Vulvovaginal Pain from a Fear-Avoidance Perspective: A Prospective Study Among Female University Students in Sweden

Objectives: To examine how fear-avoidance influences vulvovaginal pain and sexual function over time. Method: At baseline and at 10-month follow-up, self-report measures for sexual and fear avoidance factors were obtained from 483 female university students with and without self-reported vulvovaginal pain. Results: Individuals with pain at both times reported lower sexual function, and higher levels of fear-avoidance compared to the pain-free group. Fear-avoidance beliefs predicted the occurrence of vulvovaginal pain at follow up and the level of pain intensity. Conclusion: The results points to the relevance of the components of the fear-avoidance model in vulvovaginal pain over time.     

Central Perspectives and Debates in Strategic Change Research

This paper appraises and evaluates more than three decades of empirical research on strategic change. Strategic change research has traditionally built on either the deterministic view or the voluntaristic view – two opposing perspectives with fundamentally different assumptions about the influence of managers on the fortunes of organizations. In addition, a dialectical view on strategic change, which aims to bridge the two traditional views, has emerged. Despite the richness and value of research within these three perspectives, the continued accumulation of isolated and idiosyncratic insights adds little to the understanding of strategic change. In this paper, therefore, the authors assess, contrast and integrate research across the three perspectives in order to foster one cumulative body of knowledge about strategic change and to provide guidance for future research. Based on an analysis of 119 studies published in the leading academic journals in the fields of strategy and management, they consolidate existing knowledge and identify shortcomings in the cumulative body of research. On the basis of this assessment concerning prior research foci, study designs and assumptions, the authors propose four pathways for future research across the three perspectives that they believe can help foster full understanding of strategic change: (1) examinations of different types, processes and outcomes of strategic change; (2) expansion of the scope of actors considered in relation to strategic change; (3) exploration of the non‐linear nature of strategic change; and (4) investigations of strategic change conundrums.     

Development,Feasibility, and Piloting of a Novel Natural Mentoring Intervention for Older Youth in Foster Care

Aging out of foster care is associated with deleterious emerging adulthood outcomes. The enduring presence of a caring adult, such as a natural mentor, can improve outcomes for emancipating foster youth. Caring Adults ‘R’ Everywhere (C.A.R.E.) is a novel, child welfare-based intervention designed to facilitate natural mentor relationships among aging-out youth. Our aims were to test the feasibility of implementing C.A.R.E. and the feasibility of conducting a randomized controlled study with older foster youth. Twenty-four foster youth aged 18–20.5 years were recruited and randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 12) or control groups (n = 12). Ten natural mentors were identified and contacted for participation in the intervention and study. Process-oriented qualitative data and quantitative pre- and postintervention outcome data were collected and analyzed. Utilizing a controlled rigorous design, the findings highlight the positive experience of both the intervention youth and their natural mentors with C.A.R.E. Overall, results support the continued refinement, delivery, and rigorous testing of C.A.R.E. with great promise for programmatically supporting natural mentor relationships among youth aging out of foster care.     

Interaction between employees' physical load factors and early support at the workplace

Physical workload is a continuous problem, even in modern workplaces. The purpose of the survey was to determine the effect of support on employees' physical load factors at workplaces. Training, guidance and support were the main focus areas of the early support intervention, which aimed to enable supervisors to find weak signals of impaired ergonomics.The survey was carried out in the form of a controlled longitudinal study, and the material was gathered via a questionnaire in both 2008 and 2010 from two co-operative trade groups. The final sample was 301 intervention subjects and 235 control subjects, and the response rate was 45% in both groups. We applied factor analysis to reduce the number of items. The physical load factors' sum score consisted of six items. We used logistic regression in the statistical analysis.Encouragement to improve processes at the workplace increased the probability of positive change (i.e. decrease) in physical load factors. The same applied to working pace, if individuals could control it themselves. In contrast, workload and the support of supervisors had a reversed impact on workers' physical load factors. Focusing on promoting workers' ergonomics is still important in workplaces when aiming to decrease physical load factors.     

Inequality of opportunity in adult health in Colombia

This paper measures inequality of opportunity in adult health in Colombia using the 2010 Living Standards and Social Mobility Survey, a rich dataset that provides unique information about individual childhood circumstances in that country. Dissimilarity and Gini-opportunity indexes are calculated to provide different measures of inequality of opportunity using a self-reported variable for health status. The Shapley-value decomposition is then used to estimate the contribution of early-life circumstances such as parental background, region of origin and ethnicity to inequality of opportunity. The findings suggest that 8 % to 10 % of the circumstance-driven opportunities distinctively enjoyed by those who are healthier should be redistributed or otherwise compensated in order to achieve equality of opportunity. Differences in household socio-economic status during childhood and parental educational attainment appear to be the most salient dimensions of inequality of opportunity in adult health.     

Migration-related land use dynamics in increasingly hybrid peri-urban space: insights from two agricultural communities in Bolivia

This article investigates the impact of transnational labor migration on agriculture in urbanizing communities in Bolivia. Previous research shows that the characteristics of rural out-migration communities affect whether agricultural practices are intensified and improved. Using a mixed methods approach, two closely located peri-urban communities with distinct prerequisites for agricultural development are analyzed. This study shows weak migration-induced changes in agriculture and concludes that transnational migration does not necessarily accelerate an ongoing urbanization process. It shows that remittances function to maintain farming for subsistence and as a secondary livelihood activity. However, major investments in agricultural intensification are not attractive due to the communities’ proximity to the main cities. This article highlights the need for nuanced conceptualization when studying migration-driven agricultural change in hybrid peri-urban spaces.     

Affective virtuosity: Challenges for governance feminism in the context of the economic crisis

This article explores the possibilities and constraints for feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and its influence over policy making and public debate in the context of austerity and neoliberal governance. By analysing the process in which a group of Finnish academic feminists used their expert position to influence government policy in 2015–2017, the article illustrates the strategies they adopted to engage in political debates and how they negotiated the new political landscape. The research material was derived from two years of action research and participant observation and is considered through the theoretical lens of governance feminism. The article makes a distinctive contribution to extant theories of governance feminism, by drawing upon theories of affects and ambivalence as a complement to governance feminism's focus on discourses and co‐optation. We coin the term affective virtuosity to highlight the importance of affect in feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and in shaping the various perspectives available to feminist scholars in encounters with politicians and policymakers.     

Schools as workplaces: Intersectional regimes of inequality

Joan Acker extended her 1990 brilliant and path‐breaking article, ‘Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies', to address the intersectional effects of gender, race and class as ‘inequality regimes' in her 2006 article of that name. This research picks up her challenge to see embodied workers holding jobs in organizations structured simultaneously and interactively by gender, race and class processes. Rather than studying a corporate regime in which the actors are managers, supervisors and workers, this study looks at the organizational interactions among teachers and paraprofessionals in one large, urban and unionized school district in the United States. We look at skill, care and respect as three dimensions of interaction embedded in the occupational demands and specific job requirements of teachers and paraprofessionals, and some of the tensions this regime produces between the largely White teachers and the women of colour who are the paraprofessionals. By highlighting the largely invisible racialized work of supporting the moral worth of students and staff, we extend the understanding of skill and care beyond a binary model.     

Conceptualising and Categorising Child Abuse Inquiries: From Damage Control to Foregrounding Survivor Testimony

Testimony before inquiries into out‐of‐home care that have taken place in many countries over the last twenty years has severely disrupted received ideas about the quality of care given to children in the past. Evidence of the widespread abuse of children presented before recent inquiries internationally gives rise to the question: why didn’t we know? Part of the answer lies in the changing forms and functions of inquiries, whose interests they serve, how they are organised and how they gather evidence. Using as a case study, a survey of historical abuse inquiries in Australia, this article explores the shift to victim and survivor testimony and in so doing offers a new way of conceptualising and categorising historical child abuse inquiries. It focuses less on how inquiries are constituted or governed, and instead advances an historically contextualised approach that foregrounds the issue of who speaks and who is heard.     

Raising the legal gambling age in Finland: problem gambling prevalence rates in different age groups among past-year gamblers pre- and post-implementation

This article reports on the frequency of problem gambling, measured with the Lie/Bet instrument, in different age groups among Finnish past-year gamblers in 2011 (n = 2984) and 2014 (n = 2326). The data highlights the situation before, and three years after, the implementation of a raised minimum age limit for gambling from 15 to 18 years. The difference in problem gambling frequency when comparing all age groups was statistically significant in 2011, but not in 2014. A significantly lower frequency of problem gambling was found among 18–19-year-olds in 2014 (3.4%), compared to 2011 (16.3%). The results regarding problem gambling prevalence among 15–17-year-olds (8.0% in 2011, 0.0% in 2014) are somewhat inconclusive as the number of respondents fulfilling the criteria for problem gambling was zero in 2014, thus affecting the analysis. No statistically significant difference in problem gambling frequency was found among 20–21-year-olds (a group less affected by the policy implementation) – or other older age groups – between the survey years. While the findings should be viewed with caution, they do support recommendations regarding a minimum gambling age of 18 years or higher as an effective harm-minimization measure.