Is Transport Safety More Valuable in the Air?

Using a contingent valuation survey, people's willingness to pay for a given risk reduction is found to be much larger, consistently more than two times as large, when traveling by air compared to by taxi. Follow-up questions revealed that an important reason for this discrepancy is that many experience a higher mental suffering from flying, and that they are willing to pay to reduce this suffering. It was also consistently found that people are willing to pay more for a certain risk reduction if the original price was higher. Policy implications are discussed.     

Coming Out and the Potential for Growth in Sexual Minorities: The Role of Social Reactions and Internalized Homonegativity

Coming out is a significant and sometimes difficult process in the lives of sexual minorities, but disclosure can also affect wellbeing in positive ways, including reduced distress and greater relationship satisfaction. This study investigates the possibility of stress-related growth and depreciation following coming out. To obtain a diverse sample with varying coming-out experiences, data were collected from undergraduate students as well as from online sources, including lesbian, gay, and bisexual support groups and Pride groups. Regression analyses indicated that negative social reactions to coming out predicted both growth and depreciation, although they more strongly predicted depreciation. Positive social reactions were positively related to stress-related growth, while internalized homonegativity was inversely associated with growth. Although the two sample sources (online and campus) differed in some ways, sample source was not a significant predictor in the regressions, nor was it indicated as a moderator in exploratory ANOVA analyses.     

The Social-Entrepreneurship Advantage: An Experimental Study of Social Entrepreneurship and Perceptions of Nonprofit Effectiveness

A common assertion in the nonprofit literature is that nonprofit organizations can become more efficient, effective, and sustainable by embracing social entrepreneurship in their operational and strategic posture. In this article, we examine whether the mere label of social entrepreneurship results—with no actual organizational differences—in an increase in positive attributions associated with a nonprofit organization, an effect we call the social entrepreneurship bias. We experimentally test for the existence of a social entrepreneurship bias by examining how the label of social entrepreneurship alters how people judge a nonprofit’s effectiveness and decide how to allocate scarce donation funds.

     

Social workers' assessments of needs and interventions for adolescents with substance misuse problems,criminal behaviour and mental health difficulties: a vignette study

The aim of the current vignette study was to examine how social workers assess adolescents with substance misuse problems, criminal behaviour and mental health difficulties, and how they make decisions about treatment interventions to reduce these problems. Earlier research has shown lack of knowledge concerning factors and processes that govern assessments and decisions in social work practice. In this anonymously administered survey, social workers in Stockholm, Sweden, were invited to assess fictitious youth issues. We found that social workers recognise the problems and needs of young people, but that they find it harder to link needs to evidence-based interventions. Also, there is a tendency to overrate alleged non-serious problems in the vignettes. We conclude that there is a need for increased knowledge about evidence-based methods and more structured procedures to broaden the basis for decisions.     

Multi‐sited accumulation of capital: Cape Verdean returnees and small‐scale business

In recent years, policymakers have portrayed return migration as positive for development. In both migrant sending and migrant receiving countries, policymakers expect the transfer of economic, cultural and social capital by returnees to stimulate economic growth. Inherent in these assumptions is the idea of a unidirectional flow of capital from northern countries of immigration to the countries of return. The objective of this article is to contest this idea of a one‐way transfer of capital through a case study of Cape Verdean returnee business owners. To what extent have they accumulated their various forms of capital before emigration, during their sojourn abroad or after return? In this article, I examine the returnees' multi‐sited accumulation of capital and how it corresponds to the resources they need to run a sustainable business. In addition, I analyse how they adapt capital accumulated abroad to the conditions in Cape Verde.     

In a Nervous Voice: Acoustic Analysis and Perception of Anxiety in Social Phobics’ Speech

This study investigated the effects of anxiety on nonverbal aspects of speech using data collected in the framework of a large study of social phobia treatment. The speech of social phobics (N = 71) was recorded during an anxiogenic public speaking task both before and after treatment. The speech samples were analyzed with respect to various acoustic parameters related to pitch, loudness, voice quality, and temporal aspects of speech. The samples were further content-masked by low-pass filtering (which obscures the linguistic content of the speech but preserves nonverbal affective cues) and subjected to listening tests. Results showed that a decrease in experienced state anxiety after treatment was accompanied by corresponding decreases in (a) several acoustic parameters (i.e., mean and maximum voice pitch, high-frequency components in the energy spectrum, and proportion of silent pauses), and (b) listeners’ perceived level of nervousness. Both speakers’ self-ratings of state anxiety and listeners’ ratings of perceived nervousness were further correlated with similar acoustic parameters. The results complement earlier studies on vocal affect expression which have been conducted on posed, rather than authentic, emotional speech.     

The Conceptual and Relational Structure of Subjective Well-Being, Neuroticism, and Extraversion: Once Again, Neuroticism Is the Important Predictor of Happiness

The purpose of this study wastwofold: (1) to analyze and explore theconceptual structure of subjective well-being(SWB), neuroticism (N) and extraversion (E);and (2) to compare the effect sizes of N and Eas predictors of SWB. The sample comprised 461participants representative of the adultpopulation in northern Norway. Analyses wereconducted by means of Structural EquationModeling (SEM), and the results on (1)supported the notion of an overall subjectivewell-being construct sustained by the threenested dimensions of life satisfaction,positive affect, and negative affect. A simplefactor structure for N and E was notsupported, and considerable modification wasneeded to provide even a mediocregoodness-of-fit for the trait model. On (2),N explained eight times as much of the SWBvariance as did E. Moreover, throughcomparison of several models it was revealedthat if E is the sole predictor of SWB, theinfluence of E on SWB is overestimated by afactor of seven. Since N and E are stronglyand negatively correlated (r = –0.50), themodel comparison demonstrates the importanceof including both E and N as independentvariables in regression models of SWB.