Infant Distress and Regulatory Behaviors Vary as a Function of Attachment Security Regardless of Emotion Context and Maternal Involvement

Differences in infant distress and regulatory behaviors based on the quality of attachment to mother, emotion context (frustration versus fear), and whether or not mothers were actively involved in the emotion-eliciting tasks were examined in a sample of 98 16-month-old infants and their mothers. Dyads participated in the Strange Situation, a limiting task designed to elicit infant frustration, and a novelty task designed to elicit infant fear. Mothers were asked to remain uninvolved during the first minute of each task, and then instructed to engage with their infants as they wished for the remaining three minutes. Independent of concurrent maternal sensitivity, resistant infants were significantly more distressed than secure and avoidant infants. Avoidant infants engaged in fewer active mother-oriented regulation behaviors than secure and resistant infants and engaged in more self-soothing in the mother involved condition than the mother uninvolved condition. Resistant infants engaged in more physical comfort with their mothers and more venting than both secure and avoidant infants, and exhibited a smaller variety of adaptive non-mother-oriented strategies than did secure infants. There were few differences in infant distress and regulatory behaviors as a function of emotion task and maternal involvement. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.     

M&A and diversification strategies: what effect on quality of inventive activity?

Journal of Management and Governance - The aim of this paper is to examine how an acquirer’s diversification strategy shapes the multiple dimensions of inventive activity. Differing from...     

Reciprocal relationships between psychosocial work characteristics and sleep problems: A two-wave study

Sleep problems are common and impair the health and productivity of employees. Work characteristics constitute one possible cause of sleep problems, and sleeping poorly might influence wellbeing and performance at work. This study examines the reciprocal associations between sleep problems and psychosocial work characteristics. The participants were 1744 full-time employed individuals (56% women; mean age 38 years in 2007) from the Young Finns study who responded to questionnaires on work characteristics (conceptualised by the demand–control model and effort–reward imbalance model) and sleep problems (Jenkins Sleep Scale) in 2007 and 2012. Cross-lagged structural equation models are used to examine the associations. The results show that low control and low rewards at baseline predicted sleep problems. Baseline sleep problems predicted higher effort, higher effort–reward imbalance, and lower reward. Sleep problems also predicted lower odds for belonging to the low (rather than high) job strain group and active jobs group. The association between work characteristics and sleep problems appears to be reciprocal, with a stressful work environment increasing sleep problems, and sleep problems influencing future work characteristics. The results emphasise the importance of interventions aimed at both enhancing sleep quality and reducing psychosocial risks at work.     

Networks for Welfare Provision: Getting a Grip on Processes of Social Exclusion by Evaluating Network Effectiveness

It has been repeatedly stated that the topic of network effectiveness has often been neglected. This has led to a situation of ‘network euphoria’ amongst practitioners and policymakers with regard to the creation of networks as a means to (re‐)organize welfare provision. Starting from a case study of networks for welfare provision in two Belgian cities, this article focuses on the effectiveness of service delivering networks at the client level, which is understood as the contribution of the network in improving the conditions of life of those being served or targeted by the network. Therefore, we focused on the collective efforts via these networks (e.g. by creating a night shelter or by conducting case consultations) to look after a population of homeless people who face multiple problems and are not able yet to benefit from welfare provision. Our findings revealed that these networks were able to realize a ‘collaborative advantage’ by filling in service gaps and by overcoming fragmentation of care. Nevertheless, these networks equally maintained criteria that restricted the accessibility or usefulness of welfare services provided to homeless people. In the concluding section, we highlight some of the factors that could help us to explain our findings and highlight the tension between the effectiveness of networks at the client level and the effectiveness at the organizational level.     

Life Domain Satisfaction: A Portugal–France Comparison

The study was aimed at replicating on a Portuguese sample the seven-factor model of life appraisal (physical autonomy, love life, family life, social life, occupational life, finances, and leisure life) that was suggested by Salvatore and Munoz Sastre Social Indicators Research 53:229–255 (2001). A sample of 1,111 Portuguese participants, aged 17–85, was presented with the Appraisal of Life Questionnaire. The “domain” model of life appraisal satisfactorily accounted for the data gathered on the Portuguese sample. Regarding finances and occupational life, Portuguese scores were lower than French scores. Regarding the occupational score and the leisure score, a clear linear decrease as a function of age was evidenced in the Portuguese sample. Finally, regarding the family score and the financial score, a non-linear relationship with age was found. An increase was observed from young adult age to adult age, and a decrease was observed from adult age to older age. A strong decrease in the physical autonomy scores among Portuguese females was also observed.     

Exploring Quality of Life During the Transition from School to Work in Chile

Data from Chile’s national household survey (CASEN) for the years 1990–2003 reveal that the transition process from school to active working life has been postponed over the course of the 13 year period while its duration has steadily increased, resulting in a delayed integration into the labour force. This finding is consistent with experiences in other countries as reported by the OECD and the ILO. The present study explores an approach to the development of indicators, currently non-existent, for describing the school-to-work transition in Chile from a quality-of-life perspective following a Swedish paradigm. A typology is proposed based on principal variables (factors) derived from a multiple correspondence exploratory analysis of the 2003 National Youth Survey data, generating a set of transition profiles. The analysis shows that experiencing the school-to-work transition simultaneously with other passages such as the family transition (becoming the head of a household) is decisive in evaluating young people’s quality of life.     

Is ethnic prejudice declining in Britain? Change in social distance attitudes among ethnic majority and minority Britons

Most literature on racial prejudice deals with the racial attitudes of the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities separately. This paper breaks this tradition. We examine the social distance attitudes of white and non‐white British residents to test if these attitudes follow the same trends over time, whether they are driven by the same social processes and whether they are inter‐related. We have three main findings. Firstly, social distance from other ethnic groups has declined over time for both white and ethnic minority Britons. For the white majority there are both period and cohort elements to this decline. Secondly, we see some evidence that social distance between the majority and minority groups is reciprocal. Specifically, minorities who experience rejection by the white British feel a greater sense of distance from them. Thirdly, we find that all groups share the perception of the same ethnic hierarchy. We see evidence of particularly widespread hostility towards Muslim Britons from all ethnic groups suggesting that Muslims are singled out for negative attention from many British residents of all other backgrounds, including a large number who do not express hostility to other groups.     

Agreement and discrepancy between children,parents, and social workers on school‐based effort avoidance in child welfare services

A multiperspective approach is beneficial for obtaining reliable and multifaceted pictures of child behaviour problems. The goal of the present study is to examine interrater agreement on school‐based effort avoidance between children receiving child welfare services, parents, and social workers. Given previous findings, interrater agreement is expected to be low. Self‐reported data on school‐based effort avoidance were gathered for children and adolescents in child welfare services. Additionally, social workers (using the Teacher‐Report Checklist for social and learning behaviour) and parents (using the parallel version of the self‐rating questionnaire on school‐based effort avoidance) were asked to complete an external assessment tool to compare children's perspectives with the ratings of significant adults. The results confirmed significant discrepancies between parents' and children's ratings on effort avoidance tendencies. Furthermore, there were only small to moderate correlations between children's self‐ratings and the adults' assessments; however, the consensus between adults was higher than the interrater agreement between children and social workers. Discrepancies in ratings from multiple informants underline the importance of integrating multiple perspectives, especially children's perspectives, in the diagnostic process in order to plan and adapt appropriate care and treatment.     

Does Tourism Consumption Behaviour Mirror Differences in Living Standards?

Based on the theoretical foundation of well-being measurement, the study explores differences in living standards by analysing the distribution of tourism expenditure. A mixture of regression models is used to explore the heterogeneity in tourism consumption by identifying groups of families with similar tourism consumption behaviour as a function of certain socio-demographic and economic factors. The empirical analysis, performed on Italian expenditure data, suggests that there are three different patterns of consumption behaviour conditional to the socio-demographic and economic covariates in the tourism market and that differences in tourism consumption between groups of households mirror inequalities in living standards.