Exploring characteristics of innovative nonprofit organizations in South Korea

The purpose of this study was to explore how employees of Korean nonprofit organizations perceived characteristics of innovative organizations. The social-validation method (first, an open-ended question is given; and later, ideas collected from participants are used to make an instrument) was used to collect the data. Thirteen employees representing a variety of nonprofit organizations in South Korea participated in this study. At the first stage of the study, participants were asked to generate a list of characteristics of innovative organizations. A total of 125 characteristics of innovative nonprofit organizations were summarized into the 25 most often mentioned characteristics. At the second stage of the study, all participants were asked to rate each of the characteristics on how important they were for an innovative organization. Among the highest-ranked characteristics of innovative organizations were: having a clear organizational vision and mission statement, having transparent financial and accounting processes, having a leader who is open-minded and flexible, being responsive to clients’ needs, and having employees who share the vision and mission of the organization. The pattern of agreement among participants indicated a low degree of consensus. Implications were suggested based on the findings.     

Transdiagnostic mechanism of social phobia and depression: The role of anger dysregulation

ABSTRACT

Emotion dysregulation has been identified as a transdiagnostic mechanism underlying social phobia and depression; however, there is much to learn about how emotion dysregulation leads to these specific outcomes. Thus, this study examined the relationship pattern between anger dysregulation and depression and how it is mediated by social phobia. Anger dysregulation was examined specifically considering anger as a significant emotional feature of both social phobia and depression. The mediation hypothesis within this study was empirically established. The data was drawn from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (2001–2003), in which 2,827 participants met DSM-IV criteria for lifetime major depressive disorder (14.3%), and 1,905 participants met criteria for DSM-IV lifetime social anxiety disorder (9.6%). Among participants, 4,250 (21.5%) reported that they perceived their anger as out of control and either broke items or hit (or tried to hit) others. The mediation hypothesis was tested with logistic regression models. Anger dysregulation was significantly related to social phobia and depression. A significant indirect effect of social phobia was detected through bootstrap analysis, supporting the partial mediation hypothesis. This study represents the first attempt to examine the mediating role of social phobia in the relationship between anger dysregulation and depression. The findings of this study suggest that anger dysregulation may be a transdiagnostic factor across social phobia and depression.     

Trapped in Poor Places? An Assessment of the Residential Spatial Patterns of Housing Choice Voucher Holders in 2004 and 2008

ABSTRACT

This study examines the residential spatial patterns of Housing Choice Voucher holders in Western New York in 2004 and 2008 (n = 4,600 and n = 4,759, respectively). It seeks to answer two questions: Has the concentration of voucher holders in impoverished and same race neighborhoods diminished overtime; and are voucher holders, particularly African Americans, relocating in patterns that would lead to reghettoization or the reconcentration of race and poverty? This type of residential pattern puts voucher holders at risk for resettling in neighborhoods that limit economic and social mobility. Data from the public housing agency contracted to distribute Housing Choice Vouchers were examined. Exploratory spatial analysis techniques were used to identify spatial outliers and to form a hypothesis on spatial patterns of relocation. Spatial clustering analyses were conducted to test the hypothesis on the reghettoization of African American voucher holders in recently relocated neighborhoods. Analyses indicate that African American voucher holders are moving out of impoverished, hypersegregated areas into historically White neighborhoods. A limited number of voucher holders are moving in clustered patterns, which lead to reghettoization. Future research is needed that highlights the role that housing assistance providers play in the residential location choices of low-income clients.     

Impact of Childhood Socioeconomic Position on Self‐Rated Health Trajectories of South Korean Adults

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of childhood socioeconomic position (SEP) on adult health trajectory in South Korea. Seven waves of data from the Korea Welfare Panel Study (KOWEPS, 2007–2012; Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, 2014 ) were analyzed using latent growth curve analysis. Health condition was measured by self‐assessment. The major independent variables were indicators of childhood and adult SEP. The findings suggest that those who perceive their childhood economic condition to be more affluent are more likely to assess their health to be better at the intercept. The insignificant effect of childhood economic condition on the slope and the quadratic term suggest that the initial gap remains over time. On the other hand, a disruption in education as a result of poverty was significantly associated with the intercept, slope, and quadratic term. The results suggest that although the large gap at wave 1 somewhat decreases, the gap in health remains because of the significant quadratic term. Childhood SEP has a a lasting effect on adult health trajectories, after controlling for adult SEP. Significant findings support policies and programs that are targeted to reduce socioeconomic disparities in childhood to enhance equality and public health.     

Impact of Having a First Child on Maternal Depressive Symptoms: Does the Birth of a Mother's First Baby Increase Symptoms of Depression in the Mother?

Previous studies on the impact of having a first child on a mother's psychological well‐being has not been extensively examined in Korea. The present study aims to understand how having a first child is associated with a first‐time mother's depressive symptoms when compared with their childless counterparts. A sample of 140 women aged 20–40 years, married, and childless in wave 1 of the Korean National Welfare Panel Study (KOWEPS) was selected. The depressive symptoms of women who became mothers between wave 1 and wave 2 of the study and those who remained childless were compared using CES‐D. Two different types of analytical methods (i.e. pooled OLS, fixed effects model) were employed. The results consistently indicated that Korean mothers were more depressed after the birth of the first child than wives without a child. Employment status and satisfaction of social relationship were associated with women's depression in the fixed effect model. The consistent finding that shows a negative association between having a first child and maternal depressive symptoms provides empirical grounds for the development of prevention and intervention programs for first‐time mothers. Implications of the study findings are discussed.     

Statistical Estimation of the Casual Effect of Social Economy on Subjective Well-Being

It is well known that measuring the noneconomic outcomes produced by social economy organizations is fairly difficult and complex. Usually, social economy organizations feature participatory and democratic decision-making processes that help create social capital and relational goods, and they are interested in social integration; accordingly, they tend to create an organizational culture that encourages their workers to contribute to local communities. Therefore, the hypothesis that the increased activities of social economy organizations have a causal effect on the subjective well-being of the people living near those organizations is highly plausible. In this paper, we estimate the causal effect and attempt to test the hypothesis statistically by using a dataset called the “Seoul Survey,” which provides observations on the subjective well-being of 45,496 citizens living in Seoul and the size of social economy organizations. Controlling for variables at the district level and the appropriate socioeconomic characteristics of each individual in the dataset, we find that the size of social organizations is highly significant.     

A comparative analysis of the perception of public relations in Chinese and South Korean newspapers

The study analyzes the major newspapers of China and South Korea to explore how the journalists perceive public relations term which is equivalent to Xuan Chuan in China and Hong-Bo in South Korea. Chinese news considered the primary function of Xuan Chuan to be persuasion, whereas Korean news considered the primary functions of Hong-Bo to be public information and image (reputation) management. Xuan Chuan was more likely to be associated with the government and persuasion, whereas Hong Bo was closely associated with for-profit organizations and image management.     

Gene Pathways Discovery in Asbestos-Related Diseases using Local Causal Discovery Algorithm

To learn about the progression of a complex disease, it is necessary to understand the physiology and function of many genes operating together in distinct interactions as a system. In order to significantly advance our understanding of the function of a system, we need to learn the causal relationships among its modeled genes. To this end, it is desirable to compare experiments of the system under complete interventions of some genes, e.g., knock-out of some genes, with experiments of the system without interventions. However, it is expensive and difficult (if not impossible) to conduct wet lab experiments of complete interventions of genes in animal models, e.g., a mouse model. Thus, it will be helpful if we can discover promising causal relationships among genes with observational data alone in order to identify promising genes to perturb in the system that can later be verified in wet laboratories. While causal Bayesian networks have been actively used in discovering gene pathways, most of the algorithms that discover pairwise causal relationships from observational data alone identify only a small number of significant pairwise causal relationships, even with a large dataset. In this article, we introduce new causal discovery algorithms—the Equivalence Local Implicit latent variable scoring Method (EquLIM) and EquLIM with Markov chain Monte Carlo search algorithm (EquLIM-MCMC)—that identify promising causal relationships even with a small observational dataset.