Harnessing the Potential of Google Searches for Understanding Dynamics of Intimate Partner Violence Before and After the COVID-19 Outbreak

European Journal of Population - Most social phenomena are inherently complex and hard to measure, often due to under-reporting, stigma, social desirability bias, and rapidly changing external...     

Are moral norms distinct from social norms? A critical assessment of Jon Elster and Cristina Bicchieri

This article offers a critical assessment of Cristina Bicchieri and Jon Elster’s recent attempt to distinguish between social, moral, and quasi-moral norms. Although their typologies present interesting differences, they both distinguish types of norms on the basis of the way in which context, and especially other agents’ expectations and behavior, shapes one’s preference to comply with norms. We argue that both typologies should be abandoned because they fail to capture causally relevant features of norms. We nevertheless emphasize that both Bicchieri and Elster correctly draw attention to important and often neglected characteristics of the psychology of norm compliance.     

Postcommunist Societies in Times of Transition: Perceptions of Change Among Adolescents in Central and Eastern Europe

This article examines adolescents' perceptions of the economic changes and the justice of the new social contract in Eastern/Central Europe. Focusing on three countries, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic, it explores the social, political, and economic environments in which adolescents came of age in 1990. Surveys conducted among high school students in each country during 1995 tapped their perceptions of the economy, the local community, and their personal beliefs about the efficacy of individual initiative and hard work. Responses differed significantly based on age, gender, social class, value orientation, and country. Older adolescents and girls were more likely to observe that economic disparities were growing in their country and to be cynical about the value of hard work. Those with socialist values also discounted the value of recent changes. Adolescents in the Czech Republic were the least cynical about economic changes, whereas those in Bulgaria were the most cynical, with Hungarian youth the least optimistic about the future.     

Measuring firing costs: The case for direct methods

Firing costs, together with the legislative and regulatory frameworks governing employment relations, are often blamed for poor labour market outcomes. Yet, research on the economic impacts of these costs is inconclusive. There has been much focus on functional assumptions and the significance of parameters, but very little on the quality and precision of the cost measures upon which most results hinge. Reviewing the indirect and direct measurement methods commonly used, the author argues that direct quantitative methods, rarely used in research, are much needed to complement more popular indirect measures. A recent survey experiment conducted in Australia illustrates this point.     

Are equalization payments making Canadians better off? A two-dimensional dominance answer

This article provides a robust normative appraisal of the Canadian equalization transfers system. The two-dimensional dominance criteria introduced by Atkinson and Bourguignon (RES, 1982) are used to compare the distributions of private and public goods before and after equalization payments. Because the distribution before equalization is not observable, it is simulated on the basis of various scenarios that specify both its financing by the federal government and its utilization by provincial governments. The main result of the paper is that, for most scenarios, equalization transfers have an ambiguous normative impact on the distribution of well-being among Canadians and that, for some scenarios, equalization transfers actually worsen this distribution of well-being.     

A location–allocation model for service providers with application to not-for-profit health care organizations

In this paper, we develop and solve a model for the location and allocation of specialized health care services such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) treatment. The model is based on and applied to one of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ integrated service networks. A cost minimization model with service proportion requirements is solved using simulated annealing. Large instances of the model with 100 candidate medical center locations and 15 open treatment units are solved in about 1000 s. In order to test the real-world applicability of our model, an extensive managerial experiment is conducted using data derived from our health care setting. In this experiment, the effects of three critical factors: (1) degree of centralization of services, (2) the role of patient retention as a function of distance to a treatment unit, and (3) the geographic density of the patient population are investigated with respect to the important trade-off between the cost of providing service and the need to provide such service. Our analysis shows that all three factors of the experiment are both relevant and useful to decision-makers when selecting locations for their services.     

Die Muslime in der Region Midi-Pyrenäen

Building mosques inside towns, organising separate squares for Moslems in our own cemeteries, ruling over slaughtering the hallal way, putting high schools under regional governments — all these questions can be debated in France. This body allows (or imposes) a unity in their voicing to the various representatives so that they can stand up the State Representative. This new and legitimate body tries to solve many problems in its numerous specific commissions. Consequently one has to organise a way of working with the various departments, leaving them sufficient freedom according to their demographic numbers. This has also to take into account the many relations which these communities have with the Moslem Regional Council (CRCM), the different countries they come from and Europe. On the other hand, not every one recognises this new body because they had not all be able to express their votes previously. But ruling Islam in France is already beginning to be organised at county levels.     

The role of work-related personal projects during two burnout interventions: a longitudinal study

Burnout is nowadays a common problem among employees, and a new approach to reduce its extent is needed. This study looked at burnout interventions in terms of personal goals and/or projects. These represent what individuals are striving to achieve, and include work-related goals. Our aim was to examine the extent to which two kinds of burnout intervention, in the form of different types of psychotherapy, influence employees’ personal projects. The two types of therapy were psychoanalytic and experiential, both in the form of group therapy. To determine the extent, 62 employees who had contacted the Helsinki Occupational Health Services suffering from severe burnout participated, in the course of a single year, in 16 sessions of either analytic or experiential group psychotherapy. In addition, 28 employees suffering from severe burnout served as controls. All the participants filled in Little's Personal Project Analysis and the Bergen Burnout Indicator one month before the intervention, in the middle of the intervention and one month after the intervention. The results showed that among participants in the intervention groups the level of burnout decreased. Further, the number of work-related personal projects, project-related negative emotions, and tendencies towards negative action, decreased among those in the intervention groups compared to the control group. Moreover, project-related progress, social support and managing project-related emotions increased during the intervention. Finally, the results showed that when the negative emotions related to personal projects decreased during intervention, the level of burnout also decreased.     

Beyond demand–control: Emotional labour and symptoms of burnout in teachers

Abstract

Teaching is a profession that involves a high level of emotional labour. This includes such behaviours as surface acting (displaying an emotion that is not actually felt), deep acting (the activity undertaken to actually feel a required emotion), and suppression of emotion. In many professions, this emotional labour is thought to be related to high levels of burnout. The aim of our study was to show that emotional labour has a unique relationship with burnout that is separate from its relationship with the variables of the Demand Control Support (DCS) model. Emotional labour was studied, together with the variables of the Karasek Job Demand Control Support model, in a random sample of 365 mathematics teachers in the Netherlands. We used the Dutch Questionnaire on Emotional Labor (D-QEL) that measures: (1) surface acting, (2) deep acting, (3) suppression, and (4) emotional consonance. In line with other studies, job characteristics were found to be specifically related to emotional exhaustion. Surface acting was significantly related to depersonalization, and emotional consonance (the absence of emotional labour) was related to personal accomplishment. We conclude that whereas the DCS model has been valuable for understanding emotional exhaustion, emotional labour provides an additional perspective for understanding work stress.