Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? Adolescent Interpretations of Parental Substance Use

Parents are powerful socialization agents for children and as children reach adolescence parental role models, among other sources of influence, become particularly salient in adolescents’ decision-making regarding initiation of substance use. Open parent-adolescent communication about substances is associated with less substance use by adolescents; however, it is unclear how youth interpret antidrug use messages from their parents, especially if the parents engage in legal and/or illicit substance use themselves. Framed by social learning theory and social constructionism, this study analyzed in-depth interviews with 108 adolescents about personal experiences with substance use, family communication about substance use, and adolescent interpretations of parental use. Emergent themes in the data include: positive parental influence, parental contradictions, and negative outcomes of use. Prevalence of parental use—regardless of legality, rarity of explicit communication about parental use, and various interpretations of parental use are discussed.     

Two tests for monotone failure rate with incomplete data

Two statistics are proposed for testing for the exponential distribution against monotone failure rate alternatives when ran-domly right censored data are available. One of them is a general-ization of the Billmann, Antle and Bain test based on the MLE of the shape parameter of the Weibull distribution. The second has the advantage of being given in closed form. For this test the asymptotic null distribution is given. Consistency of the two tests is proved starting from an expected value inequality characterizing monotone failure rate.     

Social construction of national identity: Taiwanese versus Chinese consciousness

The struggle to break away from the parent state and claim independence often results in political unrest, terrorist activities and even ethnic cleansing. Understanding the nature of the secessionist movement does not only preserve national unity, but can also avoid conflict and violence, and maintain peace. Irredentist and secessionist advocators generally defend themselves in terms of common blood, race or culture. None of them regards the issue from the human agency theory, namely Weber-Thomas-Berger's social construction theory. This paper uses phenomenological analysis to explain the origin of national identity and hence the emergence of a nation. It argues that social construction of national reality originates from everyday life experience taken for granted during socialization. Individuals make sense of the external world. Experiences taken for granted become the actor's stock of knowledge. A common scheme of knowledge shared by the community serves to differentiate in-group (nationals) and out-group (foreigners). Collective consciousness thus defines national identity and hence a nation. Unless people (both in-group and out-group) interact with and learn from each other, different stocks of knowledge taken for granted will create political conflict. This theory is applied to the Taiwan Strait conflict. People in Taiwan are searching for national identity, manifested in the processes of Sinicization and Taiwanization. The struggle between Chinese and Taiwanese consciousness is the underlying cause of conflict within Taiwan and across the Taiwan Strait. The growing tendency of Taiwanization and diminution of Sinicization in Taiwan render the Cross-Strait relation vulnerable. The paper concludes that Cross-Strait exchanges and communication provide opportunities for people to understand each other and re-define their national identity, hence resulting in a peaceful political resolution between Taiwan and mainland China.     

A bilevel programming problem with maximization of a supermodular function in the lower level

In bilevel programming there are two decision makers, the leader and the follower, who act in a hierarchy. In this paper we deal with a bilevel problem where the follower maximizes a supermodular function. The payoff for the leader is given by the weighted set that is chosen by the follower. To increase his payoff the leader can increase the supermodular function of the follower by a modular one, thus influencing the follower’s decision, but he has to pay a penalty for this. We want to find an optimum strategy for the leader. This is a bilevel programming problem with continuous variables in the upper level and a parametric supermodular maximization problem in the lower level. We analyze the structure of the bilevel problem. This we use to provide an equivalent one-level combinatorial problem. Finally, we investigate the properties of the new problem.     

How Adolescents Use Text Messaging Through their High School Years

Co‐construction theory suggests adolescents use digital communication to address developmental challenges. For a sample of 214 ethnically diverse adolescents, this research used direct observation to investigate the frequency, content, and timing of texting with parents, peers, and romantic partners through grades 9–12. Analyses showed that texting frequency follows a curvilinear trajectory, peaking in eleventh grade. Adolescents discussed a range of topics, predominantly with peers. Communication with parents was less frequent, but consistent over time. Approximately 45‐65% of adolescents communicated with romantic partners, texting heavily and about topics similar to those discussed with peers. Texting may help adolescents navigate key developmental challenges of adolescence—the establishment of autonomy, intimate peer relationships, romantic relationships, and self‐identity.     

THE OPTIMAL ALLOCATION OF PRIZES IN TOURNAMENTS OF HETEROGENEOUS AGENTS

Tournaments are widely used in organizations, explicitly or implicitly, to reward the best‐performing employees, for example, by promotion or bonuses, and/or to penalize the worst‐performing employees, for example, by demotion, withholding bonuses, or unfavorable job assignments. These incentive schemes can be interpreted as various prize allocations based on the employees' relative performance. While the optimal prize allocation in tournaments of symmetric agents is relatively well understood, little is known about the impact of the allocation of prizes on the effectiveness of tournament incentive schemes for heterogeneous agents. We show that while multiple prize allocation rules are equivalent when agents are symmetric in their ability, the equivalence is broken in the presence of heterogeneity. Under a wide range of conditions, loser‐prize tournaments, that is, tournaments that award a low prize to relatively few bottom performers, are optimal for the firm. The reason is that low‐ability agents are discouraged less in such tournaments, as compared to winner‐prize tournaments awarding a high prize to few top performers, and hence can be compensated less to meet their participation constraints. (JEL M52, J33, J24)     

The Power of Perceived Experience: Events That Shape Work as a Calling

Meaning plays an important role in many people's lives and work. A significant source of meaning derives from a greater sense of fulfilling one's calling, or purpose in work. This study examined the specific life experiences that shape people's perceptions of their calling and the characteristics of those experiences that make them so powerful. Fifty‐eight people who self‐identified as leaders responded to a questionnaire about the relevant experiences that shaped their perceptions of their work as a calling. Participants' responses were content‐analyzed to generate a taxonomy of themes in 4 overarching categories: (a) content of the event, (b) context of the event, (c) confirmation of one's call, and (d) the continuing effect that the event has had on the individual's life. By increasing knowledge about events that affect perceptions about one's calling, counselors may be more equipped to shed light on the potential, unexamined trajectories of a client's work and life.     

Part I: Gravestones and Epitaphs. “Grinning Skulls,Smiling Cherubs,Bitter Words”

We have said that gravestone studies is our own corner of research in American attitudes toward death. We begin with a discussion of burying grounds not only because it is our own, but because we have chosen gravestone s t d i e s to represent the historical backdrop against which our contributors view important twentieth century attitudes toward death in America. “Grinning Skulls, Smiling Cherubs, Bitter Words” discusses burial grounds and gravestone motifs in New England from the late seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century, and connects shifts in gravestone imagery to changes in social, intellectual and religious life in New England. “Ideologies in Stone: Meanings i n Victorian American Gravestones,” by Kenneth Ames, expands the geographical area nationwide, and covers the chronological period between 1850 and 1920. Like “Grinning Skulls,”“Ideologies in Stone” is concerned to connect the confines of the burying ground with the social values of the culture that produces it.     

Der soziale Hintergrund von Sprachwahlen in Belarus

This paper analyzes the language behavior in the bilingual society of Belarus. Therefore we look at language usage in dependence of individual values. The development of those values is considered under a macro- and micro sociological perspective. The theoretical approach examines language behavior in consequence of politically created language structures on the one hand and in consequence of integration in social interaction structures on the other hand. Hence a special imprint of cultural identity arises, which is expressed by language behavior. This approach is used for the examination of language behavior in Belarus. The influence of corresponding socioeconomic and cultural indicators of language usage is estimated by a multinomial logit model.