Search (f)or Work: Der Übergang vom Studium in den Beruf

Previous research shows that college graduates in the humanities face a notably difficult college-to-work transition compared to graduates from other disciplines. Their transition to work not only takes longer; graduates in the humanities are also more likely to wind up in atypical employment. This paper asks, what factors explain the difficulties in the college-to-work transition for graduates in the humanities. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, graduates in the humanities are compared to two reference groups: law and economics as well as engineering. Using data from the HIS Absolventenpanel 1997, separate piecewise constant hazard regression models were estimated to identify the determinants of the college-to-work transition for each discipline. Drawing on Spence’s theory of signaling and Rosenbaum’s tournament theory, we find that tournaments and signals structure the college-to-work transition differently in each discipline. While selection processes are weak in the humanities, graduates need to acquire additional occupationally useful skills before or during their studies in order to make a smoother transition into the labor market.     

Sustainable Caregiving? Demands Upon and Resources of Female Carers of Adults with Intellectual Disability

Female carers of adults with an intellectual disability are increasing in our communities as those with intellectual disability live into middle and old age. Twenty-seven carers between the ages of 45 and 85 years responded to questionnaires about demands, resources, and their health. Almost all were in the clinical range on the measure of psychological functioning. Demands contributed significantly to poorer functioning; however, other measures did not. The women in this study appeared to underreport the level of difficulties they experienced. The caregiving role undertaken by these women does not appear to be sustainable under their current circumstances.     

Tailoring a Parenting Curriculum for the Needs of Pregnant Adolescents in The Bahamas

Adolescence marks the transition from childhood into adulthood. For pregnant female adolescents, the transition is to motherhood as well as adulthood. They must not only deal with the physical and emotional changes of adolescence but learn how to become mothers. This article provides recommendations for enhancing a parenting skills curriculum for pregnant adolescents based on the research of the primary author with a cohort in an alternative school in Nassau, the Bahamas and follow-up discussions with alumni of the program.     

A new class of measurement-error models,with applications to dietary data

Measurement-error modelling occurs when one cannot observe a covariate, but instead has possibly replicated surrogate versions of this covariate measured with error. The vast majority of the literature in measurement-error modelling assumes (typically with good reason) that given the value of the true but unobserved (latent) covariate, the replicated surrogates are unbiased for latent covariate and conditionally independent. In the area of nutritional epidemiology, there is some evidence from biomarker studies that this simple conditional independence model may break down due to two causes: (a) systematic biases depending on a person's body mass index, and (b) an additional random component of bias, so that the error structure is the same as a one-way random-effects model. We investigate this problem in the context of (1) estimating distribution of usual nutrient intake, (2) estimating the correlation between a nutrient instrument and usual nutrient intake, and (3) estimating the true relative risk from an estimated relative risk using the error-prone covariate. While systematic bias due to body mass index appears to have little effect, the additional random effect in the variance structure is shown to have a potentially important effect on overall results, both on corrections for relative risk estimates and in estimating the distribution of usual nutrient intake. However, the effect of dietary measurement error on both factors is shown via examples to depend strongly on the data set being used. Indeed, one of our data sets suggests that dietary measurement error may be masking a strong risk of fat on breast cancer, while for a second data set this masking is not so clear. Until further understanding of dietary measurement is available, measurement-error corrections must be done on a study-specific basis, sensitivity analyses should be conducted, and even then results of nutritional epidemiology studies relating diet to disease risk should be interpreted cautiously.     

The network of global corporations and elite policy groups: a structure for transnational capitalist class formation?

This study situates five top transnational policy–planning groups within the larger structure of corporate power that is constituted through interlocking directorates among the world's largest companies. Each group makes a distinct contribution towards transnational capitalist hegemony both by building consensus within the global corporate elite and by educating publics and states on the virtues of one or another variant of the neo–liberal paradigm. Analysis of corporate–policy interlocks reveals that a few dozen cosmopolitans – primarily men based in Europe and North America and actively engaged in corporate management – knit the network together via participation in transnational interlocking and/or multiple policy groups. As a structure underwriting transnational business activism, the network is highly centralized, yet from its core it extends unevenly to corporations and individuals positioned on its fringes. The policy groups pull the directorates of the world's major corporations together, and collaterally integrate the lifeworld of the global corporate elite, but they do so selectively, reproducing regional differences in participation. These findings support the claim that a well–integrated global corporate elite has formed, and that global policy groups have contributed to its formation. Whether this elite confirms the arrival of a transnational capitalist class is a matter partly of semantics and partly of substance.