Depressive symptoms of caregiving women in midlife: the role of physical health

This research examined the relationships between providing assistance to aging family members, caregivers' age, caregivers' perceptions of their physical health, and caregivers' depressive symptoms. Several alternative hypotheses were examined. Longitudinal data from 1,898 women from the 1992 and 2000 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) were used. Results indicate a reciprocal relationship between depression and physical health. These processes were examined using a path analysis. Although the evidence only supported one of the hypotheses, this study clearly demonstrated the importance of physical health for the psychological well-being of women in midlife.     

Teacher shortages, teacher contracts and their effect on education in Africa

Summary.  To enhance primary enrolment rates, many African countries have launched large teacher recruitment programmes in recent years. Given tight budgetary constraints, teachers are no longer employed in civil service positions, but on the basis of (fixed term) contracts typically implying considerably lower salaries and a sharply reduced amount of professional training. We analyse the effect of this change on educational quality in Niger, Togo and Mali, on the basis of very informative data, which are comparable across these countries. We use a variety of estimation techniques, including a non-parametric estimation of quantile treatment effects. Our results demonstrate that contract teachers tend to reduce inequalities in student outcomes. Overall, the effects are positive in Mali, somewhat mixed in Togo and negative in Niger. This ordering is consistent with theoretical expectations related to the manner in which contract teacher programmes were implemented differently in each of the three countries under study.     

Projection‐Based Statistical Inference in Linear Structural Models with Possibly Weak Instruments

It is well known that standard asymptotic theory is not applicable or is very unreliable in models with identification problems or weak instruments. One possible way out consists of using a variant of the Anderson–Rubin ((1949), AR) procedure. The latter allows one to build exact tests and confidence sets only for the full vector of the coefficients of the endogenous explanatory variables in a structural equation, but not for individual coefficients. This problem may in principle be overcome by using projection methods (Dufour (1997), Dufour and Jasiak (2001)). At first sight, however, this technique requires the application of costly numerical algorithms. In this paper, we give a general necessary and sufficient condition that allows one to check whether an AR‐type confidence set is bounded. Furthermore, we provide an analytic solution to the problem of building projection‐based confidence sets from AR‐type confidence sets. The latter involves the geometric properties of “quadrics” and can be viewed as an extension of usual confidence intervals and ellipsoids. Only least squares techniques are needed to build the confidence intervals.     

The Role of the Private Market in Day-care Provision for Children in Need

This article examines the role that the private day-care market plays within the range of day-care services offered by 12 local authorities for children in need. It examines how local authorities have developed their use of private day-care services generally, and goes on to discuss three models of sponsored childminding practice which were identified in the study. Although authorities have generally been innovative in developing their work with independent day-care providers, if they are to continue to purchase good quality services for children in need they need to ensure that private day-care providers receive adequate levels of training and support, and that steps are taken to address existing gaps in both private and local authority day-care services.     

Diversity of romantic experiences in late adolescence and their contribution to identity formation

Romance constitutes a central experience in adolescence, which can take several forms including (a) serious romance with a steady partner, (b) casual and short‐lived dating, and (c) pending experiences of romantic thoughts and attempts. Using a three‐way longitudinal design, the present study examined the gender differences and developmental changes of these romantic experiences, and their cross‐lagged associations with identity processes, throughout one year in late adolescence. 389 students (63% girls) filled out questionnaires about their romantic experiences and identity processes. Girls reported more serious romance than did boys, who reported more casual dating and pending experiences. Serious romance increased over the year for both genders whereas casual dating and pending experiences continued to rise only for boys. The cross‐lagged model highlighted that serious romantic experience positively predicted identity commitments and exploration in depth whereas identity exploration in breadth positively predicted casual dating. This pattern was stable over the three time points and across gender and age groups. Overall, this study invites consideration of more diverse romantic experiences than those associated with tangible involvement. We discuss the contribution of romantic experiences to the identity dynamic.     

Management Consulting: Towards an Integrative Framework of Knowledge,Identity, and Power

This paper reviews the past 28 years of scholarship on management consulting to synthesize the field and establish more broadly its contribution to management research. Through a systematic review of 219 articles, we identify three core conceptual themes – knowledge, identity, and power – that have dominated the literature to date. Through a thematic inductive analysis of a subsection of articles, we then investigate how these themes have been defined, used, and linked. This allows us to uncover and problematize the relationships between these themes. In making explicit underlying theoretical assumptions and relationships between knowledge, identity, and power, we induce a unique framework that can guide and support future studies, instigate metaparadigmatic dialogue, and thus help consolidate the field.     

The power of negative thinking: The use of negative case methodology in the development of sociological theory

Theory and Society -     

Return rates in studies of life history evolution: Are biases large?

Studies of life history evolution in passerine birds often depend on examination of annual survival probability of adult birds. Most studies rely on return rates (proportion of marked individuals released in one year that are recaptured in the next year) to estimate annual survival probability. Yet, return rate includes both the probability of survival and the probability of recapturing or resighting the bird in the next time interval. We use numerical estimation to illustrate the increasing bias in return rate as an estimator of annual survival probability as recapture/resighting probability decreases. Recapture/resighting probability is normally assumed to be high and relatively invariant for recapture/resighting studies of color-banded territorial birds. We tested this assumption through examination of 11 color-banding studies of passerines. These studies showed that recapture/resighting probabilities vary strongly and cannot be generalized as high. In short, return rates generally are poor estimators of annual survival probabilities and use of return rates may strongly bias relationships explored in comparative studies or bias results of experiments to test survival costs of reproduction. Recapture/resighting probabilities should be estimated in all studies that attempt to estimate annual survival probabilities.