Commentary: A Citizenship without Social Rights? EU Freedom of Movement and Changing Access to Welfare Rights

Despite not being grounded in the classic nation-building dynamic of citizenship identified by T.H.Marshall, EU citizenship offers social rights and welfare protection to non-nationals on a principle of non-discrimination. We narrate a creeping process of retrenchment by which European member states have used policy strategies to undermine this principle, by transforming the unique idea of free movement of persons in the EU to just another form of “immigration” which can be subject to selectivity and exclusion. As Europe’s multiple recent crises have unfolded, political resources were found to effect this transformation tangibly via reshaping access to welfare for EU citizens. Focusing on the cases of the UK and Germany, we discuss how, despite their distinctive welfare regimes and labour market systems, these two countries have led the way toward a dismantling of non-discrimination for EU citizens and effectively the end of the anomalous ‘post-national’ dimension of European citizenship.     

Loops,ladders and links: the recursivity of social and machine learning

Theory and Society - Machine learning algorithms reshape how people communicate, exchange, and associate; how institutions sort them and slot them into social positions; and how they experience...     

A stochastically curtailed two-arm randomised phase II trial design for binary outcomes

Randomised controlled trials are considered the gold standard in trial design. However, phase II oncology trials with a binary outcome are often single-arm. Although a number of reasons exist for choosing a single-arm trial, the primary reason is that single-arm designs require fewer participants than their randomised equivalents. Therefore, the development of novel methodology that makes randomised designs more efficient is of value to the trials community. This article introduces a randomised two-arm binary outcome trial design that includes stochastic curtailment (SC), allowing for the possibility of stopping a trial before the final conclusions are known with certainty. In addition to SC, the proposed design involves the use of a randomised block design, which allows investigators to control the number of interim analyses. This approach is compared with existing designs that also use early stopping, through the use of a loss function comprised of a weighted sum of design characteristics. Comparisons are also made using an example from a real trial. The comparisons show that for many possible loss functions, the proposed design is superior to existing designs. Further, the proposed design may be more practical, by allowing a flexible number of interim analyses. One existing design produces superior design realisations when the anticipated response rate is low. However, when using this design, the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis is sensitive to misspecification of the null response rate. Therefore, when considering randomised designs in phase II, we recommend the proposed approach be preferred over other sequential designs.     

Prevalence of Low Physical Activity and its Relation to Social Environment in Deprived Areas in the London Borough of Redbridge

Achieving adequate levels of physical activity (PA) is important to maintain health and prevent chronic disease. The costs of inadequate physical activity to the NHS have been estimated at over a billion pounds annually. While socio-demographic characteristics such as age, sex and ethnicity have been reported to be associated with different levels of PA, there is evidence that people??s social environments may also be important in encouraging a physically active lifestyle. The objective of this paper is to describe associations between the social environment and physical activity among the poorer communities in an outer London Borough, when other socio-demographic factors are controlled for. A household survey was carried out in six poorer neighbourhoods in Redbridge in 2008 as part of a wider health needs assessment. The questionnaire included questions allowing estimation of levels of physical activity as well as extent of social environment [social network score (SNS) and social support score (SSS)]. A random sample of households was taken and a total of 799 completed responses from over 16 year old were obtained. The association between physical activity and the social environment controlling for socio-demographic characteristics was estimated using a logistic nested model. Higher SNS was significantly associated with younger age, Black ethnicity, higher education level, higher household income and higher levels of PA in bivariate analyses. Higher SSS was positively associated with Indian ethnicity, higher household income and area of residence. In multivariate analyses higher levels of PA were significantly associated with wider social networks and stronger social support, educational level and marital status. Despite its limitations, our findings confirm that the relationship between low physical activity and weak social networks and low social support, observed in general population studies, also occurs in deprived communities in London. The relationship merits further exploration given the limited evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity.     

Staffing a Multiskilled Workforce with Varying Levels of Productivity: An Analysis of Cross-training Policies*

Service operations that utilize cross-trained employees face complex workforce staffing decisions that have important implications for both cost and productivity. These decisions are further complicated when cross-trained employees have different productivity levels in multiple work activity categories. A method for policy analysis in such environments can be beneficial in determining low-cost staffing plans with appropriate cross-training configurations. In this paper, we present an integer linear programming model for evaluating cross-training configurations at the policy level. The objective of the model is to minimize workforce staffing costs subject to the satisfaction of minimum labor requirements across a planning horizon of a single work shift. The model was used to evaluate eight cross-training structures (consisting of 36 unique cross-training configurations) across 512 labor requirement patterns. These structures, as well as the labor requirement patterns, were established based on data collected from maintenance operations at a large paper mill in the United States. The results indicate that asymmetric cross-training structures that permit chaining of employee skill classes across work activity categories are particularly useful.     

ESTIMATING A RATIO OF MEANS FROM BIVARIATE COUNTS WITH APPLICATIONS IN STEREOLOGY

In survey sampling and in stereology, it is often desirable to estimate the ratio of means θ= E(Y)/E(X) from bivariate count data (X, Y) with unknown joint distribution. We review methods that are available for this problem, with particular reference to stereological applications. We also develop new methods based on explicit statistical models for the data, and associated model diagnostics. The methods are tested on a stereological dataset. For point‐count data, binomial regression and bivariate binomial models are generally adequate. Intercept‐count data are often overdispersed relative to Poisson regression models, but adequately fitted by negative binomial regression.     

Fast computation of spatially adaptive kernel estimates

Kernel smoothing of spatial point data can often be improved using an adaptive, spatially varying bandwidth instead of a fixed bandwidth. However, computation with a varying bandwidth is much more demanding, especially when edge correction and bandwidth selection are involved. This paper proposes several new computational methods for adaptive kernel estimation from spatial point pattern data. A key idea is that a variable-bandwidth kernel estimator for d-dimensional spatial data can be represented as a slice of a fixed-bandwidth kernel estimator in \((d+1)\)-dimensional scale space, enabling fast computation using Fourier transforms. Edge correction factors have a similar representation. Different values of global bandwidth correspond to different slices of the scale space, so that bandwidth selection is greatly accelerated. Potential applications include estimation of multivariate probability density and spatial or spatiotemporal point process intensity, relative risk, and regression functions. The new methods perform well in simulations and in two real applications concerning the spatial epidemiology of primary biliary cirrhosis and the alarm calls of capuchin monkeys.     

A Support Group for Caregivers of Children with Craniofacial Differences

ABSTRACT

Caregivers of children with craniofacial differences (CFD) experience psychosocial stressors; however, few groups are described for this population. The authors outline an eight-session group and qualitative analysis of caregivers’ experiences. The majority of participants (n = 100) were mothers (76%) of children who were female (75%) and identified as Latino (79%). Children’s mean age was 10.6 (SD = 2.8) years, and they were born with cleft lip/palate (56%) along with other CFD diagnoses. Themes included: group appreciation (21%), mutual acceptance (18%), coping (18%), parenting skills (17%), learning (9%), resiliency (7%), empathy (4%), diagnosis information (3%), and self-care (3%). Caregivers’ reported experiences largely corresponded with group goals.