LGBQ-Specific Elderly Housing as a “Sparkling Sanctuary”: Boundary Work on LGBQ Identity and Community in Relationship to Potential LGBQ-Specific Elderly Housing in Sweden

This study explored how boundaries in relationship to community and identity were created and negotiated among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) people within the framework of picturing LGBQ-specific elderly housing as a housing alternative in older age, by applying focus group methodology. “An island as a sparkling sanctuary” was identified as a metaphor for how symbolic resources defining the LGBQ community can be manifested in LGBQ-specific qualities of elderly housing. The boundary work underlying this manifestation included elaborations on the dilemma between exclusiveness and normality. The findings illustrate further how symbolic resources and collective identities were developed through dialectic interplay between internal and external definitions. Further, the findings show how boundary work generated shared feelings of similarity and group membership. The associated symbolic and social resources not only served to deal with difficult situations but also to manifest LGBQ identity and sense of community as a “gold medal.”     

Quality,qualifications, and the market: Procuring interpretation services in the context of the “refugee crisis”

Contracting of services has become increasingly important over the last few decades. Against this background, public contracts play an indispensable role in setting standards for services as well as in the regulation of labour. This article explores public tendering strategies for a specific service, interpretation in the context of asylum and international protection. Based on an empirical study of tendering strategies of two public agencies in Greece, it analyses core issues related to working conditions and service quality, namely, the importance given to the price and the use of stipulations relating to working conditions and qualifications. The findings reveal that even under high budgetary constraints, individual agencies may seek to strategically counteract a price‐driven competition and point to the importance of the structure of the market as an external constraint.     

Transmuted Weibull distribution: Properties and estimation

In this article, we investigate the potential usefulness of the three-parameter transmuted Weibull distribution for modeling survival data. The main advantage of this distribution is that it has increasing, decreasing or constant instantaneous failure rate depending on the shape parameter and the new transmuting parameter. We obtain several mathematical properties of the transmuted Weibull distribution such as the expressions for the quantile function, moments, geometric mean, harmonic mean, Shannon, Rényi and q-entropies, mean deviations, Bonferroni and Lorenz curves, and the moments of order statistics. We propose a location-scale regression model based on the log-transmuted Weibull distribution for modeling lifetime data. Applications to two real datasets are given to illustrate the flexibility and potentiality of the transmuted Weibull family of lifetime distributions.     

Work and health in Gnosjö: a longitudinal study

This study includes women and men born between 1934 and 1953 in the municipality of Gnosj? in the south of Sweden and covers the period 1998 to 2001. Compared with the country, a large proportion of the population of the municipality of Gnosj? works in the manufacturing industry. The aim was to examine associations between physical and psychological stress factors in and outside work, sickness absence and cardiovascular and musculoskeletal diseases, from a gender perspective. Information about working conditions and other aspect of life was collected by a questionnaire in 1998, and register data about sickness absence, cardiovascular diseases and musculoskeletal diseases 1999-2001. The impact on sickness absence consisted mainly of demand and control aspects of the psychosocial working conditions, but also temporary employment and of low sense of coherence. In relation to musculoskeletal health, demand and control was important among women, but not among men. Very few physical factors in the work environment were related to musculoskeletal diseases. Low sense of coherence had an impact also on musculoskeletal diseases. Cardiovascular diseases among women were influenced by demand and control and by life style related factors. We hope that the knowledge gained from our study makes it possible to develop better tools for both the preventive work in Gnosj? and for the rehabilitation of the people already ill. Because of our holistic approach, both public health aspects and working life aspects are covered. The municipality of Gnosj? is small, and therefore foreseeable in a way that many municipalities are not. Still, we do believe that our finding, in this longitudinal study, can be of value also in the public efforts and the efforts to develop adequate and successful rehabilitation approaches.     

Understanding the resilience of mail-back survey methods: An analysis of 20 years of change in response rates to national park surveys

Coverage and response rate challenges facing telephone and internet surveys have encouraged scientists to reconsider mail data collection methods. Although response rates to telephone surveys have declined sharply in the last 20 years, it is unclear how response rates to mail have fared during this time. This study analyzes 179 mail-back surveys of visitors to US National Parks from 1988 to 2007, which used virtually the same administration procedures throughout the period. Results show that response rates, based on only those who initially agreed to return a questionnaire, have remained at a high level with a 76% average while the number of questions and pages steadily increased. Despite this rise in response burden, rates have declined only moderately from about 80% in the late 1980s to about 70% more recently. The roles of additional contacts and survey salience in maintaining high response rates are examined. Results suggest that mail-back surveys for obtaining information from quasi-general public populations remain an effective data collection procedure.     

The emigration of immigrants, return vs onward migration: evidence from Sweden

This study analyzes emigration propensities for natives and immigrants delineating among immigrant emigrants between return and onward migration. Results indicate that emigrants are positively selected in terms of upper education. Well-educated immigrants have a higher probability of leaving for third-country destinations than returning to countries of origin. Predicted age–income profiles for immigrants show that return migrants have higher adjusted mean income levels than non-emigrants up to the age of 40. Onward migrants have lower predicted income levels across the age distribution due to this group’s composition and relatively low employment levels in Sweden. Separate estimations by region of origin indicate that within each group, onward migrants are more positively selected then return migrants in terms of income.