Philippine NGOs and Multistakeholder Partnerships: Three Case Studies

This paper discusses an emerging role for Philippine NGOs—building and maintaining intersectoral cooperation among various sectors of society to tackle key issues like agricultural development, HIV/AIDS, and agrarian reform. The three case studies elaborated in the paper show that Philippine NGOs play important intermediary and bridging functions crucial for the success of multistakeholder partnerships. NGOs are well equipped for this because of their middle-class and professional nature and because of various characteristics like autonomy, flexibility, and the ability to mobilize resources.     

Development of Parenting Skills in Individuals with an Intellectual Impairment: an epigenetic explanation

Current changes in legislation in the United States support the rights of individuals with an intellectual impairment to marry and have children. Current societal views, however, are heavily influenced by our history of viewing these individuals as inadequate parents. This historical view is based upon the assumption that those with intellectual impairments are genetically inferior. Changing views of development, however, suggest that the issue of how individuals with intellectual impairments develop is somewhat more complex. The epigenetic model is one that proposes that development is the result of the complex transaction between the individual and the environment. This paper applies this model to persons with an intellectual impairment to better understand the parenting skills they display. It is argued that by intervening and changing developmental pathways, the development of parenting skills of those with intellectual impairments can be facilitated.     

Career Self‐Efficacy and Perceptions of Parent Support in Adolescent Career Development

The authors examined the relative contributions of both proximal and distal supports to the career interests and vocational self‐efficacy in a multiethnic sample (N = 139) of middle school adolescents. Consistent with Social Cognitive Career Theory, it was found that (a) vocational self‐efficacy and career planning/exploration efficacy consistently predicted young adolescents' career interests across Holland (J. L. Holland, D. R. Whitney, N. S. Cole, & J. M. Richards, 1969) themes; (b) gender and career gender‐typing predicted interests in Realistic, Investigative, and Social careers; and (c) perceived parent support accounted for 29% to 43% of the total unique variance in vocational self‐efficacy for all Holland theme careers.     

Rehabilitating the Criminality of Immigrants Under Section 19 of the Canadian Immigration Act1

Immigration has historically been associated with moral entrepreneurship and xenophobia. In periods of high unemployment and global dislocation, immigrants easily become the targets of political commentators who complain of their criminality, morals, demand on public services, and competition for scarce employment. In this exercise, looking at the recidivism of immigrants who come to Canada with a previous, foreign criminal history, quite a different picture emerges. Among this random sample (N=204), 97.5 percent of immigrants granted a rehabilitation waiver under the provisions of the Canadian Immigration Act were not re‐arrested in Canada within a period of about 3.5 years after their landing was approved by the Minister. Of those who were arrested, most of the delinquency was manageable and, in fact, resulted in either an acquittal, diversion or lower‐range sanctions. This is not the kind of imagery complained of by the tabloids or critics in the body politic. It behooves us, then, to exercise care in discussing crime and immigration, as it is a subject easily prone to the creation of “moral panics” and resulting repressive legislation against persons of color.     

A NOTE ON EVANESCENT PROCESSES

This note examines the connection between μ-invariant measures for the transition function of a continuous-time Markov chain and those of its q-matrix, Q. The major result establishes a necessary and aufficient condition for a convergent μ-invariant measure for Q to be μ-inhant for the minimal transition function, P, under the assumption that P is honest. This corrects Theorem 6 of Vere-Jones (1969) and the first part of Corollary 1 of Pollett (1986), both of which assert that the above conclusion holds in the absence of this condition. The error was pointed out by E.A. van Doom (1991) and the counterexample which be presented provides the basis for the present arguments. In determining where the error occurred in the original proof, we are able to identify a simple sufficient condition for μ-invariance.     

WAGE DISCRIMINATION ACROSS ETHNIC GROUPS: EVIDENCE FROM ISRAEL

We investigate wage differentials between ethnic groups in Israel, proposing a new methodology and an illustration based on the latest Israeli census. By using separate wage equations for the various occupations, our methodology allows us to decompose the wage differential into three components: one reflecting human capital differences; one reflecting wage discrimination; and a third indicating occupational segregation. We find that 70 percent of the wage gap is due to segregation, 26 percent to wage discrimination and only 4 percent to human capital differences. Evidence is also found for the existence of duality in the Israeli labor market.     

Design optimization using ANOVA

This paper describes the design optimization of a robot sensor used for locating 3-D objects employing the Taguchi method in a computer simulation scenario. The location information from the sensor is to be utilized to control the movements of an industrial robot in a 'pick-and-place' or assembly operation. The Taguchi method, which is based on the Analysis-of-Variance (ANOVA) approach, is utilized to improve the performance of the sensor over a wider operating range. A review of the Taguchi method is presented along with step-by-step implementation details to identify and optimize the design parameters of the sensor. The method allows us to gauge the impact of various interactions present in the sensor system exclusively and permits us to single out those factors that have a dominant influence on the overall performance of the sensor. The investigation suggests that the Taguchi method is a more structured and efficient approach for achieving a robust design compared with the classical full factorial design approach.     

Consumption and Saving Behavior of Older and Younger Baby Boomers in Korea

The 1998 Korean Survey of Family Income and Expenditures was used to examine the overall consumption and saving behavior of Korean baby boomers and compared the differences in consumption and saving behavior between older and younger boomers. The t -test results indicated that the younger boomers allocated a significantly higher percentage of their expenditures on food away from home, household appliances, transportation and communication than did the older boomers, whereas the older boomers spent higher amounts and allocated larger budget shares on their children's education than did the younger boomers. The results of Ordinary Least-Squares (OLS) regression analysis showed that, holding other factors constant, older boomers not only spent significantly more in the total consumption expenditures and education expenditures, but older boomers also saved significantly less than did younger boomers.