Child Benefit Portfolios Across OECD Countries

Current research on the cross-national pattern of investment in child benefits mostly adopts the total resources approach and the model family method. The total resources approach conducts a broad comparison of the aggregate expenditure of different types of child benefit across countries. The model family method adds sophistication by comparing the values of child benefit packages of different countries, which combines different levels of spending in each type of child benefit, based on different family types with certain assumed characteristics. To complement the existing approaches, this study uses cluster analysis to classify countries into groups of similar investment strategies by simultaneously counting the different types and levels of child benefits of all countries. The findings show that four types of child benefit investment portfolio, namely Active, Moderate, Conservative, and Minimal, can be identified across OECD countries. While some studies have focused on the effects of individual types of child benefit on child outcomes, little is known about the effects of child benefits as a whole. The pattern of child benefits as investment portfolios could serve as a basis facilitating further investigation into its relationship with child outcomes. Preliminary findings indicate that child poverty, health, and satisfaction with school life differ significantly across investment portfolios, especially Active Investment outperforms Minimal Investment consistently.     

A reference activity model for smart factory design and improvement

Smart manufacturing systems (SMSs) are envisioned to contain highly automated and IT-driven production systems. To address the complexity that arises in such systems, a standard and holistic model for describing its activities and their interrelationships is needed. This paper introduces a factory design and improvement (FDI) activity model and illustrates a case study of FDI in an electromechanical component factory. In essence, FDI is a reference activity model that encompasses a range of manufacturing system activities for designing and improving a factory during its initial development and also its operational phases. The FDI model shows not only the dependency between activities and manufacturing control levels but also the pieces of information and software functions each activity relies on. We envision that the availability of these pieces of information in digital form to integrate across the software functions will increase the agility of factory design and improvement projects. Therefore, our future work lies in contributing to standards for exchanging such information.     

Stationarity test of electromyographic signals during isokinetic trunk exertions

The aim of this study is to investigate the stationarity of the electromyographic (EMG) signals during isokinetic exertions of the trunk muscle. Six healthy subjects participated in this study. The erector spinae muscles were used to collect the signals. In order to simulate the isokinetic exercises of the trunk, a Cybex system with a trunk modular component was used. All subjects performed sustained exertions with a combination of load (25%, 50% MVC) and angular velocity (0, 15, 30 degree/s). The stationarity of the signals was tested by the reverse arrangements test and modified reverse arrangements test. In the results, the signal stationarity was high in all conditions in the reverse arrangements test. However, in the modified reverse arrangements test it was relatively low at about the 30 degree/s angular velocity. In the analysis of variance, the effect of angular velocity was statistically significant at the 0.05 significance level in the modified reverse arrangements test and Tukey's HSD grouping showed that the stationarity of 30 degree/s angular velocity was significantly different from 0, 15 degree/s condition. These results indicate that the stationarity of the EMG signals showed no difference between isometric and isokinetic conditions when the angular velocity was equal to 15 degree/s.     

A Social Network Contagion Theory of Risk Perception

Risk perceptions have, to a great extent, been studied exclusively as individual cognitive mechanisms in which individuals collect, process, and form perceptions as atomized units unconnected to a social system. These individual-level theories do not, however, help explain how perception of risk may vary between communities or within a single community. One alternative approach is based on a network theory of contagion. This approach, emerging largely from organizational and community social network studies, suggests that it is the relational aspects of individuals and the resulting networks and self-organizing systems that influence individual perceptions and build "groups or communities of like-minded" individuals. These social units, it is argued, behave as attitude, knowledge, or behavioral structures. The study reported in this article tests one aspect of this theoretical perspective. The central hypothesis proposes the existence of risk perception networks--relational groupings of individuals who share, and perhaps create, similar risk perceptions. To test this idea, data were collected from individuals involved in a community environmental conflict over a hazardous waste site cleanup. The statistical analysis used a matrix of relational social linkages to compare with a matrix of individual risk perceptions The analysis confirmed the hypothesis suggesting that social linkages in communities may play an important role in focusing risk perceptions.     

Basic Psychological Need Profiles and Correlates in Volunteers for a National Sports Event

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - According to the basic psychological need theory, satisfaction and frustration of basic psychological needs are related to...     

The psychosocial needs of the Chinese elderly

Changing Chinese family patterns caused by immigration have contributed to the breakdown of traditional community and familial control in Chinese-American families. As a result, the Chinese-American elderly are faced with unique psychosocial problems that workers must consider when providing services to this population.     

Appraising the Quality of Democracy as a Developmental Phenomenon: How South Koreans Appraise the Quality of Their Democracy

In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have made serious efforts to assess the quality of democracy from the perspective of ordinary citizens. Their research endeavors to date have all sought to distinguish democracies exclusively in terms of low to high levels of quality. Unlike these studies, which are solely concerned with the varying levels of democratic quality, this study offers a new conceptual framework that allows for discerning and monitoring its shifting patterns from electoral through liberal to civic quality. An analysis of the 2010 Korea Democracy Barometer survey confirms that the quality of democracy is, indeed, a developmental and multidimensional phenomenon. Furthermore, it reveals that ordinary citizens are capable of identifying its particular dimensions, and Korean democracy shows a significant deficit in two: the liberal and civic domains.     

Adaptive and repeated cumulative meta‐analyses of safety data during a new drug development process

During a new drug development process, it is desirable to timely detect potential safety signals. For this purpose, repeated meta‐analyses may be performed sequentially on accumulating safety data. Moreover, if the amount of safety data from the originally planned program is not enough to ensure adequate power to test a specific hypothesis (e.g., the noninferiority hypothesis of an event of interest), the total sample size may be increased by adding new studies to the program. Without appropriate adjustment, it is well known that the type I error rate will be inflated because of repeated analyses and sample size adjustment. In this paper, we discuss potential issues associated with adaptive and repeated cumulative meta‐analyses of safety data conducted during a drug development process. We consider both frequentist and Bayesian approaches. A new drug development example is used to demonstrate the application of the methods. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Part-time employment and worker health in the United States

A growing body of research has highlighted the consequences of part-time employment for workers’ health and well-being. However, these studies have yielded inconsistent results and relied on cross-sectional data. In addition, relatively little empirical research has explored whether the effect of working part-time on health varies by gender, particularly in the United States. Using longitudinal data from three waves of the General Social Survey panel (2010–2012–2014), our study examined the association between part-time employment and perceived health among U.S employees, and whether this association varied by gender. The results showed that part-time workers were less likely to report poor self-rated health than full-time workers, especially among males. The pattern of results was consistent across empirical approaches—including generalized estimating equations and random effects models, with an extensive set of covariates. Taken together, these findings suggest that for U.S. employees, working part-time appears to be beneficial or at least not detrimental to perceived health, which warrants further investigation.