Opportunities and Impediments for Risk-Based Standards: Some Views from a Workshop

Techniques for performing scientific risk assessments for a wide variety of chemical and radiological hazards present in the environment and workplace are available. Speakers at a workshop sponsored by the Environmental and Public/Occupational Health Standard's Steering Group addressed both the state-of-the-art in risk assessment and areas of difficulty that require further research. The Steering Group concluded that within the limits of the available data, risk-assessment techniques are a useful tool in decision-making. In the past, many government agencies have not been effective either in listening to public concerns or in communicating technical or scientific information about risks. This has been true at all levels of government. Workshop speakers discussed some ways that government agencies can more effectively communicate with the public. The Steering Group concluded that major efforts must be made to ensure that two-way communication takes place. Thus the results of the workshop show that effective management of risk requires both a scientific assessment of risk and a responsive consideration of the public's perception of risk. Intensive efforts must be made to ensure that effective two-way communication takes place between members of the public and the appropriate government agencies.     

Psychotherapists’ Stereotypes of Heterosexual,Gay, and Bisexual Men

This study investigated stereotypes of heterosexual, gay, and bisexual men in a sample of 112 psychotherapists. Stereotypes were assessed with an open-ended measure asking participants to list characteristics that they associated with one of the three groups of men. Thematic analysis of these characteristics yielded 14 stereotype categories, including categories that reflected psychosocial difficulties (e.g., Depressed and Anxious), gender roles (e.g., Female Gender Role Attributes), and personality (e.g., Open-Minded). Sexual orientation differences were found for 8 of the 14 categories. For example, therapists were most likely to associate open-mindedness with bisexual men, traditional male gender role attributes with heterosexual men, and intelligence with gay men. Implications of results for practice and training are discussed.     

Gender Differences in the Earnings Mobility of Migrants

This study analyses gender differences in the intergenerational earnings mobility of second‐generation migrants in Germany. Thereby it takes into account the influence of assortative mating and the parental integration. First, intergenerational earnings elasticities are estimated at the mean and along the earnings distribution. The results do not reveal large differences in the mobility — neither between natives and migrants nor between men and women. Second, intergenerational changes in the relative earnings position are analysed. These results confirm that migrants are mostly as (im)mobile as the native population.     

Behaviour of the length test for medium sample sizes

In this note it is shown that even for relatively large sample sites the asymptotic distribution of the smoothed length as derived in Reschenhofer and Bomse (1991) should not be used for the determination of critical values. Therefore extended tables of critical values for both the 1% and 5% levels of significance generated by simulation are presented.     

Dialogic literary gatherings and out‐of‐home child care: Creation of new meanings through classic literature

Research on out‐of‐home child care has revealed that foster care programmes focused on educational attainment and reading have the potential to improve the academic outcomes of children in care. However, no studies have examined which elements of these programmes positively benefit children's emotional well‐being. This article presents evidence of the positive effects of implementing a successful educational action, dialogic literary gatherings, in a children's residential care institution. A qualitative study using a communicative‐oriented methodology was conducted and involved five participant observations and eight daily life stories with children in out‐of‐home care in Catalonia (Spain). The children's reflections demonstrated that reading classic books, such as Dickens' Oliver Twist, deeply influenced their feelings and self‐conceptions and created new and exciting meaning in their lives.     

A New Chilean Migration Act: an Approach to International Standards

The current Chilean Migration Act is the oldest in South America. It was created under the paradigm of national security, not human rights, and today does not adequately serve a participating democratic state, active within the international community. The Chilean government will soon be moving to discuss in congress a new migration act. We want to emphasize that the government should not forget the importance of incorporating international standards of migration policy into the national sphere. Chile is part of the United Nations system and, as a participating member, ratifies all core human rights treaties. Given that the United Nations Human Rights Bodies have made recommendations about migration policy, it is essential that this discussion be brought to the attention of our governing officials. This article reviews the UN recommendations as a concrete approach to the implementation of international standards in Chilean migrant policy.     

Habitusanalyse als Diagnoseinstrument in Supervision und Beratung

Two important analytical steps in the context of supervision and counselling are: the identification of socially determined action barriers that preclude the desires for change of advice-seeking persons and, related to this, the uncovering of incongruences in thought and action. Using the socio-analytical research approach of “habitus” developed by Pierre Bourdieu in the context of social inequality and the modes of action of symbolic violence, work attitudes and methods can be integrated into the context of supervision and counseling, that help identify and understand the interplay of social framework conditions and individual action decisions.