The robustness and optimality of response surface designs

Recent work on extended optimality criteria for robust designs is applied to response surface problems. Methods of calculation are described and the criteria illustrated with several examples. The extended criteria discriminate among designs equivalent by other criteria.     

Entitlement and the efficiency-equality trade-off: an experimental study

When randomly assigning participants to experimental roles and the according payment prospects, participants seem to receive “manna from heaven.” In our view, this seriously questions the validity of laboratory findings. We depart from this by auctioning off player roles via the incentive compatible random price mechanism thus avoiding the selection effect of competitive second price auctions. Our experiment employs the generosity game where the proposer chooses the size of the pie, facing an exogenously given own agreement payoff, and the responder is the residual claimant. We find that entitlement crowds out equality seeking and strengthens efficiency seeking. More generally, we find that inducing entitlement for the roles in which participants find themselves makes a difference. Interpreting participants’ willingness to pay for their role as their aspiration level further allows to test satisficing and explore “mutual satisficing.” We find that responder participants apparently do not anticipate proposer generosity in aspiration formation.     

Controlling Access to Sick Leave Programmes: Practices of Physicians in the Netherlands

Policymakers in industrialized countries attempt to contain the costs of sick leave and disability schemes by limiting access to include medically proven cases only. However, a person's incapacity to work cannot be fully deduced by referring to his or her medical condition. It is the question whether using more restrictive eligibility criteria that focus on medical evidence actually reduces the number of benefit recipients and makes access to employee benefit arrangements fairer. This ethnographic study shows that physicians working in Dutch illness certification practices use alternative methods to restrict access to sick leave programmes. Doctors do not control their clients in a restrictive sense of the word. Rather, they exercise control over their clients by inciting them to internalize norms about being active and responsible. While we do not claim that this is good per se, we do contend that this control style may have some advantages over and above more restrictive control mechanisms. Elaborating on policy that supports this alternative notion of control, therefore, seems worthwhile.     

Social Work Education in Mainland China: Development and Issues

The present paper gives an overview of the current trend of social work education in Mainland China, a fast-expanding academic subject of higher education in Mainland China during the last 20 years. This rapid development was brought about by the increasing recognition of the use of social work knowledge in tackling some of the social problems arising from the social and economic changes induced by the open door policy of China. New initiatives were undertaken by government departments, academic institutes and service providers, to explore possible reform of service delivery models in serving the elderly, children and youth, women and other vulnerable groups. It thus creates demands for personnel with new skills and knowledge. It has also led to the promulgation of government policies in 2006, in establishing a strong work force of social work, by setting up an accreditation system for social work as a vocation, making available funding for service development and setting up of NGOs. This paper also highlights some of the imminent issues that cause concern, such as the search for a theoretical model of social training and practices suitable for Chinese society, standardization of curriculum design, teaching and learning, consolidation of accreditation examination and career structure, and creation of a working environment conducive to the professionalization of social work in terms of motivating and retaining social work graduates to stay in the service sector.     

A new approach for disclosure control in the IAB establishment panel—multiple imputation for a better data access

For micro-datasets considered for release as scientific or public use files, statistical agencies have to face the dilemma of guaranteeing the confidentiality of survey respondents on the one hand and offering sufficiently detailed data on the other hand. For that reason, a variety of methods to guarantee disclosure control is discussed in the literature. In this paper, we present an application of Rubin’s (J. Off. Stat. 9, 462–468, 1993) idea to generate synthetic datasets from existing confidential survey data for public release.We use a set of variables from the 1997 wave of the German IAB Establishment Panel and evaluate the quality of the approach by comparing results from an analysis by Zwick (Ger. Econ. Rev. 6(2), 155–184, 2005) with the original data with the results we achieve for the same analysis run on the dataset after the imputation procedure. The comparison shows that valid inferences can be obtained using the synthetic datasets in this context, while confidentiality is guaranteed for the survey participants.     

对后现代艺术的反思

在后现代视角主义基础上反思后现代艺术现象并肯定了其独特价值,主要涉及五个方面:历史概念的去总体化,真理概念的去总体化,生活形式的去总体化,艺术的去总体化以及当代艺术博物馆排列的后现代转向。     

“You Cannot Be Like That Here”: Discourses of Sexual Identities among Urban Ghanaian Families

Gender Issues - While social discourses on gender and sexuality have become controversial in the African context, there is a tendency to overlook how the domestic space contrives and participates...     

Counting Young Carers in Switzerland – A Study of Prevalence

An online survey of children in school grades 4–9 (mostly aged 10–15) was conducted in order to determine the prevalence of young carers in Switzerland using a 2‐stage stratified sampling approach. 4082 respondents were drawn from 230 schools. A total of 3991 respondents were included in the analysis and of these 307 (7.7%) were identified as young carers. The population estimate of prevalence was 7.9 per cent. This suggests that there are around 38 400 young carers in school grades 4–9 in Switzerland. Extrapolating to the 9–16 age group gives a figure of almost 51 500.     

Intrahousehold empowerment gaps in agriculture and children's well‐being in Bangladesh

This article examines the relationship between empowerment gaps between spouses and children's nutritional status and education using nationally representative data from the 2012 Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey. We measure relative empowerment of spouses using the recently developed Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index. We find that while gender gaps in empowerment are only linked weakly to children's nutritional status, fathers’ and mothers’ empowerment have different effects on investment in children. Fathers’ empowerment is positively associated with younger children's nutrition and schooling, while mothers’ empowerment is more important for girls’ education in general and in keeping older boys and girls in school.