Der positive und negative Einfluss von Geschwistern auf den Gymnasialübergang

Within sociology of education living with siblings is almost exclusively considered as having a negative impact on educational success. Drawing on the German Microcensus 2008, the analysis reveals that although sibling constellation is strongly associated with transition to high school, this association is not solely negative. The probability to enter higher secondary school (Gymnasium) is sharply lowered by living in a household with an older sibling that neither attends the Gymnasium nor has a higher education entrance qualification. Vice versa living in a household with an older sibling that attends Gymnasium or has a higher education entrance qualification enhances the probability of transition to upper secondary school. Furthermore it is shown that the positive influence on entering Gymnasium that originates from an older sibling that attends Gymnasium is stronger in federal states (Bundesländer) in which the recommendation of elementary school for secondary school is not binding. What remains unanswered is the question of the mechanisms that underlie these demonstrated associations. However, some of the potential mechanisms can be proved empirically.     

‘It takes two to tango …’ revisited: a qualitative study on integration and participation of people living with spinal cord injury in Switzerland

We aimed to examine how integration and participation are understood by persons with spinal cord injury. A qualitative study was carried out where we analysed 14 interviews with persons with spinal cord injury living in Switzerland. Integration was more often understood in terms of social acceptance and inclusion, while individual activities were more often highlighted in definitions of participation. Environmental factors were seen as the most important determinants. Applied strategies comprised pre-arrangements, open communication, asking for help and optimism. Common ground appears to be autonomous functioning and freedom of choice while major determinants are seen in the environment.     

Determinants of Rural Physicians' Life and Job Satisfaction

Objective: To identify and quantify factors that contribute to rural physicians' satisfaction with their jobs and life as a whole.Design: Cross-sectional, mailed survey. Study population: Family physicians practicing in rural communities eligible for British Columbia's Northern and Isolation Allowance. Main measures: Demographics, Domain satisfaction, Maslach Burnout Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, and Life Satisfaction.Results: Stepwise multiple regressions reveal the greatest predicators of rural physician overall life satisfaction are satisfaction with jobs, personal relationships, health, finances, and absence of depression. These predictors account for 70% of the variation in rural physician overall life satisfaction. The greatest predictors of rural physician satisfaction with jobs and satisfaction with current place of residence/practice, on-call shifts, personal accomplishments, and absence of emotional exhaustion. The predictors account for 44% of the variation in rural physician job satisfaction.     

Recentering our tendencies: Immigrant youth development and the importance of context in social work research

According to Weiner’s model, help giving has various determinants such as social and individual causes, affective reactions, and responsibility. The aim of this study was (1) to examine the influence of bullying acts, the victim’s behavior at work, and revictimization on equity judgments and the perceived responsibility of perpetrators and victims; and (2) to test the determinants of help decisions. Twelve vignettes of bullying at work submitted to 133 participants varied according to the severity of bullying, the victim’s pro- or antisocial behaviors, and the victim’s antecedents. The results showed that the situation was judged less equitable, the victim less responsible, and the perpetrator more responsible, and the intention of help was increased, (1) when the perpetrator’s acts were serious, and (2) when the bullied person had shown prosocial behavior versus antisocial behavior. The help increased more (1) when the perpetrator’s acts were harmful and (2) when the victim had shown prosocial behaviors.     

Remarks on emancipatory practices and industrial societies in crisis

La sociologie critique dont il s'agit ici ne se consacre pas settlement à la critique des sociétés existantes mais à l'avènement de celles qui pourraient et devraient naître. Aussi s'intéresse-t-elle plus aux pratiques qu'aux théories, plus aux 'praxis' qu'aux pratiques. Plus à l'instituant qu'à l'institué.
L'article qu'on a traduit en anglais veut servir de cadre conceptuel à une étude de terrain; on peut en déduire des hypothèses qui peuvent être confirmées ou infirmées. L'article ne vise pas à l'érudition mais à l'énonciation de certaines propositions qui pourraient guider le chercheur dans la cueillette et l'interprétation de ses données.
Trois monographies seront publiées bientôt et un cinquième volume fera l'autocritique du cadre conceptuel ainsi que son utilisation.
Critical sociology, as discussed in this article, is not only devoted to the critique of existing societies, but also to the advent of those which could and should develop. In addition, it is more interested in practices than in theories, more in 'praxis' than in practices, more in the establisher than in the established. The article, which has been translated into English, is designed to serve as a conceptual framework for an empirical study; from it, one can deduce hypotheses which can be proved or disproved. The article does not aim at pure scholarship, but at formulating certain propositions which could guide the researcher in the collection and interpretation of data. Three monographs will be published shortly and a fifth publication will effect a critique, from the inside, of the conceptual framework as well as of its utilization.     

Occupational variations in drinking and psychological distress: a multilevel analysis

The relationship between alcohol intake and psychological distress has been overlooked in studies on the working population. Using a multilevel multivariate model, this study reports results obtained from a sample of 8812 workers nested in 387 occupations. Results show that alcohol intake and psychological distress vary significantly at the worker and occupation levels, but they do not show a large variation at the occupation level. Occupational socioeconomic status appears to be a common factor explaining the correlation between alcohol intake and psychological distress at the occupation level. Semi-professionals, middle management, foreman and semiskilled clerical-sales-services occupations are particularly at risk. Gender is related to both outcomes, while work schedule and number of weekly working hours are associated only with psychological distress. Implications and limitations of these results are discussed.     

Design optimisation for pharmacokinetic modeling of a cocktail of phenotyping drugs

Our paper proposes a methodological strategy to select optimal sampling designs for phenotyping studies including a cocktail of drugs. A cocktail approach is of high interest to determine the simultaneous activity of enzymes responsible for drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, therefore useful in anticipating drug–drug interactions and in personalized medicine. Phenotyping indexes, which are area under the concentration‐time curves, can be derived from a few samples using nonlinear mixed effect models and maximum a posteriori estimation. Because of clinical constraints in phenotyping studies, the number of samples that can be collected in individuals is limited and the sampling times must be as flexible as possible. Therefore to optimize joint design for several drugs (i.e., to determine a compromise between informative times that best characterize each drug's kinetics), we proposed to use a compound optimality criterion based on the expected population Fisher information matrix in nonlinear mixed effect models. This criterion allows weighting different models, which might be useful to take into account the importance accorded to each target in a phenotyping test. We also computed windows around the optimal times based on recursive random sampling and Monte‐Carlo simulation while maintaining a reasonable level of efficiency for parameter estimation. We illustrated this strategy for two drugs often included in phenotyping cocktails, midazolam (probe for CYP3A) and digoxin (P‐glycoprotein), based on the data of a previous study, and were able to find a sparse and flexible design. The obtained design was evaluated by clinical trial simulations and shown to be efficient for the estimation of population and individual parameters. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gerechtigkeit und Arbeitskontext – Zur Bedeutung situativer Merkmale für die Gerechtigkeitswahrnehmung von Führungskr?ften

Leaders who are perceived to act with fairness can evoke desired employee behaviour in unique ways. Until now, little attention has been paid to the influence of situational factors on judging leader??s fairness in the work context. Based on the event paradigm, this study explores the formation of employee??s perception of leader??s justice in the context of work distribution through a variety of situational factors. Using a factorial survey we show that not only well-known factors such as respectful and reasonable behaviour affect the perception of leader??s fairness but also situational factors such as speech situation, trust between leader and follower, and the quality of the task.     

Intriguing yet simple skewness: kurtosis relation in economic and demographic data distributions,pointing to preferential attachment processes

In this paper, we propose that relations between high-order moments of data distributions, for example, between the skewness (S) and kurtosis (K), allow to point to theoretical models with understandable structural parameters. The illustrative data concern two cases: (i) the distribution of income taxes and (ii) that of inhabitants, after aggregation over each city in each province of Italy in 2011. Moreover, from the rank-size relationship, for either S or K, in both cases, it is shown that one obtains the parameters of the underlying (hypothetical) modeling distribution: in the present cases, the 2-parameter Beta function, itself related to the Yule–Simon distribution function, whence suggesting a growth model based on the preferential attachment process.