Family Mapping: A Cumulative Measure of Family Structure and Instability

Family structure is an important area of study given the growing rates of family instability. The research, however, is limited due to broad definitions and measurement methods that only consider one time point. Using a sample of young adults (N = 398), our goal was to develop a user-friendly implementation procedure and coding system that efficiently captures a broad range of information. The coding system offered includes multiple levels of detail and hundreds of previously untapped variables. Examinations of standard methods versus the cumulative family mapping method revealed additional variance explained in measures of substance use, providing early indications of measurement utility.     

Companion animals in families of children with autism spectrum disorder: Lessons learned from caregivers.

Companion animals (i.e., pets) have been increasingly recognized for the roles they play in families, including those with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This cross-sectional study explored the unique functions of companion animals within families with a child with ASD. Phenomenology was used to analyze the responses of participants (N = 338) who responded to a survey offered through the Interactive Autism Network. The study initially focused on dogs; however, the analysis was forced to expand to other species due to the data provided by participants. Seven major themes emerged: bonding and benefits, learning opportunities, barriers, grief, fit (match of family characteristics with those of the companion animal), safety, and alternative animals. Successful fit between companion animals and families was often described as necessary for beneficial functions. Barriers included necessary cost and time, as well as required supervision of interactions to enhance safety of the children and animals.     

Telling the Collective Story? Moroccan-Dutch Young Adults’ Negotiation of a Collective Identity through Storytelling

Researchers taking a social constructionist perspective on identity agree that identities are constructed and negotiated in interaction. However, empirical studies in this field are often based on interviewer–interviewee interaction or focus on interactions with members of a socially dominant out-group. How identities are negotiated in interaction with in-group members remains understudied. In this article we use a narrative approach to study identity negotiation among Moroccan-Dutch young adults, who constitute both an ethnic and a religious (Muslim) minority in the Netherlands. Our analysis focuses on the topics that appear in focus group participants’ stories and on participants’ responses to each other’s stories. We find that Moroccan-Dutch young adults collectively narrate their experiences in Dutch society in terms of discrimination and injustice. Firmly grounded in media discourse and popular wisdom, a collective narrative of a disadvantaged minority identity emerges. However, we also find that this identity is not uncontested. We use the concept of second stories to explain how participants negotiate their collective identity by alternating stories in which the collective experience of deprivation is reaffirmed with stories in which challenging or new evaluations of the collective experience are offered. In particular, participants narrate their personal experiences to challenge recurring evaluations of discrimination and injustice. A new collective narrative emerges from this work of joint storytelling.     

Ambiguity in asset pricing and portfolio choice: a review of the literature

We survey the literature that has explored the implications of decision-making under ambiguity for financial market outcomes, such as portfolio choice and equilibrium asset prices. This ambiguity literature has led to a number of significant advances in our ability to rationalize empirical features of asset returns and portfolio decisions, such as the failure of the two-fund separation theorem in portfolio decisions, the modest exposure to risky securities observed for a majority of investors, the home equity preference in international portfolio diversification, the excess volatility of asset returns, the equity premium and the risk-free rate puzzles, and the occurrence of trading break-downs.     

Does business model affect accounting choices? An empirical analysis of European listed companies

Financial accounting research increasingly includes business model (BM) constructs, but the ability of financial reporting to capture BM characteristics has not been verified. This study empirically explores the links between BMs and accounting choices by clustering a sample of 103 European listed companies according to an innovative, nonlinear algorithm (self-organizing map) that uses pertinent industrial, strategic, governance, and financial variables to uncover different dimensions of a BM. The authors investigate accounting choices (accounting measurement, accounting treatment, and disclosure level) by companies that belong to the different identified BMs. The analysis of the relations between different company BMs and their accounting choices indicates no significant connections, which offers empirical confirmation of the criticisms regarding the inability of financial reporting to represent (or even consider) a company’s BM. The results suggest further attempt to capture BM in financial reporting, which requires regulators to establish accounting standards that acknowledge the value creation processes of an entity and incentivize managers to represent those processes.     

A spatial analysis on Italian unemployment differences

Using spatial econometric models, this paper focuses attention on the spatial structure of provincial unemployment disparities of Italian provinces for the year 2003. On the basis of findings from the economic literature and of the available socio-economic data, various model specifications including supply- and demand-side variables are tested. Further we use ESDA analysis as equivalent to integration analysis on time series; therefore it is applied on each variable, dependent and independent, involved in the statistical model. The suggestions of ESDA lead us to the most adequate statistical model, which estimates indicate that there is a significant degree of neighbouring effect (i.e. positive spatial correlation) among labour markets at the provincial level in Italy; this effect is present notwithstanding we controlled for local characteristics. The unemployment shows a polarized spatial pattern that is strongly connected to labour demand and to a much lesser extent to the share of young population and economic structural composition.     

School-to-work transitions in times of crisis: the case of Spanish youth without qualifications

This article focuses on the school-to-work transitions of Spanish youth. Herein, we study the pathways followed during a 10-year period by young people who dropped out of school without achieving any qualifications and who did not achieve any at a later date. This is a population aged 26–28 years old with an educational level of ISCED 0–1. The study adopts a plurimethodological approach that includes an initial qualitative phase whose main instrument was the biographical interview and a second phase with a quantitative focus in which data were collected using a questionnaire. The results show the effect of dropping out of education without qualifications on the pathways of the youths as well as their greater vulnerability in the current period of economic crisis, which results in a high percentage of the population that has no employment, education or training. This effect is even greater among women. This study highlights the difficulties associated to returning to education, the reproduction of educational exclusion in the population that did not obtain the diploma corresponding to compulsory secondary education, and a lack of public policies to support this specific population.     

Dropout of Hospital Volunteers in Italy

Voluntary work in Charities is a constantly growing reality: in particular, in the last few years, voluntary work in hospitals has become of great importance, marking a substantial increase of commitment in social issues. However, at the same time, volunteering Charities have been plagued by the increase of the phenomenon of dropout, that is, volunteers abandoning the Charitable Association they’re working in, often after a relatively short period of activity. In this study, we attempted to verify if and how active and dropped out volunteers perceive their own activity as a source of anxiety and stress. Our data show that both active and dropped out volunteers show high levels of burnout; in fact, dropped out volunteers show higher levels of burnout, especially of emotional exhaustion, in comparison with active volunteers. Subsequently, we identified the factors potentially assuming the role of mediators or moderators in the direct relation involving the status of voluntary work activity and the levels of anxiety and burnout. Our study demonstrates that coping strategies and the relationship established with hospital workers can be considered good moderators.     

The analysis of extreme pollution levels: A case study

Our case study focuses on Milan. Italian law specifies strict guidelines for the permissibility of high levels of a variety of air pollutants in cities. In Milan, a highly sophisticated network of recording stations has been constructed to monitor pollutant levels. The aim of this paper is to obtain a summary of the temporal behaviour of the pollutant series, with particular reference to extreme levels. Simple exploratory analysis reveals a number of sources of stochastic variation and possible dependence on covariate effects, which are subsequently modelled, exploiting recent developments in the modelling and inference for temporal extremes. Using this methodology, we examine the issues of data trends, non-stationarity, meteorological effects and temporal dependence, all of which have substantive implications in the design of pollution control regulations. Moreover, the asymptotic basis of these extreme value models justifies the interpretation of our results, even at levels that are exceptionally high.