Effectiveness of the International Child Development Programme: Results from a randomized controlled trial

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the International Child Development Programme (ICDP), a group-based parenting programme used internationally and implemented nationally in Norway. We used a cluster randomized controlled trial in which 81 groups were randomly assigned to either the intervention or waitlist control condition after the baseline data collection. A total of 590 parents completed at least one of three questionnaires (administrated before and after ICDP and 4 months after completing the intervention). Primary outcomes included parental self-efficacy, parental emotion sensitivity and positive involvement with their child. Secondary outcomes included parents' perceptions of their relationship with the child, child-rearing conflicts and the child's psychosocial health. We found significant effects favouring the intervention arm following the intervention and at follow-up on two primary outcomes (parental self-efficacy and emotion sensitivity). For the secondary outcomes, we found a significant reduction in child-rearing conflict at the 4-month follow-up, increased closeness to the child, reduced child internalizing difficulties and increased prosocial behaviour immediately following the intervention. However, ICDP seems to have limited effects on parent-reported changes in children. We conclude that ICDP as a universal preventive programme offered to parents in groups can be effective in strengthening parental self-efficacy and improving parental emotion sensitivity.     

Estimation of multivariate conditional-tail-expectation using Kendall's process

This paper deals with the problem of estimating the multivariate version of the Conditional-Tail-Expectation, proposed by Di Bernardino et al. [(2013), ‘Plug-in Estimation of Level Sets in a Non-Compact Setting with Applications in Multivariable Risk Theory’, ESAIM: Probability and Statistics, (17), 236–256]. We propose a new nonparametric estimator for this multivariate risk-measure, which is essentially based on Kendall's process [Genest and Rivest, (1993), ‘Statistical Inference Procedures for Bivariate Archimedean Copulas’, Journal of American Statistical Association, 88(423), 1034–1043]. Using the central limit theorem for Kendall's process, proved by Barbe et al. [(1996), ‘On Kendall's Process’, Journal of Multivariate Analysis, 58(2), 197–229], we provide a functional central limit theorem for our estimator. We illustrate the practical properties of our nonparametric estimator on simulations and on two real test cases. We also propose a comparison study with the level sets-based estimator introduced in Di Bernardino et al. [(2013), ‘Plug-In Estimation of Level Sets in A Non-Compact Setting with Applications in Multivariable Risk Theory’, ESAIM: Probability and Statistics, (17), 236–256] and with (semi-)parametric approaches.     

Measuring Socio-Demographic Differences in Volunteers with a Value-Based Index: Illustration in a Mega Event

The phenomenon of volunteering can be analysed as a consumer experience through the concept of value as a trade-off between benefits and costs. In event volunteering, both the expected value (pre-experienced) and the perceived value (post-experienced) of volunteering can be assessed. With this purpose, an online quantitative survey is conducted with a sample of 711 volunteers in a religious mega event, with questions related to five dimensions of their experience: efficiency, social value, play, spirituality and time spent. These five scales, properly tested are used for building a multidimensional index of both the expected and perceived value of the volunteer experience. ANOVAs test show significant differences on the index in both moments upon the socio-demographic profiles: negative expectations/experience balance by age, contrasted results by sex, and more experienced volunteers being more critical with the value experienced. Implications for event managers are proposed, in line with the motivation of volunteers.     

Profiling Donors of Blood,Money, and Time

Understanding donor profiles is crucial for donor relationship management. Whereas previous research has focused on profiling blood, money, or time donor segments separately, we define seven donor profiles based on their former donation behavior for blood, money, and time donation and compare them to non‐donors. Relying on representative data from the German Socio Economic Panel, we use an extensive set of characteristics that include sociodemographic, psychographic, health‐related, and geographical measures and simultaneously investigate profiles of donors for single and multiple donation forms and non‐donors by means of a multinomial logistic model. Our results reveal valuable insights for donor acquisition and retention strategies of nonprofit organizations along the identified profiling characteristics of donor segments. By this, our findings help nonprofit organization managers to better target single and multiple donors across three donation forms.     

Using mixtures in seemingly unrelated linear regression models with non-normal errors

Seemingly unrelated linear regression models are introduced in which the distribution of the errors is a finite mixture of Gaussian distributions. Identifiability conditions are provided. The score vector and the Hessian matrix are derived. Parameter estimation is performed using the maximum likelihood method and an Expectation–Maximisation algorithm is developed. The usefulness of the proposed methods and a numerical evaluation of their properties are illustrated through the analysis of simulated and real datasets.     

Changes in the Satisfaction of Cohabitors Relative to Spouses Over Time

Family scholars have noted a gap in the subjective well‐being of cohabitors relative to spouses and have hypothesized that the size of this “cohabitation gap” varies depending on how far cohabitation has diffused in a society. For the first time we test this hypothesis across time in a single country, Italy, by analyzing 20 cross‐sectional, nationally representative surveys collected from 1993 to 2013 by the Italian Institute of Statistics (N = 279,190 partnered young adults). We find that differences in the assessments of family satisfaction between cohabitors and spouses have eroded over the years and that there has been no detectable cohabitation gap since 2011. In addition, we illustrate that the weakening of the cohabitation gap is attributable to the diffusion of cohabiting unions in Italian society.     

Social Services for Children At Risk: The Impact on the Quality of Life

Social Indicators Research -     

Family Trajectories and Well-being of Children Born to Lone Mothers in the UK

We investigate how lone mothers’ heterogeneity in partnership trajectories is associated with children’s well-being. We use data from the Millennium Cohort Study, which follows a large sample of children born in the UK in 2000–2002. We divide children who were born to lone mothers into four groups based on their mothers’ partnership trajectories between birth and age seven, which cover more than 80% of these children’s family experiences. We then analyse how these trajectories are associated with markers of health, cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes measured at around age seven. We find that compared to the children that live continuously with lone mothers, children whose biological father stably joined the household have better cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes. In contrast, children in trajectories characterised by living with a stepfather or who experienced biological father joining in the family followed by biological parents’ dissolution had outcomes similar to children living continuously with lone mothers. The results underscore the importance of treating children born to lone mothers as a heterogeneous category.     

European Perspectives on Intercultural Communication

Some of the major aspects of intercultural communication in Italy in particular, and in Europe in general, are summarised in this paper. In the wake of developments in favour of political and social minority rights in the United States, voluntary movements in Europe arose in the 1970s and became stronger in the 1990s. Among their many activities, volunteers working to further intercultural education have taken on the role of multipliers, spreading the application of intercultural learning. They have served alternately as trainers of young people and students of experts, functioning as hinges between teaching and learning. In many European countries, intercultural education in schools is still left to volunteer initiatives. The peculiarity of intercultural communication lies in its pragmatic approach to reality. It is based on a few abstract general truths, such as the fact that all humans have a culture, value orientation, etc. allowing them to understand and interpret an endless amount of practical experiences. Here, we shall present an anthropological approach to intercultural relations, considering various issues, such as the differences between cultural and national identities, the development of ethnocentrism as a response to perceived foreign threats, and the differences between assimilation, inclusion and integration. The focus on the Mediterranean region provides an example of the intercultural communication that takes place among many western and eastern cultures.     

New Media and Strategy Research: Towards a Relational Agency Approach

A rapidly growing body of literature focuses on the relationship between new media and strategy, and offers recommendations regarding appropriate strategic actions in relation to new media. This paper systematically reviews 130 articles with a focus on the diagnoses they provide and the directions they offer strategists regarding the role of new media in strategy. The analysis identifies four main ways of conceptualizing new media in the literature: as forces in an increasingly turbulent strategic environment; as changing the role of strategists; as tools for strategically engaging stakeholders; and as both increasing and decreasing the control necessary for strategy making. These conceptualizations are based on often‐implicit assumptions about ‘agency’ in strategy: new media are seen either as forces influencing strategy or as tools in the hands of humans, who are portrayed as the agents of strategy. In both cases, new media are black‐boxed, such that their specific properties and ways of becoming embedded in particular contexts are rarely examined. After discussing these assumptions and a limited number of studies that challenge them, the paper develops an approach to strategy and new media based on a relational understanding of agency, an attention to technological affordances and a methodological sensitivity to tracing strategy‐making assemblages of human and non‐human elements. We argue that future research based on this approach will advance our knowledge of strategy making in ways that do not take new media for granted and ways that are attentive to different kinds of agency.