Anticipating Work and Family: Exploring the Associations Among Gender-Related Ideologies, Values, and Behaviors in Latino and White Families in the United States

This study explores Latina and White women's perceptions of their mother and father's gender-role ideologies, values, and behaviors concerning work and family intersections. Although Latino and White families in this Northern California, United States sample differed in terms of income and educational attainments, they did not differ in terms of the values they placed on work, marriage, and parenting or in terms of the time spent on work, marriage, and parenting. Among both Latino and White families, fathers and mothers were seen as quite distinct, in sex stereotypic ways. Correspondence between ideologies, values, and behaviors was not strong, either among Latinos or among Whites. It seems safe to conclude that people's attitudinal endorsement of egalitarianism does not assure behavioral endorsement.     

Do Cultural Values Affect Quality of Life Evaluation?

Schwartz defines cultural values as motivational types, where each value reflects goals and objectives to be achieved. According to Schwartz, cultural values are related to an orientation that is individualistic (values referred to as power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation and self-direction), collectivistic (benevolence, tradition and conformity) or mixed (security and universalism). Today, there is a theoretical consensus that cultural values are mediators in the evaluation of quality of life (QOL); nonetheless, there are few published studies to date relating them to QOL. To determine whether a significant relationship exits between cultural values and QOL in three Spanish-speaking countries. A total of 821 persons participated: 321 from Chile, 200 from Spain and 300 from Cuba. The Schwartz Cultural Values Survey and the WHOQOL-BREF Quality of Life Scale were used. Analysis of variance, and correlation and regression analyses were preformed after collecting data. Only hedonism was significantly correlated with the global evaluation of QOL in Spain and Chile. Few correlations were found in all three countries between cultural values and the QOL domains evaluated, with the exceptions of the value of self-direction, which was related to physical well-being, and the value stimulation, which was correlated with psychological as well as social well-being in all three countries. Certain values may be associated with a better perception of QOL, depending on the particular culture of the population evaluated.     

Applying a Community Violence Framework to Understand the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Threat on Latino Children

Heeding the call put out by the New England Journal of Medicine (2017), we utilize an ecological–transactional model as a conceptual framework for understanding existing literature and for guiding future research on immigration enforcement threat and Latino child development. Using the World Health Organization's definition of violence, we draw on literature from psychology, medicine, social work, and developmental psychology to outline how the anti-immigrant climate in the United States and the threat of immigration enforcement practices in everyday spaces are experienced by some Latino children as psychological violence. Researchers, teachers, and practitioners are encouraged to be aware of how uncertainty and threat regarding familial safety adversely impacts the lives of Latino children in immigrant households, especially in charged, anti-immigrant climates.     

QUANTIFYING THE DETERRENT EFFECT OF ANTICARTEL ENFORCEMENT

This paper presents a rare attempt to quantify the deterrent effect of anticartel policy. It develops a conceptual framework, which establishes the sort of information necessary for such quantification. This is then illustrated and calibrated by drawing upon existing literatures and using evidence from legal cartels to approximate what would be observed absent policy. Measuring impact by the proportion of all potential harm that is deterred, our best estimate is two‐thirds and, even on conservative assumptions, at least half of all harms (or seven times the detected harm) is deterred. (JEL H11, K21, L44)     

Meeting in the mist: Key considerations in a collaborative research partnership with people with mental health issues

Objectives: This study explored the experiences of an established collaborative research group, which were collected as data to gain research skills. Currently ideas about user involvement and knowledge transfer have not been considered together, indicating possible gaps in knowledge. Participants: Eight members of the group took part, including five people using local mental health services, an assistant and an occupational therapist from local services, and an academic. Methods: Experiences of collaborative working were explored in phases. Structured individual reflections were recorded and shared for initial analysis. A group discussion prepared for constant comparative analysis, which synthesized the emerging themes. Results: Participants had gained and shared skills, understanding and knowledge. "Meeting in the mist" was a metaphor to explain the journeys experienced by participants, within a collaborative cycle. This cycle was central to a visual model, "Creating space", which suggested the importance of allowing sufficient time and space to work for a shared vision of the future. A final theme was the "warp factor", which drew on relativity theory to highlight the sense of innovation. Conclusions: Collaborative work can be based on knowledge transfer and ideas about user involvement, generating tangible benefits for all involved, including engaging in productive occupations.     

Posttraumatic stress disorder and older women

This article examines the literature related to the identification and treatment of post traumatic stress disorder in older women. From this review, several key findings emerge. Consistent in the research literature is the fact that American women are more at risk for PTSD than are men as a result of the high frequency of sexual and domestic physical abuse that women experience. Studies on older women and PTSD indicate that older women are underdiagnosed and are more typically perceived as suffering from depression, anxiety or poor physical health. It was found consistently that older women who present with age-related stressors may not be asked about earlier trauma history or it may not be understood within the context of trauma related variables. In several research studies, trauma history was often not identified either as a result of current assessment practice or because women from certain age cohorts did not disclose trauma-related data to health professionals. Key researchers emphasize the necessity of clinicians, staff and medical personnel to attend to the historical variables present in trauma histories of older women. Researchers underscore the importance of understanding the impact of early and repeated trauma, especially interpersonal trauma, on the physical health and social functioning of older women- even though a significant amount of time may have elapsed since exposure. These findings indicate that further study of PTSD in older women is warranted. The paper concludes with a discussion of assessment and treatment options.     

Differential Mortality and the Design of the Italian System of Public Pensions

Abstract. This paper considers the issue of actuarial fairness of the new Italian public pension system in view of the recent trends in old‐age mortality and the survival differences by gender, birth cohort and region of residence. After reviewing the secular trends in elderly mortality in Italy, and the evolution of regional differences in survival over the last three decades, we evaluate the impact, on the conversion factors introduced by the Dini reform, of a further decline in elderly mortality over the next few decades. We compute the conversion factors using a close approximation to the unknown formula employed in the Dini reform but allowing for gender‐ and region‐specific survival probabilities. Our results leave no doubt about the importance of frequently updating the conversion factors in the light of the rapid increase in elderly survival. The paper also quantifies to what extent gender‐ and region‐specific conversion factors may differ from their currently legislated values, that only vary by age. Finally, we recognize that the actuarial fairness of the system introduced by the recent reform can only be guaranteed on average and that, in the presence of a heterogeneous population of individuals that differ considerably in their mortality prospects, the current system implies a substantial degree of redistribution from high‐mortality groups (typically characterized by low income and low wealth) to low‐mortality groups (typically characterized by high income and high wealth).     

The downside of organizational identification: Relations between identification,workaholism and well-being

Abstract

Employee organizational identification has been proposed and found to be positively related to employee health and well-being. The empirical evidence, however, is not unequivocal, and some authors have suggested possible downsides of identification with the organization as a whole or with a group within it. The potential negative effect of over-identification was tested empirically for the first time in the present paper. Two studies were conducted; Study 1 was cross-sectional and used a sample of Italian law court clerks (N=195) and Study 2 was longitudinal and employed a sample of Italian teachers (N=140 at T2). We proposed a curvilinear mediation model with identification curvilinearly predicting workaholism, and workaholism, in turn, negatively affecting employee well-being. This curvilinear link between organizational identification and workaholism means that workaholism at first decreases with growing identification, but when identification becomes too strong, workaholism increases. The results confirmed our hypotheses, and we discuss theoretical and practical implications.     

Sing for me,Mama! Infants' discrimination of novel vowels in song

When adults speak or sing with infants, they sound differently than in adult communication. Infant-directed (ID) communication helps caregivers to regulate infants' emotions and helps infants to process speech information, at least from ID-speech. However, it is largely unclear whether infants might also process speech information presented in ID-singing. Therefore, we examined whether infants discriminate vowels in ID-singing, as well as potential differences with ID-speech. Using an alternating trial preference procedure, infants aged 4–6 and 8–10 months were tested on their discrimination of an unfamiliar non-native vowel contrast presented in ID-like speech and singing. Relying on models of early speech sound perception, we expected that infants in their first half year of life would discriminate the vowels, in contrast to older infants whose non-native sound perception should deteriorate, at least in ID-like speech. Our results showed that infants of both age groups were able to discriminate the vowels in ID-like singing, while only the younger group discriminated the vowels in ID-like speech. These results show that infants process speech sound information in song from early on. They also hint at diverging perceptual or attentional mechanisms guiding infants' sound processing in ID-speech versus ID-singing toward the end of the first year of life.     

Planning a Bayesian early-phase phase I/II study for human vaccines in HER2 carcinomas

Recent innovative statistical approaches for phase I/II clinical trials allow one to jointly model the toxicity and efficacy of a new treatment, taking into account the information gathered during the trial. Prior probabilities are then updated with interim data and thus predictive probabilities become more accurate as the trial progresses. In this study, prior distribution elicited from a physician's opinion on the available dose levels planned for a vaccination dose-finding trial, with human DNA in patients with HER2-positive tumours in terms of toxicity and therapeutic response is presented and discussed. A simulation study was conducted in order to quantify the impact of the choice of prior on study results, i.e. the recommended dose level at the end of the trial.