Transforming Retirement: New Definitions of Life After Work

This quantitative research study uses survey data of women born between 1946 and 1951 in Australia. It follows earlier work that identified the importance of transitions from work for women of the baby boomer generation. We provide important insights into the lives of women who have partially or fully retired and the changing nature of women's work and retirement. For many women, retirement is characterized by newfound freedoms, opportunities, career change, and evolving identities, yet others view retirement as a continuation of previous occupational and gendered roles and commitments. This study has important implications for retirement policies for women.     

Changing the risky beliefs of post-partum women about therapeutic sun-exposure

BackgroundMany post-partum women hold risky beliefs about perceived therapeutic benefits of sun-exposure in the post-partum period and infancy.QuestionCan a maternity hospital based educational intervention reduce the prevalence of such beliefs among post-partum women?MethodsIn this outcome evaluation of an interventional study, two groups of healthy post-partum women (hospital inpatients) were interviewed, 1–4 days following delivery. The first cross-section (106 women) was recruited prior to in-services for maternity staff; the second (203 women) was recruited after completion of the in-services. Data were compared between the groups.FindingsMore pre-intervention than post-intervention women reported they would expose their baby to sunlight to treat suspected jaundice (28.8% vs 13.3%; p < 0.001) or help his/her skin adapt to the sun (10.5% vs 2.5%; p = 0.003); or use sunlight to manage breastfeeding-associated sore/cracked nipples (7.6% vs 2%; p = 0.026).ConclusionThis simple, effective educational intervention could be implemented in programmes for parents, health professionals and students.     

From “nobody's clapping for us” to “bad moms”: COVID-19 and the circle of childcare in Canada

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of childcare to national economies in general and women's economic participation in particular, spurring renewed interest in childcare policy in many countries that have implemented lockdowns. This paper adopts a circle of care framework to analyzes how COVID-19 has affected paid childcare, unpaid childcare and other paid work, and the relationship between these sectors. Analysis is grounded in the lived experiences of parents and childcare educators, documented through 16 semi-structured interviews during the initial lockdown (March–June 2020) in British Columbia, Canada. Experiences from educators suggest their safety was not prioritized, and that their contributions were undervalued and went unrecognized. Mothers, who provided the majority of unpaid care, not only lost income due to care demands, but struggled to access necessities, with some reporting increased personal insecurity. Those attempting to work from home also experienced feelings of guilt and distress as they tried to manage the triple burden. Similarities of experiences across the circle of care suggest the COVID-19 childcare policy response in BC Canada downloaded care responsibilities on to women without corresponding recognition or support, causing women to absorb the costs of care work, with potential long-term negative effects on women's careers and well-being, as well as on the resilience of the circle of care. Pandemic recovery and preparedness policies that aim to promote gender equality must consider all sectors of the circle of care and the relationships between them.     

Nonverbal Auditory Cues Allow Relationship Quality to be Inferred During Conversations

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - The claim that nonverbal cues provide more information than the linguistic content of a conversational exchange (the Mehrabian Conjecture) has been widely cited and...     

Splines as a Useful and Convenient Statistical Tool

The framework for a unified statistical theory of spline regression assuming fixed knots using the truncated polynomial or “+” function representation is presented. In particular, a partial ordering of some spline models is introduced to clarify their relationship and to indicate the hypotheses that can be tested by using either standard multiple regression procedures or a little-used conditional test developed by Hotelling (1940). The construction of spline models with polynomial pieces of different degrees is illustrated. A numerical example from a chemical experiment is given by using the GLM procedure of the statistical software package SAS (Barr et al. 1976).     

A Simplified Treatment of the Estimation of Parameters and Tests of Hypotheses in Constrained Design Models with Unbalanced Data

A simple approach to the least squares estimation of parameters in the linear design model is given. An algebraically tractable example for unbalanced data is used to illustrate the approach.     

Do Baseball Players Regress toward the Mean?

Baseball performances are an imperfect measure of baseball abilities, and consequently exaggerate differences in abilities. Predictions of relative batting averages and earned run averages can be improved substantially by using correlation coefficients estimated from earlier seasons to shrink performances toward the mean.     

IT Governance Characteristics,Electronic Medical Records Sophistication,and Financial Performance in U.S. Hospitals: An Empirical Investigation

As a result of a recent federal government mandate, an increasing number of hospitals have decided to adopt electronic medical record (EMR) systems. This initiative is expected to lead toward more efficient and higher quality health care; however, little is known about governance characteristics and organizational performance for EMR adopters. Our goal is to inform theory and practice by examining hospitals with a sophisticated EMR and comparing those hospitals to similar hospitals (with a less sophisticated EMR) to understand the association between information technology (IT) governance characteristics and the implications on financial performance. Leveraging elements of the upper echelon theory, we posit that hospitals in which the chief information officer (CIO) reports to the chief executive officer, CIO turnover is low, and an IT steering committee is present are more likely to have a sophisticated EMR. We argue that EMR sophistication leads to improved financial performance. Our results underscore the importance of continuity in the CIO position on successful EMR implementations. Results also show that hospital size and financial performance are strongly associated with EMR sophistication. In addition, we find that a sophisticated EMR appears to be a fundamental element in improving hospitals’ revenue cycle management. Moreover, we find that hospitals with a sophisticated EMR appear to be more profitable. Finally, we observe that total payroll expense adjusted by total discharges drops among the sophisticated hospitals, potentially due to an increase in employee productivity. These insights can serve as a basis for tempering expectations relative to the financial impact of EMR adoption.