Long-term care in Spain: Difficulties in professionalizing services

The aim of this article is to analyze the difficulties in professionalizing the long-term care system in Spain. Since 2006, the new Spanish law has recognized care as a subjective right, and regulations are being designed to create a framework for its professionalization. Nowadays, family remains the most important group of providers who care for their elders, and women remain the main informal caregivers. Why do families resist using public long-term care services and professional carers included in the new law? The hypothesis highlights sociocultural factors as an obstacle to professionalization of long-term care services in addition to political and economic factors. The results show qualitative data about expectations, preferences, and discourses that women caregivers have in relation to their responsibility. The empirical material includes 25 interviews with different profiles of caregivers and six focus groups with family caregivers. The article suggests that the Spanish ideal of care is a problem for the professionalization of services because the family remains as the main provider of care—without specific skills, knowledge, and abilities.     

Postdisaster Housing Stages: A Markov Chain Approach to Model Sequences and Duration Based on Social Vulnerability

Housing recovery is an unequal and complex process presumed to occur in four stages: emergency shelter, temporary shelter, temporary housing, and permanent housing. This work questions the four-stage typology and examines how different types of shelter align with multiple housing recovery stages given different levels of social vulnerability. This article also presents a Markov chain model of the postdisaster housing recovery process that focuses on the experience of the household. The model predicts the sequence and timing of a household going through housing recovery, capturing households that end in either permanent housing or a fifth possible stage of failure. The probability of a household transitioning through the stages is computed using a transition probability matrix (TPM). The TPM is assembled using proposed transition probability models that vary with the social vulnerability of the household. Monte Carlo techniques are applied to demonstrate the range of sequences and timing that households experience going through the housing recovery process. A set of computational rules are established for sending a household to the fifth stage, representing a household languishing in unstable housing. This predictive model is exemplified on a virtual community, Centerville, where following a severe earthquake scenario, differences in housing recovery times exceed four years. The Centerville analysis results in nearly 5% of households languishing in unstable housing, thereby failing to reach housing recovery. These findings highlight the disparate trajectories experienced by households with different levels of social vulnerability. Recommendations are provided at the end for more equitable postdisaster recovery policies.     

Health Outcomes and Volunteering: The Moderating Role of Religiosity

In this paper, we examine whether and what extent public and private forms of religiosity act as moderators of the volunteering and well-being relationship in mid- to later-life. We use data from the second wave of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (n = 1,805). We analyzed the relationships between volunteering and indicators of well-being (self-rated physical and mental health), and tested the moderating effects of public and private religiosity on the volunteering and well-being relationship. Our findings suggest that salubrious effects of volunteering on the self-perceived physical and mental health of middle- aged and older- aged adults varied by their participation in different forms of religiosity. In particular, volunteers who engaged in more public forms of religiosity reported significantly better physical and mental health than non-volunteers who engaged in these forms of religiosity. In other words, individuals who were actively engaged public forms of religious practices and who volunteered, maximized the associated health benefits.     

Managing Logistics in Regional Banknote Supply Chain Under Security Concerns

We study the logistics problem faced by Regional Branches (RBs) of a central bank in managing the currency supply under security concerns. While making banknote supply decisions to Sub‐Branches (SBs), the management of RB must achieve two goals simultaneously: (i) guarantee that each SB has sufficient inventories of all denominations of banknotes to satisfy the demands from all commercial banks within its service area, and (ii) control the annual spending on this banknote supply operation. Due to security concerns, the following methods are implemented in the process of transporting banknotes: (i) the capacity of a cash truck is limited by the total face value (instead of the physical space) of banknotes, and (ii) empty decoy trucks are deployed along with the trucks filled with banknotes. After deriving a polynomial‐time strategy to guarantee an optimal solution for the special Bin‐Packing Problem faced in this study, we provide an exact formulation for the RB's supply planning problem. We also propose several polynomial‐time algorithms for deriving either optimal or near‐optimal solutions for the problem under different settings. Using the weekly demand data obtained from the central bank, we verify the performance of our algorithms, and analyze the impacts of changes in these features and in the fleet capacity on the total cost incurred by an RB under various scenarios.     

Recent Social Work Practitioners’ Understanding and Use of Evidence-Based Practice and Empirically Supported Treatments

The aim of this study was to evaluate how CSWE’s 2008 shift placing more emphasis on research have affected newly trained social workers’ use of evidence-based practice (EBP). This qualitative study examined the educational and practice experiences of newly trained social workers and how those experiences influence the use of EBP and empirically supported interventions/treatments in the field. Thirteen newly graduated social workers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. Twenty-three codes emerged from the interviews, with the most prominent theme being a sense of overall confusion about EBP. Other themes included lack of educational preparation, lack of agency resources, and prohibitive agency culture. Implications for social work education and practice are discussed.     

Stakeholder perceptions of contextual factors related to PBIS implementation in high need schools

Positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS) is a thoroughly researched three-tiered framework for preventing and treating challenging behavior in schools. While more than 20 years of research contribute to the literature base, less is known about PBIS implementation in high-needs school settings, particularly those that serve students predominantly from low-income families and majority minority student populations across urban and rural districts. This study investigated the critical contextual factors of PBIS implementation from the stakeholder perspective. Specifically, we surveyed 161 participants including teachers, school staff members, and administrators who were PBIS team members and had received technical assistance in PBIS implementation. The completed surveys were analyzed with participants and their schools coded for district type, Title I funding, and position in order to determine how the perceptions of issues such as buy-in, administrator support, PBIS in secondary school settings, and poverty affect PBIS implementation and team needs. The factor analysis and resulting structure along with statistically significant results for each factor are presented along with implications.     

Gender Role,Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation in CAIS (“XY-Women”) Compared With Subfertile and Infertile 46,XX Women

The perception of gender development of individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) as unambiguously female has recently been challenged in both qualitative data and case reports of male gender identity. The aim of the mixed-method study presented was to examine the self-perception of CAIS individuals regarding different aspects of gender and to identify commonalities and differences in comparison with subfertile and infertile XX-chromosomal women with diagnoses of Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKHS) and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). The study sample comprised 11 participants with CAIS, 49 with MRKHS, and 55 with PCOS. Gender identity was assessed by means of a multidimensional instrument, which showed significant differences between the CAIS group and the XX-chromosomal women. Other-than-female gender roles and neither-female-nor-male sexes/genders were reported only by individuals with CAIS. The percentage with a not exclusively androphile sexual orientation was unexceptionally high in the CAIS group compared to the prevalence in “normative” women and the clinical groups. The findings support the assumption made by Meyer-Bahlburg (2010 Meyer-Bahlburg, H. F. L. (2010). Gender outcome in 46,XY complete androgen insensitivity syndrome: Comment on T'Sjoen et al. (2010). Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39, 1221–1224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that gender outcome in people with CAIS is more variable than generally stated. Parents and professionals should thus be open to courses of gender development other than typically female in individuals with CAIS.     

THE PASS‐THROUGH OF BEER TAXES TO PRICES: EVIDENCE FROM STATE AND FEDERAL TAX CHANGES

From a policy perspective, it is crucial to understand how changes in beer taxes affect retail beer prices. This study provides new evidence of the pass‐through rate of state beer taxes to prices in a post‐merger era. Our estimates that use state‐level beer tax changes suggest that a 10‐cent increase in beer taxes raises retail prices by about 17 cents. Comparable findings from the 1991 federal beer tax increase show a rise in retail beer prices of 19–22 cents. Our findings suggest that consumers fully bear the burden of increased beer taxes. (JEL H2, I0, D4)     

“Who Are You?”: The Making of Korean “Illegal Entrants” in Occupied Japan 1945–1952

Recent progress in the study of migration history in Japan has cast new light on the influx of Koreans to Japan just after the end of the Second World War in August 1945. Both the Japanese Government and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers called this migration illegal entry or smuggling, and tried to suppress it., One important question remains to be solved about this migration; namely; how was it prohibited? Before the Immigration Control Act (1951) was enshrined, and at a time when Koreans in Japan still held Japanese citizenship, how were the authorities able to regard Korean migration to Japan illegal? How did this migration became a political and social problem? Focusing on the legislation process and performance of the law, this article attempts to answer these questions. Politics, legislation, and social interaction all contributed to making the ethnic and legal category of Korean in postwar Japan.     

100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.