Race differentials in employment effects of psychological distress: A study of non-Hispanic Whites and African-Americans in the United States

This study used two sub-samples of African-Americans and non-Hispanic Whites from the 2002–2003 U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health to examine differential effects of psychological distress (PD) on employment. Failing to reject exogeneity of PD in the employment specifications, we estimated standard probit of employment. We found that PD significantly reduced employment probability regardless of race; but the reduction was 7.4% for African-Americans, compared to 5.3% for Whites. Using individuals with PD only, we estimated the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and found endowments explained 61% of employment differences between Whites with PDs and African-Americans with PDs while 39% of these differences were due to unexplained factors. These findings suggest that targeted policies for prevention and effective treatment of PD might yield higher employment benefits for minorities.     

Longitudinal data: different approaches in the context of item-response theory models

In this paper, some extended Rasch models are analyzed in the presence of longitudinal measurements of a latent variable. Two main approaches, multidimensional and multilevel, are compared: we investigate the different information that can be obtained from the latent variable, and we give advice on the use of the different kinds of models. The multidimensional and multilevel approaches are illustrated with a simulation study and with a longitudinal study on the health-related quality of life in terminal cancer patients.     

Leading public sector networks: An empirical examination of integrative leadership behaviors

The literature has often suggested that network leadership is different from leadership in hierarchical/single-agency structures. While this difference has been assumed, relatively little research has been conducted to determine whether such a distinction between network and hierarchical leadership actually exists. This study addresses this gap in the literature using data from 417 public sector leaders. We compared the leadership behaviors exhibited by a leader in their government agency with the behaviors exhibited by that same individual while leading his or her network. The leadership behaviors were classified into one of three categories common in the leadership literature. The results indicate that while the frequency of organization-oriented behaviors vary widely between the agency and network contexts, leaders in their networks focus more on people-oriented behaviors and less on task-oriented behaviors when compared to leading their agency.     

Does “The Public” Think Politically?: A Search for “Deep Structures” in Everyday Political Thought

An abundant literature studies the political thought of ordinary citizens qualitatively, but cross-national comparative studies are rare. To begin identifying cultural differences, this article focuses on the U.S. and Argentina, two countries that are opposite in many respects, while homogenizing the age, family situation, income, and metropolitan residence of the respondents. On one hand, the analysis shows two elements (that we call ideologemes) common to both countries: the vision of the public sphere of mothers who have experienced downward social mobility, and the recurrent reference to the breaking of a previously extant social covenant. On the other hand, it shows differences in a basic axis of discursive organization: In Argentina, personal experience is tied to political events and historicized, while in the U.S., discourses about society are predominantly articulated in terms of spatial categories.     

Mediated reunions in adoption: findings from an evaluation study

In Canada, there are long waiting lists of adopted persons and birthparents seeking information or actual reunions. In the province of Quebec, the government authorized a pilot project, involving a fee-for-service program and use of contract social workers to supplement agency staff as intermediaries in the reunion process. This article reports on the project's evaluation and provides birth-parents' and adoptees' responses to reunion. A survey of clients who used this service found a high level of satisfaction. There were, however, some significant differences between birthparents and adoptees as well as between those who were searching and those found.     

Attitudes of nurses towards 8-h and 12-h shift systems

Twelve-hour shift schedules are becoming increasingly popular. The present study was designed to investigate the attitudes of nurses, their priorities with respect to working time and other aspects of the working conditions, and to analyse the conditions leading to a diminished satisfaction with the shift schedule and to aspirations for a change of schedule. Questionnaires were returned by 880 nurses (78% return rate) from 12 hospitals. A total of 65% worked 12-h shifts and 35% worked 8-h shifts. A considerable proportion of both groups showed a low satisfaction with their schedule and a desire to change the schedule (44% of those working 12-h shifts, 47% of those working 8-h shifts). Concerning effects of the shift schedule on work strain, continuity of service, health, family and leisure time, 8-h shifts were rated more favourably, especially by those working these shifts, but also by nurses working 12-h systems, with the exception of effects on leisure time and to some extent also on continuity of service and on family. Effects of the shift schedule on social responsibilities and leisure time activities turned out to be a major moderating variable in both groups with respect to schedule satisfaction and attitudes towards a change of schedule. Apparently neither type of shift system, traditional 12-h shift rosters or rotating 8-h shifts, is very appealing to the nurses. A stronger relationship between social consequences and health state in nurses working 12-h shifts indicates that in this group negative effects on family and leisure time might be due to an increased need for recuperation, which reduces effective leisure time.     

Modelling spatio-temporal air pollution data from a mobile monitoring station

ABSTRACT

Environmental data is typically indexed in space and time. This work deals with modelling spatio-temporal air quality data, when multiple measurements are available for each space-time point. Typically this situation arises when different measurements referring to several response variables are observed in each space-time point, for example, different pollutants or size resolved data on particular matter. Nonetheless, such a kind of data also arises when using a mobile monitoring station moving along a path for a certain period of time. In this case, each spatio-temporal point has a number of measurements referring to the response variable observed several times over different locations in a close neighbourhood of the space-time point. We deal with this type of data within a hierarchical Bayesian framework, in which observed measurements are modelled in the first stage of the hierarchy, while the unobserved spatio-temporal process is considered in the following stages. The final model is very flexible and includes autoregressive terms in time, different structures for the variance-covariance matrix of the errors, and can manage covariates available at different space-time resolutions. This approach is motivated by the availability of data on urban pollution dynamics: fast measures of gases and size resolved particulate matter have been collected using an Optical Particle Counter located on a cabin of a public conveyance that moves on a monorail on a line transect of a town. Urban microclimate information is also available and included in the model. Simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed model over existing alternatives that do not model data over the first stage of the hierarchy.     

Boundaries of the business model within business groups

Scholars have sought various ways to find out how financial performance of the firm can be affected by its business model (BM). However, to date academic literature has focused attention on the “firm” as a unit of analysis without clearly defining the boundaries of the reporting entity to which the BMs refer. The aim of this paper is to investigate what are the boundaries of the BM of the affiliated-group companies and how the degree of independence of BMs is measured within the business group. The contribution of the paper is in using the BM concept to expound and criticise the assumptions in economic analysis and accounting standards that groups of companies are economic units that optimise economic income of the group as a whole and that the financial statements of individual subsidiaries, sub-groups and the group as a whole report the value generated by the group.     

The Role of Posterior Densities in Latent Variable Models for Ordinal Data

In latent variable models, problems related to the integration of the likelihood function arise since analytical solutions do not exist. Laplace and Adaptive Gauss-Hermite (AGH) approximations have been discussed as good approximating methods. Their performance relies on the assumption of normality of the posterior density of the latent variables, but, in small samples, this is not necessarily assured. Here, we analyze how the shape of the posterior densities varies as function of the model parameters, and we investigate its influence on the performance of AGH and of the Laplace approximation.