The Development of Peer Interaction in Infancy: Exploring the Dyadic Processes

Peer interaction is an important component of children's social repertoires that is associated with a variety of developmental outcomes and life skills. The present study provides an in‐depth study of early dyadic peer behaviors during the infancy period, during which social competence with peers is first being developed. Results from variable‐centered analyses highlight the effectiveness of behaviors, such as offering objects to peers, and point to the importance of the social context set by a peer's prior social behavior and processes for eliciting peer responses. Findings from person‐centered analyses reveal marked individual differences in the processes through which infants are successful in eliciting responses from their peers, illustrating the presence of multiple pathways to achieving social competence with peers.     

Reporting Systems for Sustainability: What Are They Measuring?

The dominance of the neoliberal discourse in the sustainability debate has tended to privilege the economy over environment and social dimensions with implications for what is measured by sustainability monitoring systems. Moreover, systems to measure sustainability, including those influenced by neoliberal discourse, lack robust definitions and fail to address the interrelationship between social, economic and environmental contexts. If sustainability indicators are to help understand the interrelated forces driving change, by providing indications of sustainability, then the indicators should be derived from an epistemologically consistent conceptual framework which encapsulates clearly defined phenomena. The paper discusses whether sustainability indicators in the Australian context are derived from an epistemologically consistent framework. It is argued that the validity of current sustainability reporting systems is contestable.     

Working with emotion: Issues for the researcher in fieldwork and teamwork

This paper addresses the role of emotion in the qualitative research process and in particular, the effects of emotional experiences on the researcher. Drawing briefly on the literature, we show the importance of emotion for understanding the research process. Whilst this literature acknowledges the emotional risk for research respondents, there is little evidence providing in-depth understanding of the emotions of the researcher. We consider theoretically and empirically, the significance of emotion throughout the duration of a research project. Using our own personal experiences in the field, we present a range of emotional encounters that qualitative researchers may face. We offer suggestions for research teams who wish to develop strategies for 'managing' emotion and effectively utilizing 'emotionally-sensed knowledge'. We conclude that unless emotion in research is acknowledged, not only will researchers be left vulnerable, but also our understandings of the social world will remain impoverished. The challenge therefore is how to construct meaning and develop understanding and knowledge in an academic environment that, on the whole, trains researchers to be rational and objective, and 'extract out' emotion.     

The State of Sleep Among College Students at a Large Public University

Abstract

Objective: Data about college student sleep were collected and used to develop an education campaign to improve sleep. Participants: On-campus residents at a large state university were surveyed on 4 occasions, October 2005 to April 2007. Sample size was 675 to 1,823 students. Fall 2005 mean age = 18.5 years, SD = 1.03 (range 18–30) years. Initial survey included 935 males and 1,859 females (2005–2006). Matched pairs data (2006–2007) included 91 males and 107 females. Twenty-six males and 22 females participated in interviews. Methods: A survey administered online included the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, along with an 8-question in-person interview. Results: Poor sleep interacted with academics and mental health, and an education campaign positively affected student sleep. Conclusions: Teaching students how to effectively manage sleep can improve their well-being. Sleep may also be a gateway topic for health care professionals to address sensitive health issues such as depression.     

East African Population Census 1948 Some Problems of Planning

The effects of nonresponse can be reduced by simulating an increase in the number of recalls. The procedure consists in adding to the addresses of current surveys the nonresponse addresses from similar recent surveys.     

Parameter estimation in nonlinear regression models 1

Fisher information contained in record values, inter-record times and their concomitants from a sample of fixed size is derived in general and explicit expressions are deduced for some specific known bivariate classes of distributions. A comparison between fixed sampling and inverse sampling schemes with equal number of records and concomitants is also carried out. We also consider parameter estimation based on bivariate records and a small simulation study is done.     

Flexible Labor

This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object of knowledge in 1980s US public culture. The keyword flexibility, which crossed economic discourses about topics ranging from production to remuneration to consumption, was constructed as coextensive with feminism at this time. The essay begins by analyzing popular knowledge concerning labor flexibility created in scholarship and mainstream news. Next, the paper focuses on the contemporaneous articulation of flexibility to feminism. Since 1980, news, scholarship, and film argued that flexibility might provide a feminist antidote for late twentieth-century capitalism's harsh draining of labor from bodies. Particularly, flexible working conditions became publicized as a way that mothers could be better accommodated in the workplace. Yet as the century waned, flexibility failed to uproot standard time-intensive models of work and excluded some women from job opportunities and job security. When flexibility appeared to fail, pundits blamed feminism for wage-earning women's difficulty balancing family and workplace. This analysis shows that the various contradictory practices understood as flexibility rendered it troublesome as a feminist strategy. The paper concludes with an examination of the contemporary implications of this recent discursive history of flexibility.