Climate,stress and satisfaction: a multilevel study in the public sector / Clima,estrés y satisfacción: un estudio multinivel en el sector público

The aim of this study was to examine the mediating effect of role ambiguity on the relationship between climate and job satisfaction in local public administration. Taking the job demands-resources model (JD-R) as the starting point, a multilevel mediation analysis was used to determine the influence of the different services within the sample. The sample consisted of 196 employees in 29 integrated services of two local corporations. Results confirm the job demands-resources model by showing multilevel partial mediation of role ambiguity in the relationship between climate and job satisfaction of public employees. These results indicate the importance of climate in organizational contexts and its implications for reducing role stressors while strengthening and maintaining the wellbeing of employees.     

Generational Peers and Alcohol Misuse

This study investigates the influence of generational peers on alcohol misuse among immigrant youth. We derive hypotheses from sociological theories of generations regarding race/ethnicity, gender, and immigrant generation and test these hypotheses using a measure that accounts for the proportion of peers within a given peer network that are of the same immigrant generation. Results show that generational ties decreased the odds of alcohol misuse for immigrants and that these effects depend partly on race/ethnicity and gender. We conclude that generational ties play a meaningful role in the health and well‐being of immigrant youth, and discuss possible future avenues for research on immigrant generational peers.     

Motivational Profiles and Career Decision Making of High School Students

Based on self‐determination theory, this study sought to identify distinct motivational profiles in a sample of high school students (N = 396, mean age = 17.02 years) using a person‐centered approach. Three motivational clusters of students emerged: self‐determined students, non‐self‐determined students, and externally regulated students. Differences between and among these profiles across career exploration and career indecision levels were analyzed. Overall, self‐determination theory appears to offer a conceptual framework for organizing career interventions. The fact that motivational profiles can distinguish students among career exploration and career indecision levels leads the authors to reaffirm the importance of differential career intervention practices. Future research should examine the stability of motivational profiles, their predictive power over career exploration and career decision making, and the differences between highly motivated students regarding the career decision‐making process.     

How do Spanish disability support offices contribute to inclusive education in the university?

This article analyzes the functioning of disability support offices and their contribution to inclusive education in seven Spanish universities from the perspective of staff. Using a qualitative methodology, interviews with office staff were conducted, and data were analyzed through an inductive coding system. The results are organized around five themes: characteristics of disability support offices, staff training, functions performed by different services, barriers and opportunities identified by office staff, and proposals to improve attention given to disabled students. Information gathered leads to the conclusion that the work carried out in disability support offices must receive support from universities, as these offices are a key element for the access and retention of students with disabilities in the university and for the successful completion of their studies.     

Migrant narratives as photo stories: on the properties of photography and the mediation of migrant voices

This article examines how the properties of photography might mediate voice, defined as the capacity to speak and to be heard speaking about one’s life and the social conditions in which one’s life is embedded. It focuses on the affordances that the image provides for migrant cultural minorities to articulate such a voice within the context of collaborative research. I look at the case of Shutter Stories, a collaborative photography exhibition featuring the photo stories of Indian and Korean migrants from Manila, The Philippines. Using participant observation data, I show that it was photography’s ability to be all at once indexical, iconic, and symbolic that became important in voice as ‘speaking’. It allowed migrants to tell rich, multimodal narratives about their lives, albeit with some key limitations. I also show that it was photography’s inability to fix meanings with finality that mattered in voice as ‘being heard’. Although the locals who visited the exhibition engaged with the photo stories in an overwhelmingly positive manner, they often did not completely grasp the migrants’ complex narratives. All these data indicate that collaborative photography exhibition projects should not just be about how migrants speak and are heard. They should also be about how migrants can listen, so that they can adjust what they say to how they are being heard. This is a valuable reminder that in conceptualising photography and migrant cultural minority voices, we also need to take into account the broader process of multicultural dialogue.     

Copula-graphic estimation with left-truncated and right-censored data

In Survival Analysis and related fields of research right-censored and left-truncated data often appear. Usually, it is assumed that the right-censoring variable is independent of the lifetime of ultimate interest. However, in particular applications dependent censoring may be present; this is the case, for example, when there exist several competing risks acting on the same individual. In this paper we propose a copula-graphic estimator for such a situation. The estimator is based on a known Archimedean copula function which properly represents the dependence structure between the lifetime and the censoring time. Therefore, the current work extends the copula-graphic estimator in de Uña-Álvarez and Veraverbeke [Generalized copula-graphic estimator. Test. 2013;22:343–360] in the presence of left-truncation. An asymptotic representation of the estimator is derived. The performance of the estimator is investigated in an intensive Monte Carlo simulation study. An application to unemployment duration is included for illustration purposes.     

Absent in theory,invisible in practice: Queering HBSE for a more inclusive social work profession

A sound theoretical foundation is a necessary element of social work education that prepares students to confront the challenges of practice with critical knowledge of the human experience. Queer theory is a strength-based framework for understanding sexual and gender identities that fall outside of the current social norms, and offers a highly relevant and useful pathway for the education of social work practitioners. Despite its utility for enhancing understanding and acceptance of gender and sexual minority (SGM) people, it is underutilized in social work compared with other disciplines. Additionally, this study reports on the gender and sexual identities of social work students and their endorsement of help-seeking behaviors related to issues of gender and sexual nonconformity. These empirical-based perspectives undergird the tenets of queer theory and support its application in research endeavors aimed at better understanding the human experience. A theoretical and empirical-based argument is made for the queering of HBSE to strengthen both explicit and implicit curricula in social work education. This study expands on the limited usage of queer theory within social work and directly challenges the normative and binary nature of sexual and gender identity evident within the professional literature and implications for education and research are offered.     

How do vulnerable youth complete secondary education? The key role of families and the community

This article demonstrates how the engagement of families and other community members in decision-making processes in a school may prevent early school leaving among vulnerable youth and simultaneously increase their enrolment in secondary education. Based on a large-scale, EU-funded study, this article focuses on the case of one school located in a deprived area inhabited mainly by Roma people – one of the vulnerable populations most affected by early school leaving – where a specific egalitarian participatory process of Roma families was implemented. According to the analysis of the collected data, this participation contributed to a reduction in student dropout rates during primary education, led to the implementation of compulsory secondary education in the same school, and increased the numbers of students who graduated from secondary school. These achievements transformed the educational and social prospects of vulnerable youth who were following the path to failure and who now dream of continuing their studies. Furthermore, these youth are acting as role models for younger children in primary education, helping to prevent school dropout and early school leaving from early ages. The case shows how the community participation in decision-making processes transformed the climate and expectations regarding education in the neighbourhood.     

Does physical exercise improve perceptual skills and visuospatial attention in older adults? A review

Neuroimaging studies suggest that when the brain ages, more areas are involved to perform a task in order to obtain the same results. This, together with the increase in crystalized intelligence and wisdom, is usually considered as a compensatory strategy. Research has demonstrated that physical activity might also act as a strategy and be one of the main factors that can slow down age-related perceptual and cognitive decline. Research also suggests that different types of physical exercise and sport lead to different changes in perceptual and cognitive skills as well as in several areas of the brain, especially those involving multiple domains, such as exergaming, dance or some sports. This review summarizes the findings of recent studies with older adults investigating the brain and cognitive benefits of different forms of physical exercise. Visuospatial attention, which plays a critical role in our daily lives, especially for older adults, is a central part of this analysis.