How do my parents react when I feel happy? Longitudinal associations with adolescent depressive symptoms,anhedonia, and positive affect regulation

Parental emotion socialization plays a role in the development of adolescents’ emotion regulation and is associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Most research has focused on parental socialization of negative affect. The scarce research on parental socialization of positive affect (PA) shows that parental downgrading responses to adolescents’ PA are associated with concurrent adolescent depression. The aims of the present study were to examine longitudinal associations of both maternal and paternal responses to adolescents’ PA with how adolescents regulate their PA (i.e., dampening and enhancing) and with adolescents’ general depressive symptoms and anhedonia. We also considered associations in the opposite direction from adolescent regulatory responses and symptoms to parental responses. In a two‐wave study (1‐year interval), 635 adolescents from Grade seven completed questionnaires. Cross‐sectionally, maternal and paternal responses to adolescents’ PA were associated with concurrent adolescents’ PA regulation as well as adolescents’ depressive and anhedonic symptoms. Longitudinally, low maternal and paternal enhancing responses to adolescents’ PA predicted relative increases in anhedonic symptoms and relative decreases in adolescent enhancing over time. Low maternal enhancing was also predictive of relative increases in depressive symptoms. The present study points to bidirectionality of relations as adolescents’ level of depressive symptoms predicted maternal and paternal responses.     

An Initiators' Perspective on the Continuity of Citizens' Initiatives in Rural Areas

Against the backdrop of depopulation and the shift toward Big Society, citizens' initiatives in rural areas are believed to be able to mitigate the decline of service provision in rural regions. Consequently, this mitigation requires the continuity of such initiatives. However, so far, we lack an initiators' perspective on the relevance of this continuity and the factors influencing it. From a theoretical standpoint, continuity of citizens' initiatives can be understood at three levels: the participant, group, and initiative levels. Based on empirical data obtained from 157 questionnaires distributed to a variety of initiatives, and using regression analysis, the focus of this paper is twofold. First, how and at which level the initiators understand continuity of an initiative is considered. Second, factors influencing the expected continuity of an initiative are researched. The results reveal that continuity differs from merely being successful and is influenced by other factors as well. Furthermore, continuity on the initiative level—the realization of a certain goal—is most prominent in analyzing expected continuity. In conclusion, we explore the roles that citizens' initiatives can be expected to play in service provision and which levels of continuity align with these expectations.     

Left home high and dry-reduced migration in response to repeated droughts in Thailand and Vietnam

Population and Environment - We investigate the extent to which droughts impact migration responses of rural households in Thailand and Vietnam, as well as the role of underlying mechanisms such as...     

Consequences of religious and secular boundaries among the majority population for perceived discrimination among Muslim minorities in Western Europe

While the concept of symbolic boundaries and ethnic boundary-making is well established in social research, the direct consequences of these boundaries for the integration of migrants have not received much attention. This paper thus analyses whether religious and secular boundaries of national belonging among the majority population have an impact on perceived discrimination among Muslim minorities in Western Europe. To analyse this linkage, data from the International Social Survey Programme measuring the importance of religion as a symbolic boundary of national belonging among the majority have been aggregated as a regional context condition and combined with a Muslim minority subsample from the European Social Survey. The results of the multilevel models reveal that the salience of religious boundaries is associated with less perceived discrimination among Muslim minorities, while secular orientations among the majority seem to be more decisive for subjective perceptions of feeling discriminated against. Overall, the results thus challenge the role of religion as an ethno-religious demarcation and point to the relevance of secular boundaries of belonging for immigrant integration.     

Missing item imputation for quality-of-life instruments with application to asthma quality-of-life questionnaires

There has been increasing use of quality-of-life (QoL) instruments in drug development. Missing item values often occur in QoL data. A common approach to solve this problem is to impute the missing values before scoring. Several imputation procedures, such as imputing with the most correlated item and imputing with a row/column model or an item response model, have been proposed. We examine these procedures using data from two clinical trials, in which the original asthma quality-of-life questionnaire (AQLQ) and the miniAQLQ were used. We propose two modifications to existing procedures: truncating the imputed values to eliminate outliers and using the proportional odds model as the item response model for imputation. We also propose a novel imputation method based on a semi-parametric beta regression so that the imputed value is always in the correct range and illustrate how this approach can easily be implemented in commonly used statistical software. To compare these approaches, we deleted 5% of item values in the data according to three different missingness mechanisms, imputed them using these approaches and compared the imputed values with the true values. Our comparison showed that the row/column-model-based imputation with truncation generally performed better, whereas our new approach had better performance under a number scenarios.     

What shapes plant and animal diversity on urban golf courses?

Recent concern over increasing loss of biodiversity has prompted considerable interest in the role of urban green spaces as reservoirs of local biodiversity. This study assessed the diversity of three indicator taxa - plants, ants and birds - on golf courses spanning a wide range of environmental variation in terms of climate, elevation, course age, size and connectivity to native woodland. Species richness and community composition was further compared between contrasting on-course habitat types that reflect different management intensities. We identified a set of taxon-specific environmental correlates indicating an intricate interplay of landscape- and local-scale variables that affect local species diversity. Our results show that floristic diversity is positively associated with the amount of rainfall, whereas ant and bird diversity are related to local-scale factors, particularly the number of trees and the size of water features on a site. The amount of on-course native habitat was a strong predictor of plant and ant diversity and was also associated with the number of unique species at the site level; this reinforces the value of remnant habitat patches as local biodiversity reservoirs that represent mini hot-spots in an otherwise species-poor urban landscape. Community composition for all three taxa differed markedly between non-playing and playing areas, with boundary and remnant habitats generally having more diverse, species-rich communities. Our results suggest that local floral and faunal biodiversity on urban golf courses can be enhanced by creating woody non-playing areas and, especially, by preserving, restoring or expanding remnant habitats.     

Karriereerfolg als Ergebnis des Personalmanagements

Strategic human resource management has avoided to evaluate its efforts in relation to employees’ careers. Recent research has investigated a selection of individual human resource management (HRM) practices (e.?g., training and development, mentoring, career development, talent management, performance appraisal) in relation to objective and subjective career success, but failed to study HRM systems or bundles. This paper argues that HRM systems and career success can be connected via human capital theory because human capital is understood as an organizational resource and as an individual antecedent to careers. Based on extant research that relates individual HRM practices to objective or subjective career success, this paper reviews and discusses the relationship between bundles of HRM practices and the individual practices contained therein and career success. The final conclusion suggests that evaluations of HRM systems should take careers into account because organizations rely on employees’ human capital. Future research should focus more intensely on the role of HRM for the development of careers also across organizations.