Being Working Poor or Feeling Working Poor? The Role of Work Intensity and Job Stability for Subjective Poverty

Social Indicators Research - Low work intensity and high job instability are crucial micro-determinants of in-work poverty. Importantly, they might also affect subjective poverty in households that...     

Biomechanical strain of goldsmiths

The work of the goldsmiths consists in the manufacture of jewelry. The piece, be it an earring, bracelet or necklace, is hand-assembled. This task requires precision, skill, kindness and patience. In this work, we make use of tools such as cuticle clippers and rounded tip, beads or precious stones and also pieces of metal. This type of activity requires a biomechanical stress of hands and wrists. In order to quantify the biomechanical stress, we performed a case study to measure the movements performed by an assembly of pieces of jewelry. As method for research, filming was done during assembly of parts to a paste, using a Nikon digital camera, for 1 (one) hour. The film was edited by Kinovea software, and the task was divided into cycles, each cycle corresponds to a complete object. In one cycle, there are four two movements of supination and pronation movements of the forearm. The cycle lasts approximately sixteen seconds, totaling 1800 cycles in eight hours. Despite the effort required of the wrists, the activity shows no complaints from the employees, but this fact does not mischaracterizes the ability of employees to acquire repetitive strain injuries and work-related musculoskeletal disorders.     

Effects of long-acting testosterone undecanoate on bone mineral density in middle-aged men with late-onset hypogonadism and metabolic syndrome: results from a 36 months controlled study

We evaluated the effects of long-term testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) on the bone mineral density (BMD) in obese patients with metabolic syndrome (MS) and late-onset hypogonadism (LOH). Sixty men (mean age 57 ± 10) with low serum testosterone (T < 320 ng/dL) and MS regardless the presence of osteoporosis were enrolled. Forty men received intramuscular T-undecanoate (TU) four times/year for 36 months and 20 age-matched hypogonadal men with MS in whom T treatment was contraindicated were used as controls. Hormonal, biochemical markers, vertebral and femoral BMD by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry were measured. At baseline, overall patients had mild osteopenia (lumbar BMD= 0.891 ± 0.097 g/cm(2); femoral BMD= 0.847 ± 0.117 g/cm(2)). TU induced a significant improvement of bone mass after 36 months (lumbar BMD=1.053 ± 0.145 g/cm(2); p < 0.002; femoral BMD=0.989 ± 0.109; p < 0.003 g/cm(2)) with a 5%/year increase and a significant reduction in hs-CRP without changes in body mass index. A direct relationship between serum T and BMD increments at the lumbar (r(2)?= 0.66, p < 0.0001) and femoral (r(2)?=0.52, p < 0.0001) sites was demonstrated. Study adherence was 50% without serious side effects. Long-term TRT in middle-aged men with LOH and MS determines a significant increase in both vertebral and femoral BMD related to increased serum T levels, probably independently from estradiol modifications.     

A Psychosocial Measure of Social Added Value in Non-profit and Voluntary Organizations: Findings from a Study in the South of Italy

Inspired by the relational framework (Bassi, in: Franz, Hochgerner, Howaldt (eds) Challenge social innovation, Springer, Berlin, pp 325–350, 2012; Donati in Ital J Sociol Educ 5(1):19–35, 2013) and designed to integrate psychological and sociological aspects, a measure of social added value (SAV) was developed and validated. A study was conducted in the South of Italy on a sample of non-profit and voluntary organization members (N?=?394) to examine the statistical validity and psychometric properties of the SAV scale. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that a third-order factor model, saturated by two second-order variables (internal and external relational goods) and eight first-order variables (sense of organizational community, quality of internal relations, influence, social responsibility towards members of the organization, users and stakeholders, organizational identification, and quality of external relations) obtained good satisfactory fit indexes. Additional analyses revealed that shared member values were positively associated with SAV and that there were differences among organizations according to their legal forms and the organizational roles available. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Improving innovation performance through environmental practices in the fashion industry: the moderating effect of internationalisation and the influence of collaboration

In recent years, the scientific literature on supply chain management has increasingly debated on environmental sustainability as well as collaboration, presenting these issues as an important source of innovation along the supply chain. By combining literature streams on environmental sustainability, supply chain collaboration and innovation at the supply chain level, this paper aims to analyse whether the adoption of environmental sustainability practices and collaboration along the supply chain implies better innovation performance, in terms of differentiation from the competitors for higher quality, product or process. The paper also investigates whether the internationalisation, in terms of both production and distribution activities, negatively moderates this relationship. The study focuses on the fashion industry, and a survey of major Italian fashion companies was conducted. The main results of the research clearly show the positive impact of these practices on innovation performance. The paper also proves the existence of a moderating effect exerted by internationalisation on the relationship between environmental sustainability and innovation performance.     

Patterns of consent: evidence from a general household survey

Summary.  We analyse patterns of consent and consent bias in the context of a large general household survey, the 'Improving survey measurement of income and employment' survey, also addressing issues that arise when there are multiple consent questions. A multivariate probit regression model for four binary outcomes with two incidental truncations is used. We show that there are biases in consent to data linkage with benefit and tax credit administrative records that are held by the Department for Work and Pensions, and with wage and employment data held by employers. There are also biases in respondents' willingness and ability to supply their national insurance number. The biases differ according to the question that is considered. We also show that modelling questions on consent independently rather than jointly may lead to misleading inferences about consent bias. A positive correlation between unobservable individual factors affecting consent to Department for Work and Pensions record linkage and consent to employer record linkage is suggestive of a latent individual consent propensity.     

A Bayesian semiparametric model for non negative semicontinuous data

When the target variable exhibits a semicontinuous behavior (a point mass in a single value and a continuous distribution elsewhere), parametric “two-part models” have been extensively used and investigated. The applications have mainly been related to non negative variables with a point mass in zero (zero-inflated data). In this article, a semiparametric Bayesian two-part model for dealing with such variables is proposed. The model allows a semiparametric expression for the two parts of the model by using Dirichlet processes. A motivating example, based on grape wine production in Tuscany (an Italian region), is used to show the capabilities of the model. Finally, two simulation experiments evaluate the model. Results show a satisfactory performance of the suggested approach for modeling and predicting semicontinuous data when parametric assumptions are not reasonable.     

MDCgo takes up the association/correlation challenge for grouped ordinal data

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - The subjective assessment of quality of life, personal skills and the agreement with a certain opinion are common issues in clinical, social, behavioral and...     

Development and implementation of an operating room scheduling tool: an action research study

In this study, we report the results of an action research project whose aim was to develop and implement an operating room scheduler at the Meyer University Children’s Hospital. The study offers insights into the features that make an MSS optimisation model and scheduler effective and easy to implement, and shed light on those actions facilitating their introduction and use. Specifically, it suggests that creating an effective operating room scheduler requires clustering patients in homogeneous surgery groups and developing a flexible tool that allows: scheduling surgery groups instead of actual patients, easily adding/removing constraints, changing the objective function(s) and adjusting the planning horizon. In addition, it posits that gaining the commitment of top management by showing credible preliminary results, inferring stakeholder preferences by letting them comment on tentative schedules, introducing changes gradually and involving staff at lower levels of the hospital hierarchy can significantly facilitate the scheduler development and implementation.     

Framing Gender Equality in the European Union Political Discourse

In the last decade, the European Union (EU) approach to genderequality has broadened to new concepts, such as gender mainstreaming,and new issues, such as "family policies", "domestic violence",and "gender inequality in politics". However, the frame analysisof policy documents in these new areas shows, first, that eachissue has developed its own particular features, and, secondly,that the broadening of the EU-political discourse on genderequality has not led to a deeper framing of the issues in termsof gender equality. The lack of EU competence in these areas,the status of the policy documents, and differences in the actorshaving a voice and being referred to in the documents are proposedas possible explanations for its framing.