Log-Multiplicative Association Models As Latent Variable Models For Nominal and/or Ordinal Data

Associations between multiple discrete measures are often due to collapsing over other variables. When the variables collapsed over are unobserved and continuous, log-multiplicative association models, including log-linear models with linear-by-linear interactions for ordinal categorical data and extensions of Goodman's (1979, 1985) RC(M) association model for multiple nominal and/or ordinal categorical variables, can be used to study the relationship between the observed discrete variables and the unobserved continuous ones, and to study the unobserved variables. The derivation and use of log-multiplicative association models as latent variable models for discrete variables are presented in this paper. The models are based on graphical models for discrete and continuous variables where the variables follow a conditional Gaussian distribution. The models have many desirable properties, including having schematic or graphical representations of the system of observed and unobserved variables, the log-multiplicative models can be read from the graphs, and estimates of the means, variances, and covariances of the latent variables given values on the observed variables are a function of the log-multiplicative model parameters. To illustrate some of the advantageous aspects of these models, two examples are presented. In one example, responses to items from the General Social Survey (Davis and Smith 1996) are modeled, and in the other example, panel data from two groups (Coleman 1964) are analyzed.     

Charity Transgressions, Trust and Accountability

This research demonstrates how sustained charity fraud is supported when organisations do not develop strong accountability links to salient stakeholders. Whilst increased regulation is one response to reduce charity fraud and to increase organisational accountability, regulators seldom recognise the myriad heterogeneous needs of stakeholders. This research explores the tactics employed by beneficiaries and the donating public to escalate their accountability demands on such charities. By preferring the most powerful stakeholders, charities miss the opportunity to design effective processes to discharge accountability to meet their moral obligations to legitimate stakeholders. This article calls for increased ??stakeholder understanding?? by charity governors as a policy to recognise the moral rights of these stakeholders and to reduce charity transgressions.     

Transforming habit: revolution,routine and social change

Compelling recent scholarly work has explored the crucial role affect, emotion and feeling might play in activating radical social and political change. I argue, however, that some narratives of ‘affective revolution’ may actually do more to obscure than to enrich our understanding of the material relations and routines though which ‘progressive’ change might occur and endure in a given context – while side-stepping the challenge of how to evaluate progress itself in the current socio-political and economic landscape. Drawing on the work of Eve Sedgwick, John Dewey, Felix Ravaisson and others, this article asks whether critical work on habit can provide different, and potentially generative, analytical tools for understanding the contemporary ethical and material complexities of social transformation. I suggest that it habit’s double nature – its enabling of both compulsive repetition and creative becoming – that makes it a rich concept for addressing the propensity of harmful socio-political patterns to persist in the face of efforts to generate greater awareness of their damaging effects, as well as the material forms of automation and coordination on which meaningful societal transformation may depend. I also explore how bringing affect and habit together might productively refigure our understandings of ‘the present’ and ‘social progress’, as well as the available modes of sensing, instigating and responding to change. In turning to habit, then, the primary aim of this article is to examine how social and cultural theory might critically re-approach social change and progressive politics today.     

Migration and job satisfaction — A logistic regression analysis of satisfaction of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong

A largescale survey of 1209 (5%) Filipina contract workers (domestic servants) in Hong Kong included a five point scale measure of job satisfaction. In order to discover which variables were most related to job satisfaction levels a logistic regression analysis was carried out. Salary, length of residence, the number of relatives in Hong Kong, the provision of a private room and the nationality of the employer were selected by the model as the most important factors. Using the above five variables, the logistic regression model was then used to classify the original sample into dissatisfied and satisfied groups and was successful in 64% of cases.The sample survey was undertaken as part of a Ph.D. dissertation being undertaken for Surrey University by Carolyn French, who is currently an honorary research associate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Dr. Lam is a statistician in the Faculty of Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.     

Underpinning knowledge for child care practice: reconsidering child development theory

Child development theory has come to be regarded as essential underpinning knowledge for social work practice, a view reinforced by the current research‐minded agenda. Practitioners are enjoined to acquire a more in‐depth knowledge of child development but in this paper it is argued that this agenda requires more scrutiny if social workers are going to engage more meaningfully with the child development literature and use it in a critical and reflexive way in their practice. To this end some key messages drawn from critical approaches to developmental psychology, a literature to date largely unrecognized by social work, are examined for their relevance to practice.     

Sociological Introspection and Emotional Experience

Although social constructionists now study emotions, they neglect what emotion feels like and how it is experienced. This paper argues that social constructionists can and should study how private and social experience are fused in felt emotions. Resurrecting introspection (conscious awareness of awareness or self-examination) as a systematic sociological technique will allow social constructionists to examine emotion as a product of the individual processing of meaning as well as socially shared cognitions. Examining introspection as a sociological process, this paper argues that introspection can generate interpretive materials from self and others useful for understanding the lived experience of emotions. Findings from four studies–one, self-introspective, and the other three, interactive introspective examinations with co-investigators–provide information about the subjective part of emotion. They demonstrate the advantages of introspection in dealing with the complex, ambiguous, and processual nature of emotional experience.