Consistency of a nonparametric conditional mode estimator for random fields

Given a stationary multidimensional spatial process $\left\{ Z_{\mathbf{i}}=\left( X_{\mathbf{i}},\ Y_{\mathbf{i}}\right) \in \mathbb R ^d\right. \left. \times \mathbb R ,\mathbf{i}\in \mathbb Z ^{N}\right\} $ , we investigate a kernel estimate of the spatial conditional mode function of the response variable $Y_{\mathbf{i}}$ given the explicative variable $X_{\mathbf{i}}$ . Consistency in $L^p$ norm and strong convergence of the kernel estimate are obtained when the sample considered is a $\alpha $ -mixing sequence. An application to real data is given in order to illustrate the behavior of our methodology.     

The relationship between international law and European labour legislation and its impact on the development of international and European social law

This article draws on observations of how European Union law takes account of international worker protection instruments and the activities of international organizations to protect social rights to establish a typology of the links – often close but also very diverse – between European law and “international labour law” in the broad sense.     

Dads Tuning in to Kids: A randomized controlled trial of an emotion socialization parenting program for fathers

Fathers play an important role in shaping their children’s emotional competence although most literature has focused on the influence of mothers. Dads Tuning in to Kids (Dads TIK) is a parenting program that teaches fathers to coach their children in learning about emotions, while also helping fathers increase awareness and regulation of their own emotions. A randomized controlled efficacy trial of Dads TIK was conducted with a community sample of 162 fathers of a 4‐year‐old child attending preschool in Melbourne, Australia. Those allocated to the intervention attended a seven‐session manualized group program. Questionnaires were completed by fathers, the fathers’ partners and the children’s teachers at baseline and 6‐month follow‐up. Results were that fathers in the intervention condition but not control condition reported significant increases in emotion socialization, parenting satisfaction and efficacy, and reductions in their children’s difficult behaviors. Partners of fathers in the intervention condition reported reductions in their own emotion dismissing parenting and improvements in psychological well‐being. Partners and teachers reported significant improvements in children’s behavior across both intervention and control conditions. These findings suggest a father‐focused program appears to lead to changes in fathers’ emotion socialization skills that may have benefits for partners’ functioning and children’s behavior.     

Releasing the full transformative power of feminism

ABSTRACT

In the current political situation - with the crisis of democracy, shrinking civic spaces and dominant repression along with the rise of right-wing political movements, the current article aims to show the powerful roles feminisms play in the struggles of social movements. It focuses on the aspect of power, domination, authority, neoliberal forces and systems of oppression in order to propose alternative models based on concrete experiences from the ground of anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-patriarchy actions. Stories from Rojava, Kenya, and the Basque country; interviews; and literature review are used to show how women's efforts to achieve a balance of power and inclusion in decision-making is shifting the models of leadership, forcing changes in law and putting women at the centre of social movements by advocating for a change in social relations. All these interconnections propose a process of democratization as a tool for radical social change by delivering decision-making back to women and people.     

Institutional isomorphism and nonprofit managerialism: For better or worse?

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have increasingly adopted business‐like practices as a response to institutional pressures. Some researchers argue that this development leads to mission drift, whereas others find a positive effect on organizational performance. However, the institutional pressures responsible for shaping the nonprofit sector have remained hard to distinguish from each other. This study explores the consequences of mimetic, normative, and coercive pressures, and looks at how they affect managerialism, organizational performance, and mission drift. We link these concepts through a structural equation model based on survey data and find that one aspect of managerialism, strategic behavior, is a key construct in influencing the response to isomorphic pressures and can positively affect organizational performance while holding off‐mission drift. Normative isomorphism even has a direct positive effect on organizational performance. Mission drift can take place when organizations are under coercive pressure without having strategies or internal processes in place. These findings imply that organizations should invest in their strategy and the professional development of their staff to increase organizational performance and avoid mission drift.     

Researching women’s leadership in Asia and the Pacific – reflections on feminist research approaches in design and in practice

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) and partners have navigated the complexities and, sometimes competing, priorities, of feminist research methodology and values, in our practice. It demonstrates how, ultimately, decision-making processes along the way have been guided by the feminist values that underpin the research designs and the assertion that the process is as important as the outcome. We reflect in particular on the design and practice of two research projects undertaken by IWDA with partner women’s rights organisations in Asia Pacific. Under the Women’s Action for Voice and Empowerment programme, the projects – the Women’s Leadership Pathways research project and the Public Perceptions of Women as Leaders research project – explore the enablers and barriers to women’s leadership, from both public and private perspectives. The designs of both projects are mindful of hierarchies of authority and knowledge within the research processes that reinforce the status quo and power dynamics between the ‘expert’ and the ‘subject’ of the research. They also challenge the dynamics of power around the production and ownership of knowledge in academic spaces. They do this through collaborative designs that are locally led and owned, and through a strong valuing of women’s voices in research.     

Distribution of Aggregate Utility Using Stochastic Elements of Additive Multiattribute Utility Models

Conventionally, elements of a multiattribute utility model characterizing a decision maker's preferences, such as attribute weights and attribute utilities, are treated as deterministic, which may be unrealistic because assessment of such elements can be imprecise and erroneous, or differ among a group of individuals. Moreover, attempting to make precise assessments can be time consuming and cognitively demanding. We propose to treat such elements as stochastic variables to account for inconsistency and imprecision in such assessments. Under these assumptions, we develop procedures for computing the probability distribution of aggregate utility for an additive multiattribute utility function (MAUF), based on the Edgeworth expansion. When the distributions of aggregate utility for all alternatives in a decision problem are known, stochastic dominance can then be invoked to filter inferior alternatives. We show that, under certain mild conditions, the aggregate utility distribution approaches normality as the number of attributes increases. Thus, only a few terms from the Edgeworth expansion with a standard normal density as the base function will be sufficient for approximating an aggregate utility distribution in practice. Moreover, the more symmetric the attribute utility distributions, the fewer the attributes to achieve normality. The Edgeworth expansion thus can provide a basis for a computationally viable approach for representing an aggregate utility distribution with imprecisely specified attribute weights and utilities assessments (or differing weights and utilities across individuals). Practical guidelines for using the Edgeworth approximation are given. The proposed methodology is illustrated using a vendor selection problem.     

Floral morphology as the main driver of flower-feeding insect occurrences in the Paris region

Through the rapid expansion worldwide of impervious areas and habitat fragmentation, urbanization has strong consequences that must be understood to efficiently manage biodiversity. We studied the effects of urbanization on flower-feeding insects by using data from a citizen science program in the Parisian region. We analysed the occurrence of insects from 46 different families on flowers of different morphologies, using landscape indices in buffer areas from a 100-m to a 4000-m radius around 1194 sampled sites. Our aims were to determine (i) how the proportion of impervious area around sampled sites affected the occurrence of flower-feeding insect families and at which landscape scales impervious area calculations best predicted these occurrences; (ii) the effect of corolla shape variables on insect family occurrences. Twenty-one families were negatively impacted by increasing proportion of impervious areas (urbanophobic) and 3 were positively impacted (urbanophilic). Urbanophobic families were most affected by the proportion of impervious areas when it was estimated within buffers of 200-m to 1400-m radii, depending on the family. Notable losses of urbanophobic families were detected at less than 50% of impervious areas, which highlights the threat to the diversity of flower-feeding insects posed by urban sprawl. Corolla shape variables were the variables most often significantly implicated in the occurrence of insect families. Urbanophobic families were negatively affected by the tubular shape of flowers, and tubular corollas were found more often in urbanized areas. These results suggest that flora management might be a key component for the conservation of insect diversity in cities.