Disabled people,inclusion and policy: better outcomes through a public health approach?

The social model of disability has implications for evaluation of disability policy. Public health analyses suggest that a population and environmental approach to enablement is more likely to impact positively on disabled people than person-centred action. The capacity of people living with disabilities to participate in a range of social activities and the attitudes of others to such participation are, along with environments, important factors contributing to disability situations and therefore the restriction of our promotion of personhood. These are areas where metrics could be used to evaluate the impact of disability policy.     

Dispositional Affect and Job Outcomes

This longitudinal study examines the influence of dispositional affect,defined as self-rated cheerfulness at college entry, on three job outcomes – current income, job satisfaction, and unemployment history – assessedabout 19 years later. Analysis shows that individuals with a highercheerfulness rating at college entry have a higher current income and ahigher job satisfaction rating and are less likely ever to have beenunemployed than individuals with a lower cheerfulness rating. Althoughcheerfulness generally has a positive effect on current income, this effectis curvilinear, with current income increasing more rapidly at lower thanat higher cheerfulness ratings; the effect is also moderated by parentalincome, with the increase in current income between any two cheerfulnessratings becoming greater as the level of parental income increases. Theeffect of cheerfulness on current income is not moderated by sex; the effectof cheerfulness on job satisfaction and on unemployment history is notmoderated by either sex or parental income.     

Competition network as a source of competitive advantage: The dynamic capability perspective and evidence from China

The search for competitive advantage is the defining inquiry of strategic management research. In this study, we draw on the dynamic capability lens to develop a counterintuitive view that positions competitors of a firm as an important source of competitive advantage. We argue that a firm's competitors form a competition network from which it can collect information about innovative ideas, product market, and related industries. Such information helps it calibrate market opportunities, update the resource base, and, eventually, strengthen its competitive advantage. This positive effect of competition network on competitive advantage will reasonably be contingent upon the proactive information search by the firm. The empirical results based on the survey data of 631 Chinese firms strongly support our theoretical model. This study identifies another distinctive source of competitive advantage than industry context or organizational resources as well as advancing our understanding of competition network.     

Positivity conditions for stochastic state space modelling of time series

This short paper clarifies some aspects of the balancing method for state space modelling of observed time series. This method may fail to satisfy the so-called positive real condition for stochastic processes. We illustrate this by theoretical spectral analysis and also by simulating univariate ARMA (1,1) models.     

A new mixed first-order integer-valued autoregressive process with Poisson innovations

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - Integer-valued time series, seen as a collection of observations measured sequentially over time, have been studied with deep notoriety in recent years, with...     

Robust cusum: a robustness study for cusum quality control schemes

A standard CUSUM control scheme and four modified CUSUM control schemes are evaluated for robustness. The average run length (ARL) for each scheme is evaluated using a contaminated normal distribution, a distribution that has longer tails than the normal. A CUSUM control scheme that ignores the first suspected outlier, but gives an out-of-control signal for two successive outliers is found to perform well.     

工业革命:过去与未来

通过全球经济增长的跨世纪比较,作者洞察出18世纪末开始的工业革命之后的经济增长与先前经济增长之根本不同在于工业世界是以人口总量相对于产出总量的增长率呈现稳定下降态势和广大普通民众生活水准的普遍提高为典型特征。进一步的分析表明,以马尔萨斯(Malthus)的人口理论为代表的传统经济增长理论可以成功解释传统农业社会里各国人均收入大致相等且基本上不随时间的变化而改变,而以贝克尔(Becker)的人力资本积累理论为代表的现代经济增长理论则可以成功解释现代工业社会中全球人均收入的持续大幅度成长、跨国人均收入的巨大不平等和人均收入跨国分布的动态变化。最后,作者指出随着仍然处在进行中的工业革命向全球各个角落扩散,世界人均收入整体上将不断提高,而解决全球低收入人群生活水准的最佳途径是不断地增加世界产出总量,而非重新分配现有的世界总产出。     

Adding insult to injury: development and initial validation of the Partner-Directed Insults Scale

Women who are verbally abused by their intimate male partners suffer serious mental health consequences and often experience physical violence in their relationship. Despite the importance of studying verbal abuse, no previous research has investigated the specific content of the insults men use to derogate their partners. We present the development and initial validation of a new measure designed to assess the specific content of insults used by men against their intimate partners. In a preliminary study, we used feedback from battered women, along with a review of the relevant literature, to identify specific insults for inclusion in the Partner-Directed Insults Scale (PDIS). We administered the PDIS to a sample of United States participants (Study 1) and a sample of New Zealand participants (Study 2), allowing for a cross-national investigation of the specific insults that men use to derogate their partners. The results demonstrate the practical need for such a scale and provide evidence for the discriminant validity of the PDIS by documenting that men's use of insults predicts their use of controlling behaviors and physical violence.     

The relationship between organizational factors and resident satisfaction with nursing home care and life

We examined the relationships between nursing home (NH) resident satisfaction and NH organizational characteristics, while controlling for the effect of resident characteristics within facilities. We used a stratified, random sample of NHs (N = 72) from two states and a prescreened and randomized sample of 1496 residents. Data sources included resident interviews, an administrator survey, the Minimum Data Set (MDS), and the Online Survey, Certification and Reporting System (OSCAR). Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques, we found that non-chain affiliation, certified nursing assistant staffing, and provision of a family council had significant positive effects on total resident satisfaction. The presence of a special care unit was associated with lower levels of satisfaction.