Constructing the legitimacy of a financial cooperative in the cultural sector: a case study using textual analysis

This article investigates the foundations of cooperative identity and how it is constructed by the organization. More specifically, our research focuses on a financial cooperative in the simultaneously emerging and consolidating cultural sector. The originality of this article lies in the methodology used – textual analysis. We use the Economies of Worth model developed by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006 Boltanski , L. and Thévenot , L. , 2006 . On justification: economies of worth . Studies in Cultural Sociology Series Princeton : Princeton University Press . [Google Scholar]), which accounts for a plurality of legitimate forms of evaluation used in the processes of critique and justification.     

“Such Trivial Matters:” How staff account for restrictions of residents' influence in nursing homes

National policies emphasize older people's right to autonomy, yet nursing home residents often have restricted opportunities to make decisions about everyday matters. We use qualitative interview data to analyze staff members' explanations of actions that conflict with both social norms and national policies. Two types of problematic actions are discussed: restrictions of elderly residents' influence in decision making and neglect of residents' complaints. While staff members describe residents' influence as desirable, they simultaneously formulate accounts that justify their inability to live up to this ideal. Further, we demonstrate how certain complaints are “made trivial” when they are described and treated in specific ways by the staff. We argue that the accounts offered by staff members draw on an implicit folk logic, a logic in which residents are allowed to exercise influence only as long as it does not conflict with the efficient running of the institution as a whole.     

Over-education and Gender Occupational Differences in Spain

This paper explores the role of over-education in shaping the negative relationship between the education level attained by employees and the fact of working in a gender-dominated occupation, in Spain, a country where the phenomenon of over-education is common. Applying multinomial logit regressions, and controlling for individual and job characteristics, the results confirm the typical finding that having a university degree decreases the odds of working in a gender-dominated occupation. However, this is only true in the case of women when considering long—more than 3 years—university studies. The evidence also suggests that the general spread of over-education in Spain weakens that relationship so that reducing over-education would eventually lead to more uniformity in the gender-distribution of employment across occupations.

     

地中海区域邮轮港口发展研究

地中海区域具有发展邮轮旅游业的多重优势。区域内的众多港口为吸引邮轮公司,获取更大发展而激烈竞争。然而调研的案例表明,这些港口并未因激烈竞争而几败俱伤,反而形成你追我赶、共同发展的良好局面,地中海区域的邮轮旅游业也由此得到持续提升。进入大众旅游时代的中国,邮轮旅游作为一种新的旅游形式正被中国旅游者接受。中国港口所在地政府若能借鉴地中海区域邮轮港口群的经验,类似地中海区域邮轮港口群良性发展的局面也可在中国沿海出现。     

A review of tests for exponentiality with Monte Carlo comparisons

In this paper, 91 different tests for exponentiality are reviewed. Some of the tests are universally consistent while others are against some special classes of life distributions. Power performances of 40 of these different tests for exponentiality of datasets are compared through extensive Monte Carlo simulations. The comparisons are conducted for different sample sizes of 10, 25, 50 and 100 for different groups of distributions according to the shape of their hazard functions at 5 percent level of significance. Also, the techniques are applied to two real-world datasets and a measure of power is employed for the comparison of the tests. The results show that some tests which are very good under one group of alternative distributions are not so under another group. Also, some tests maintained relatively high power over all the groups of alternative distributions studied while some others maintained poor power performances over all the groups of alternative distributions. Again, the result obtained from real-world datasets agree completely with those of the simulation studies.KEYWORDS: Classes of life distributions, empirical power of a test, exponentiality, goodness-of-fit test, Monte Carlo simulationSubject Classifications: 62E10, 62E20, 62F03     

Measurement and socio-demographic variation of social capital in a large population-based survey

Objectives The main objective of this study was to describe the variation of individual social capital according to socio-demographic factors, and to develop a suitable way to measure social capital for this purpose. The similarity of socio-demographic variation between the genders was also assessed. Data and methods The study applied cross-sectional data from the national Finnish Health 2000 survey (n = 8,028) which represents the adult population, aged 30 years and over. Several variables indicating social capital were condensed to dimensions on the basis of factor analysis. Participants were categorized into tertiles in each dimension of social capital by means of factor scores. The multinomial logistic regression model was used to produce the adjusted prevalences for the dimensions of social capital according to socio-demographic categories (age, gender, education, living arrangements, income, and type of region). Results Three dimensions of social capital were distinguished: social support, social participation and networks, and trust and reciprocity. Age had an inverse association with social support as well as participation and networks, and a curvilinear association between age and trust and reciprocity, the oldest age groups showing the highest level of trust. Married persons and those in the highest educational and income groups tended to have more social capital than other persons. Residents of urban and rural regions did not systematically differ from each other in their level of social capital although residents of urban regions participated less and showed less trust than people living in semi-urban or rural regions. Social support varied significantly with gender. The decline of social support by age was steeper in women than in men. Social participation and networks increased with education, the gradient appearing steeper among men. The difference between married and cohabiting men was substantial compared to women when it came to trust. Conclusions People who are young, married, educated, and well-off have plenty of social capital. This information might help various services to concentrate the actions on the people in danger of social exclusion. Our results also form a basis for the future by allowing the changes in social capital to be examined over time and over different studies.     

Household income and other socio-economic determinants of long-term institutional care among older adults in Finland

An analysis of longitudinal data on Finnish older adults shows that the probability of admission to long-term institutional care is inversely associated with household income: women in the lowest income quintile are 35 per cent more likely, and men in the lowest quintile 59 per cent more likely to be admitted than those in the highest quintile, independently of age, first language, and area characteristics. Controlling for other socio-demographic characteristics and medical conditions reduces these differences by 59 and 78 per cent, respectively. Being a renter and living in poorly equipped housing increases the probability of admission to institutional care, while the possession of a car and living in a detached house decreases it, independently of other factors. These results imply that the future need for institutional care will depend not only on the increasing numbers of older people but also on socio-economic factors and housing conditions.     

How much does income matter in neighborhood choice?

There is a substantial literature on the residential mobility process itself and a smaller contribution on how households make neighborhood choices, especially with respect to racial composition. We extend that literature by evaluating the role of income and socioeconomic status in the neighborhood choice process for minorities. We use individual household data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study to investigate the comparative choices of white and Hispanic households in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. We show that income and education are important explanations for the likelihood of choosing neighborhoods. But at the same time, own race preferences clearly play a role. While whites with more income choose more white neighborhoods, Hispanics with more income choose less Hispanic neighborhoods. One interpretation is that both groups are translating resources, such as income and education, into residence in whiter and ostensibly, higher status neighborhoods.

Beratung im Kontext des Neuen Steuerungsmodells in der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe

The main elements of the ongoing reform of youth welfare in Germany “Neue Steuerung” (“New Regulation”) are the reconstruction of its administration, local networking and the transfer of economical criterions to the context of social work. Advisors and coaches, working in this field, are confronted with a problem, which is highly characterized by institutional dynamics of changes, and especially with the question of efficiency of social measures. We think, it is important that advisers, coaches an supervisors, who work in this field of “New Regulation”, are informed profoundly of the current state of the reform of the administration in their region, that they find their own point-of-view to the theme of pressure in financing social measures and social providing, and that they create a flexible supply of consultation, which is comprehensive in methods and that they cooperate with their clients` institutions.     

Markov models and Bayesian methods in image analysis

Markov random field models and Bayesian methods have provided answers to various contemporary problems in Image Analysis. We give a very brief introduction to the topic. In particular, we highlight the use of Bayesian methods in classifying the image into different classes.