Productivity of Older Workers: Perceptions of Employers and Employees

What determines the perceived productivity of the older worker and how does this perception compare to the perception of the productivity of the younger worker? In this study we present evidence based on data from Dutch employers and employees. Productivity perceptions are affected by one's age and one's position in the hierarchy. The young favor the young, the old favor the old, and employers value the productivity of workers less than employees do. However, there are also remarkable similarities across employers and employees. By distinguishing the various dimensions that underlie the productivity of younger and older workers, we tested whether soft qualities and abilities—e.g., reliability and commitment—are just as important as hard qualities—cognitive and physically based skills—in the eyes of both employers and employees. It appears that both employers and employees, young and old, view hard skills as far more important than soft skills.     

Population and Climate Change: Consensus and Dissensus among Demographers

What role does population play in thinking about the problem of climate change and some of its solutions? In a survey conducted between February and April 2020, we asked European demographers to state their views on the relationship between climate change and population developments, and asked them to rate their concern about climate change and other socio-demographic issues. We found that climate change is at the top of the list of demographers’ concerns, but that their sense of urgency with respect to taking action to redress global warming is not matched by their belief that population policy can make a crucial difference in reducing CO₂ emissions: demographers are highly divided on the question whether the global population size should be reduced to lower CO₂ emissions, as well as on the question whether family planning is an effective policy instrument.     

Beyond “linking knowledge and action”: towards a practice-based approach to transdisciplinary sustainability interventions

ABSTRACT

The imperative to “link knowledge and action” is widely invoked as a defining characteristic of sustainability research. The complexities of sustainability challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss mean that linear models of knowledge and action, where knowledge is produced first (by researchers) then “applied to” action (by policy actors), are considered insufficient. Researchers have developed more dynamic, open-ended and collaborative forms of policy engagement such as transdisciplinary and co-production research. Although promising these approaches often remain captive to linear assumptions that hinder their transformative potential. We contribute by providing a relational model of knowledge and action rooted in contemporary practice theory. A practice-based approach suggests the primary task of participants in transdisciplinary interventions is to find workable solutions to situations of dynamic complexity that are fundamentally indeterminate and unpredictable. Knowledge is not “applied to” action, but drawn upon, produced and used from within the situation at hand, allowing researchers and policy actors alike to better harness the emergent character of situational developments and outcomes. A practice-based approach provides a conceptual language that captures the experienced complexities of intervening for sustainability, reconfigures the nature of “actionable knowledge,” and identifies appropriate modes of evaluation for transdisciplinary and co-produced research.     

Stigma as a barrier to engaging in mental health services among adolescents who survive natural disasters

Many barriers impact the utilization of mental health services among adolescents who survive natural disasters. Although stigma has been identified as one of these barriers, minimal work examines the etiological factors that impact stigma and how these factors operate in perpetuating stigma among adolescents after a disaster. Understanding the role that stigma plays is a critical step to raising awareness of the cognitive and behavioral processes that preserve adolescents’ well-being, timely attainment of developmental milestones, and the potential for engagement in meaningful opportunities. We modify an existing adolescent self-stigma model to better understand how youth might respond psychologically to natural disasters both immediately after the event as well as during the long-term recovery phase. Future empirical research should assess the validity of these barriers within the suggested temporal framework. If this proposed conceptual piece is validated, interventions could be designed that directly address the role of stigma.     

Generalised joint regression for count data: a penalty extension for competitive settings

Statistics and Computing - We propose a versatile joint regression framework for count responses. The method is implemented in the R add-on package GJRM and allows for modelling linear and...     

Beyond resilience: Resistance in the lives of LGBTQ youth

Resilience has come to define a wide breadth of impactful research on marginalized groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. This resilience framework shifted the deficit “at-risk” model of research on marginalized populations to a more nuanced strengths-based perspective. In this critical review article, we examine this research trend to understand how the shift to resilience has shaped patterns of LGBTQ youth research. In doing so, this piece calls for a more sophisticated engagement with operationalizing resilience–which is vaguely defined and often upholds dominant relations in society, such as capitalistic, heteronormative values of success and happiness. We show how a shift to understanding resistance, joy, and pleasure in LGBTQ youth's lives promotes a more dynamic and complicated look at how marginalized groups navigate their social worlds and exert power in shaping these worlds. Acknowledging and uplifting LGBTQ youth's resistance and power are necessary in pushing scholarly dialogue and the possible interventions informed by research towards a more fully transformative framework in changing and dismantling oppressive societal structures.     

An experimental design criterion for minimizing meta-model prediction errors applied to die casting process design

Summary. We propose the expected integrated mean-squared error (EIMSE) experimental design criterion and show how we used it to design experiments to meet the needs of researchers in die casting engineering. This criterion expresses in a direct way the researchers' goal to minimize the expected meta-model prediction errors, taking into account the effects of both random experimental errors and errors deriving from our uncertainty about the true model form. Because we needed to make assumptions about the prior distribution of model coefficients to estimate the EIMSE, we performed a sensitivity analysis to verify that the relative prediction performance of the design generated was largely insensitive to our assumptions. Also, we discuss briefly the general advantages of EIMSE optimal designs, including lower expected bias errors compared with popular response surface designs and substantially lower variance errors than certain Box–Draper all-bias designs.     

Demographers and Their Journals: Who Remains Uncited After Ten Years?

This research note examines the level of uncitedness and the impact of articles published in the years 1990–92 in 17 demography journals. After ten years 24 percent of the demography articles are still uncited and the average number of citations per article is seven. The ten‐year citation history reveals two novel insights. First, the impact of demography journals does not slow down significantly over time. The average number of citations in the first five years hardly differs from the average in the second five years, which suggests that one should be patient in assessing the full effect of demography articles. Second, the chance of being cited for the first time does not depend on the length of time an article remains uncited. In other words, the stigma of uncitedness does not play a significant role in the allocation of citations.