Tests of the causal directions of global — Life facet satisfaction relationships

Previous research generally has supported multiple discrepancies theory (MDT) of the processes by which individuals arrive at judgments of satisfaction with various aspects of their lives as well as with life overall. However, the nature of possible causal relationships between overall and life facet satisfaction has been ignored. The purpose of this study was to extend MDT by testing alternative theoretical models which specified Bottom-up, Top-Down, and Bidirectional relationships between overall life satisfaction and satisfaction with 11 life facets in a sample of 1354 U.S. college students. Results most strongly favored the Bidirectional model in which the overall — life facet satisfaction relationship varied across life domains. The need to identify boundary conditions which determine the direction of the overall — life facet satisfaction relationship is discussed.     

Responding to environmental change in longshoring: Four north American experiences

In longshoring, technological change, expanding competition among ports, and the development of lower cost work forces induced a major restructuring of dock operations. This paper focuses on collective bargaining responses to environmental change and the interplay between those responses, government intervention, the law, and market forces. Four coastal regions in the United States and Canada are studied to gain a broad perspective in two jurisdictions with somewhat differing approaches to government intervention and labor law. Market pressures have become a dominant force, altering the need for and nature of government intervention, and accommodation to change seems most appropriate in today’s highly competitive marketplace. We are indebted to those we interviewed: Brian Ciccozzi, D. P. (Don) Garcia, Terry Lane, Arnold E. Masters, Gene Vrana, Greg Storey, Joe Weiler, and R. V. Wilds. We greatly appreciate the comments of Vitor Marciano, Yoni Reshef, and an anonymous referee, as well as the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Rice Fellowship. I thank the Oakland University Research Committee for grant support.     

Social structure and homicide in post-Soviet Russia

The Russian homicide rate is among the highest in the world. Local rates are not uniform, however, but instead show tremendous variation throughout this large nation. As a result of varying levels of development, differential access to natural resources, past Soviet economic and social policies, and the varying pace of the social, political, and economic transition, there are also large differences across Russia in structural factors thought to be related to interpersonal violence. In this study, newly available vital statistics and socioeconomic data were employed to estimate the effects of social structural characteristics on homicide rates in the Russian regions (n = 78). Results revealed that commonly tested covariates such as poverty and single-parent households were positively associated with regional homicide victimization rates, as was a proxy for heavy drinking. Further, homicide rates in the Northern Caucasus and the regions east of the Ural mountains are significantly lower and higher, respectively, than in the rest of the country. These results are discussed in terms of the current Russian situation and integrated into the broader literature on social structure and homicide.     

Personality Disorders Among Pathological Gamblers

The objective of this study was to investigate the prevalence of DSM-III-R diagnostic categories of personality disorders in pathological gamblers and to highlight the possible association between such disorders, psychological distress and selected forms of gambling. The Personality Disorders Questionnaire-Revised and a battery of psychometric measures were administered to a sample of 82 consecutive admissions to a behavioral treatment program for gambling problems at an impulse control disorders research unit in Sydney, Australia. Seventy-three percent of subjects were male. The total sample reported having gambled a mean of 15 years of which, on average, the last 6.4 years were associated with problems. Results indicated that the majority of subjects met diagnostic criteria for at least one Personality Disorder (93%), with an average of 4.6 personality disorders per subject. The majority of gamblers evidenced personality disorders from the Cluster B grouping with particularly high rates of borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders which were found to be associated with high levels of impulsivity and affective instability. Antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder were both found to be possible mediators of the severity of the problem gambling behaviours.     

Measuring Knowledge,Attitudes and Behaviours Concerning Sustainable Development among Tenth Grade Students in Manitoba

In this paper we present standardized measures of tenth grade students’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviours concerning sustainable development as those concepts are understood in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and we test the hypothesis that knowledge and favourable attitudes toward SD lead to favourable behaviours. Using a fairly representative random sample of 1,551 tenth grade students from the province of Manitoba, Canada, we crafted 3 indexes. There is a 20-item Index of Knowledge of SD with a good Cronbach alpha = 0.89, a 15-item Index of Attitudes Favourable Toward SD with alpha = 0.84 and a 15-item Index of Behaviours Favourable Toward SD with an alpha = 0.83. About 21% of the variation in our Behaviours Index scores could be accounted for by our Knowledge Index and Attitudes Index scores.     

Good Health is Not the Same as a Good Life: Survey Results from Brandon,Manitoba

The aim of this investigation was to obtain some baseline self-reported data on the health status and overall quality of life of a sample of residents of the city of Brandon, Manitoba aged 18 years or older, and to measure the impact of a set of designated health determinants, comparison standards and satisfaction with diverse domains of life on their health and quality of life. In May and June 2010, 2,500 households from the city of Brandon, Manitoba were randomly selected to receive a mailed out questionnaire and 518 useable, completed questionnaires were returned. Baseline health status data were obtained using the 8 SF-36 dimensions of health and 13 items from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Determinants of health and overall quality of life included measures of socializing activities, a Good Neighbourhood Index, Social Support Index, Community Health Index, a measure of free-time exercise levels, health-related behaviours, use of drugs, health care issues, a set of domain-specific quality of life items, a set of measures concerning criminal victimization, worries and behaviours concerning victimization and the basic postulates of Multiple Discrepancies Theory. Overall life assessment, dependent variables included Average Health, happiness, a single item measure of satisfaction with life as a whole, a single item measure of satisfaction with the overall quality of life, the Satisfaction With Life Scale, Contentment with Life Assessment Scale and a Subjective Wellbeing Index. Using multiple regression, we explained as much as 75% of the variance in Subjective Wellbeing scores and as little as 45% in happiness scores. Four clusters of health determinants explained from 20% (Happiness) to 44% (Average Health) of the variance in the dependent variables. Adding comparison standards and domain satisfaction scores to the set of health determinants increased our total explanatory power by only 2% points for Average Health (from 44 to 46%), but more than doubled our explanatory power for Happiness (from 20 to 45%) and for satisfaction with the overall quality of life (from 31 to 67%). As well, our explanatory power for the single item of Life Satisfaction increased from 34 to 66%, for the Satisfaction With Life Scale from 39 to 74%, for the Contentment With Life Assessment Scale from 36 to 60%, and for Subjective Wellbeing from 42 to 75%. This provided very clear evidence that self-perceived good health is not equivalent to perceived quality of life, confirming evidence reported in our earlier studies. The three most important take-home messages from this investigation are (1) in assessing the relative influence of any alleged determinants of health and the quality of life, different sets of alleged determinants will appear to be more or less influential for different dependent variables. Therefore, (2) researchers should use diverse sets of determinants and dependent variables and (3) it is a big mistake to use measures of health status as if they were measures of the perceived quality of life.     

A joint model of cancer incidence,metastasis, and mortality

Many diseases, especially cancer, are not static, but rather can be summarized by a series of events or stages (e.g. diagnosis, remission, recurrence, metastasis, death). Most available methods to analyze multi-stage data ignore intermediate events and focus on the terminal event or consider (time to) multiple events as independent. Competing-risk or semi-competing-risk models are often deficient in describing the complex relationship between disease progression events which are driven by a shared progression stochastic process. A multi-stage model can only examine two stages at a time and thus fails to capture the effect of one stage on the time spent between other stages. Moreover, most models do not account for latent stages. We propose a semi-parametric joint model of diagnosis, latent metastasis, and cancer death and use nonparametric maximum likelihood to estimate covariate effects on the risks of intermediate events and death and the dependence between them. We illustrate the model with Monte Carlo simulations and analysis of real data on prostate cancer from the SEER database.     

Getting back in the DeLorean: modernization vs. anti-modernization in contemporary British politics

ABSTRACT

This article highlights a growing clash between mainstream modernizing and populist anti-modernizing forces in the UK. Whilst scholarship on UK party politics has, for the past three decades, focussed on processes of party modernization, little attention has been paid to the countervailing processes of resistance towards modernization. This contrasts with comparative studies, which show that throughout much of Europe modernization processes have worked to produce populist backlashes from anti-modernizing forces seeking to reassert various types of traditional values and practices. Drawing on the comparative literature on modernization, our argument here is that a similar populist backlash against modernization is occurring across the political spectrum in the UK and has been a factor in: the rise of nationalism associated with UKIP and the SNP; the 2016 BREXIT vote and the efforts of both Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Conservative PM Theresa May to distance their parties from the legacies of their modernizing predecessors. Empirically, we show how this increasingly prevalent line of conflict is playing out in the UK, whilst theoretically we argue that a discourse theoretical approach can provide significant advantages over existing approaches for understanding the dynamic interplay between modernizing and anti-modernizing discourses.     

Austérité budgétaire et flexibilisation du marché du travail: une association risquée

Les auteurs évaluent les effets de l'association entre politiques d'austérité budgétaire et de réduction du coût du travail, et apportent ainsi quelque éclairage sur les débats en cours. Ils s'attaquent au problème de l'agrégation dans une perspective mondiale au moyen d'un macromodèle mettant en évidence la dynamique de la répartition. La flexibilisation réduit la part salariale et entraîne des rétroactions qui s'enchaînent dans une spirale descendante avec une contraction de l'activité, même dans les économies tirées par les exportations. Les gains initiaux de compétitivité se révèlent éphémères. Sur le long terme, les salaires sont les premiers moteurs de l'économie mondiale, qui réagit positivement aux stimuli keynésiens coordonnés.     

Cognitive Modifiability of New Immigrant Adults

The first research question of this study concerns the plasticity of cognitive processes of adult learners confronted with the task of adapting to a new language and an unfamiliar system of formal education. The second question inquires into the relative contribution of two different forms of cognitive intervention—the Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD) procedure and the cognitive education program—to the cognitive modifiability of immigrant adults. Both forms of intervention were studied in the past but never in comparison. It seemed, therefore, important to compare the performance of immigrant adult students who received only the LPAD procedure with that of the students who received both LPAD and a prolonged cognitive intervention. The results indicate that the cognitive processes of adult immigrants are modifiable, often no less than those of school-age children and that the participation in cognitive education program has an added value for students with relatively high preprogram performance as compared to LPAD alone.