Developing a measure of contentment in an Arab Muslim country: implications for cross-cultural research in social work

This is one in a series of papers that report on a programme of research focusing on the psychosocial consequences of Kuwaitis in the wake of the 1990 invasion and occupation by Iraq. The research team chose to focus on contentment as the obverse of trauma effects and develop a new measure that more closely represents Kuwait society due to cultural sensitivity. The paper briefly discusses the programme of research and the need for a new measure of Kuwaiti contentment. The Kuwaiti Raha Scale (KRS), was developed to serve as the primary dependent variable for a post-war national survey of mental health in Kuwait. The KRS emerged from a multi-method approach first administered to a convenience sample of 560 undergraduate university students enrolled in eight different classes. The results reported here note that no differences were found according to the variable of gender, as was expected. Four factors emerged, with Cronbach's Alphas ranging from 0.850 to 0.709 after eliminating three items. The total twenty-eight-item KRS measure yielded a Cronbach's Alpha of 0.906. Conclusions: The present findings suggest that the four subscales are a psychometrically sound measure of contentment, and would be useful in studies of Arabic-speaking cultures by social workers, and other investigators, concerned about culture-based well-being. Implications for European social professions are discussed.     

提高创新能力，充分发挥社会科学院思想库作用

加强党的执政能力建设是全党的共同任务。作为哲学社会科学专门研究机构,我们应该充分认识加强党的执政能力建设的重要性和紧迫性,组织科研人员研究有关党的执政能力建设的重大问题;要坚持围绕加强党的执政能力建设创新工作思路、探索新的方式,推出更多的精品成果;为此,加强党的执政能力建设,繁荣发展哲学社会科学需要营造良好的外部环境。     

Expenditure Differences of University Degree Holders Across Occupational Sectors in Malaysia

This study was motivated by the key role university degree holders play in Malaysia's vision for the future and by concerns expressed about the drift of university degree holders from one sector to another. A questionnaire was mailed to a sample of 400 Malaysian families that had at least one member who held a university degree. The objective was to elicit details of the household economic situation of respondents, with special reference to the differences in expenditure patterns between families whose degree holder worked in higher education, government, or the private sector.Results of tobit analysis of expenditures show that there are some differences between the sectors regarding expenditure patterns, but the differences are not as great as expected. Nevertheless, university-educated persons in the private sector seem to have somewhat different expenditure patterns than their counterparts in other sectors.     

中沙关系回顾与展望

中国和沙特政治制度不同,但两国发展积极友好的关系没有障碍。目前,沙特是中国在西亚和非洲最大的贸易伙伴,两国经贸合作前景广阔。同时,中沙双方均奉行独立自主的外交政策,拥有良好的政治关系,未来在区域组织和联合国等国际舞台上将有更广泛的合作领域。     

中国新增劳动力的总体态势浅析

中国的劳动力资源是相当丰富的,并且,中国人口目前仍以每年约1 000万左右的速度在递增,每年的新增劳动力的数量很大.文章通过对新增劳动力的初步界定,分析了他们在数量、质量、分布、流动以及就业方面的总体态势.进而指出,应该关心青年的现状,重视青年的发展,发挥青年作为社会发展的中坚力量的积极作用.     

Union PAC contributions and legislative voting

Are union PACs able to affect legislative voting patterns with campaign contributions? Unlike previous studies addressing this question, this work measures the likelihood of a legislator supporting union (AFL-CIO) issues instead of isolating specific bills for study. Furthermore, the influence of union PAC money in both congressional chambers is examined. The results are mixed: apparently, organized labor has been able to influence labor legislation with campaign money in some election cycles, but in others, they are less effective.     

Theory of optimal blocking of nonregular factorial designs

The authors introduce the notion of split generalized wordlength pattern (GWP), i.e., treatment GWP and block GWP, for a blocked nonregular factorial design. They generalize the minimum aberration criterion to suit this type of design. Connections between factorial design theory and coding theory allow them to obtain combinatorial identities that govern the relationship between the split GWP of a blocked factorial design and that of its blocked consulting design. These identities work for regular and nonregular designs. Furthermore, the authors establish general rules for identifying generalized minimum aberration (GMA) blocked designs through their blocked consulting designs. Finally they tabulate and compare some GMA blocked designs from Hall's orthogonal array OA(16,2¹5,2) of type III.     

Impact of competitive conditions on supplier evaluation: a construction supply chain case study

This research proposes a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework and demonstrates the impact of competitive conditions on supplier evaluation process for construction supply chains. The paper focuses on the supply chain of a large-scale housing project in order to illustrate the role of competitive capability and suppliers’ profile and its influence on supplier evaluation based on prevailing supply/market conditions. Various scenarios are investigated to demonstrate the impact of competition on supplier evaluation. The contribution of the study lies in highlighting the impact of supply/market conditions on MCDM decisions causing supplier evaluation ‘imbalance’ and MCDM usage. It is expected that the study will be useful for project management, construction, supply chain management, sourcing professionals. The findings of the study are generalisable to projects-based situations such as petroleum refinery and ship building where bill of materials typically consists of thousands of items and a large number of suppliers are involved.