Children and Young People Living Through a Serious Family Illness: Structural,Interpersonal and Personal Perspectives

This study explores the experiences of children and young people in Britain living through a serious family illness. The study considers the interplay between social structures, social relationships and individual agency. We draw on data from the Millennium Cohort Study to estimate the number of children and young people affected nationally and on seven in‐depth interviews to understand young people’s experiences and the effects on their daily lives. Living through a serious family illness impacts on young people’s educational achievements, mental health and social relationships over long periods. Policy and service responses are suggested.     

Treatment Experiences of Child Sexual Offenders in Norway: A Qualitative Study

This article is an attempt at gaining a better understanding of treatment of adults who have committed sexual offenses against children. In this study we aimed to explore what people who have committed sexual offenses against children find useful in therapy. The study was approached using qualitative methodology, and information was collected through semistructured interviews. Four male child sexual offenders were recruited from the Institute of Clinical Sexology and Therapy in Oslo, Norway. The informants were interviewed with a focus on what factors they found useful in therapy. Through an explorative, thematic analysis, five main themes were found. These themes include: “Why I started going to therapy,” “Why did I do it?” “Therapy as life,” “Previous and current relationships with others,” and “I lived in a fantasy world where everything was okay.” Based on this study and other earlier studies and theories it appears that the previously mentioned themes recur as important contributory factors in the treatment of child sexual offenders.     

Families Across the Income Spectrum: A Decade in Review

During the past decade, scholars continued to focus on how larger economic trends impacted families across the income spectrum. From income and wealth inequality to economic insecurity, the gaps between the haves and the have nots remained, and some widened during this period. The authors' comprehensive review found the following three major takeaways: first, the biggest economic divides run through families with children; second, low-income families face concentrated disadvantage marked by insecurity and precarity; and third, inequality and insecurity shaped the “dynamism” of family life, including how families respond culturally and emotionally to economic changes, and how these responses unfold over time. They examine active areas of research, including parenting trends and the transition to adulthood. They also document a new scholarly emphasis on uncertainty and instability along with the forces that exacerbate or mitigate them, such as job quality, economic volatility, wealth, and incarceration. Research during the past decade focused on the experience and consequences of dynamism, reflecting not only the reality that families evolve but also that they face continual change in their economic, social, and political contexts. The authors highlight research investigating how families “do dynamism,” work that looks over time or offers in-depth examinations of how families adapt to and cope with dynamism every day. This research reveals that inequality and insecurity are not only matters of levels and gaps but also ongoing matters of meaning-making, identity, and feeling. The authors conclude by highlighting some strengths and weaknesses of these research streams and pointing out new avenues for future scholarship.     

Seeing Through the Logical Framework

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In this study, we examine the key management and scientific traditions that inform the logical framework, a project...     

Artificial neural networks versus multivariate statistics: an application from economics

An artificial neural network is a computer model that mimics the brain's ability to classify patterns or to make forecasts based on past experience. This paper explains the underlying theory of the widely used back-propagation algorithm and applies this procedure to a problem from the field of international economics, namely the identification of countries that are likely to seek a rescheduling of their international debt-service obligations. A comparison of the results with those obtained from three multivariate statistical procedures applied to the same data set suggests that neural networks are worthy of consideration by the applied economist.     

Modelling consumers' use of products

Patterns of consumers' use of products are of interest to manufacturers. This paper is concerned with modelling diary data on the use of one product, shampoo, recorded to the nearest hour by over 500 men during 1 week. A binary response multilevel model is developed, building on similar models for consumer purchase data. The model allows for a dependence on the number of days since last use. The results of fitting various versions of this model are discussed. A problem is that the number of days since last use is missing for all times up to the first use. An approximate EM approach is considered to deal with this problem.     

Choices and Challenges: A Qualitative Exploration of Professional Women's Career Patterns

With the rapid changes occurring in the role of work in women's lives, this research project was designed to examine the career planning, career decision making, and work history of women in both female‐dominated and gender‐neutral careers (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.‐a). A qualitative analysis of structured interviews identified 6 emerging themes: variations of career/family patterns, career encouragers, career obstacles, personal compromises, career changes, and career decision‐making patterns. Insights for strengthening the exploration process and strategies for supporting career management are presented based on the emerging themes.     

Children's and Adolescents' Developing Perceptions of Gender Inequality

Two studies examined children's and adolescents' developing perceptions of gender inequality. The first study examined perceptions of inequality among 272 early, middle, and late adolescents, focusing on the spheres of politics, business, and the home. Results indicated an age‐related increase in perceptions of male dominance. Men were seen to have more power and status in politics than in business whereas relative equality was seen to exist in the home. The second study included 96 child and adolescent participants aged 7–15 and once again found an increase in general perceptions of male dominance with age. Results suggest that young children are less explicitly aware of gender inequality than might be assumed given their extensive knowledge of power‐loaded gender‐role stereotypes.     

Corporate financial performance and occupational stress

Abstract

Although a great deal of research has been carried out in the occupational stress field, little work has focused on the link between corporate financial performance and corporate culture on individual stress. The sample comprised senior marketing managers working in 14 electronics companies selected on the basis of their recent profit/loss performance. It was found that corporate financial performance and culture variables were more strongly associated with many of the felt stresses than were the individual and role-related predictors.