes among social workers and social work students toward privatisation in general and private practice in particular; (2) the extent and types of activities being performed privately; (3) the motives whether or not to choose self-employment; (4) the differences between public and self-employed social workers in terms of professionalisation.

Data are based on surveys of 1,000 Swedish social workers and 801 social work students. The results show ambivalence among professionals toward privatisation. The authors discuss the reasons for this at an individual and collective level. Although the share of social workers in private practice in Sweden is low, between 6 and 8%, more than one third of Swedish social workers expect to be working in private practice within 10 years. The circumstances faced by self-employed social workers, who rank higher on almost every professionalisation indicator (i.e. formal education, attitude toward research, internal status, wage level, autonomy), support the hypothesis about profession-driven privatisation.     

Subjective qualitative information structures based on orderings

This paper is motivated by the following question: Can one axiomatize information first and then probability in terms of information rather than vice versa as suggested by information theory? The emphasis here is on a new methodological approach toward a conceptualization of behavioral information which might be better suited for inferences involving nonrepeatable events or an insufficient number of repeatable events, based on the assumption that information is prior to probability statements. The main idea is to generate (via a Boolean homorphism) a Boolean algebra of events by an appropriate information structure and to utilize the notion of a topogeneous order similar to that of a Boolean order.     

The Evolution of Cooperative Strategies for Asymmetric Social Interactions

How can cooperation be achieved between self-interested individuals in commonly-occurring asymmetric interactions where agents have different positions? Should agents use the same strategies that are appropriate for symmetric social situations? We explore these questions through the asymmetric interaction captured in the indefinitely repeated investment game (IG). In every period of this game, the first player decides how much of an endowment he wants to invest, then this amount is tripled and passed to the second player, who finally decides how much of the tripled investment she wants to return to the first player. The results of three evolutionary studies demonstrate that the best-performing strategies for this asymmetric game differ from those for a similar but symmetric game, the indefinitely repeated Prisoner’s dilemma game. The strategies that enable cooperation for the asymmetric IG react more sensitively to exploitation, meaning that cooperation can more easily break down. Furthermore, once cooperation has stopped, it is much more difficult to reestablish than in symmetric situations. Based on these results, the presence of asymmetry in an interaction appears to be an important factor affecting adaptive behavior in these common social situations.     

A μ-σ-Risk Aversion Paradox and Wealth Dependent Utility

We report a surprising property of --preferences: the assumption of nonincreasing relative risk aversion implies the optimal portfolio being riskless. We discuss a solution of that paradox using wealth dependent utility functions in detail. Using the revealed preference theory we show that (general, i.e. not necessary -) wealth dependent utility functions can be characterized by Wald's axiom.     

Assessment of the Living Conditions in Polish and German Transborder Regions in the Context of Strengthening Territorial Cohesion in the European Union: Competitiveness or Complementation?

Social Indicators Research - The European Union's regional policy aims to strengthen economic, social, and territorial cohesion and equal space development opportunities. It is an action...