Becoming Self-Employed

This study explored how persons become self-employed. In critical incident interviews (Flanagan, 1954) with 5 self-employed persons, the critical events that assisted or hindered progress toward self-employment were elicited in chronological order. First, the 108 incidents were organized into 22 categories. Next, using the chronological order of categories of events, 2 basic patterns or plots for becoming self-employed were identified. Last, 8 distinctive themes of personal progress in the patterns were described. In general, becoming self-employed involved establishing conditions of action that enhanced a sense of agency, enabling each person to make a decision.     

The Impact of Family Transitions on Child Fostering in Rural Malawi

Despite the frequency of divorce and remarriage across much of sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about what these events mean for the living arrangements of children. We use longitudinal data from rural Malawi to examine the effects of family transitions on the prevalence and incidence of child fostering, or children residing apart from their living parents. We find that between 7 % and 15 % of children aged 3–14 are out-fostered over the two-year intersurvey period. Although divorce appears to be a significant driver of child fostering in the cross-sectional analysis, it is not significantly associated with the incidence of out-fostering. In contrast, maternal remarriage has both a lagged and an immediate effect on the incidence of out-fostering. Furthermore, the likelihood of out-fostering is even higher among children whose mother remarried and had a new child during the intersurvey period. Using longitudinal data collected from living mothers rather than from children’s current foster homes offers new insights into the reasons children are sent to live with others besides their parents.     

Grass Roots Promotion of Community Health and Human Rights for People with Disabilities in Post-communist Central Europe: a profile of the Slovak Republic

Individuals living with a disability or chronic illness in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe face significant challenges to quality of life. The government-supported health care infrastructures in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe remain highly centralised and institutional, which poses particular obstacles to people with disabilities who wish to live independently in their communities. A partial solution to this difficulty has been the development of innovative grass roots organisations that provide community-based support to individuals with disabilities or chronic illness. These disability organisations provide services and advocacy that allow individuals to receive needed support outside of the biomedical institutions, facilitating independent living in the community. They do so, however, in a political and economic environment of immense change, and one with varying degrees of support for non-governmental organisa tions and a Civil Society. The following article profiles this grass roots development in one particularly interesting post-communist Central European country, the Slovak Republic.     

Inventing adulthoods: a biographical approach to understanding youth citizenship

Traditionally adulthood and citizenship have been synonymous. Yet adulthood is changing. In this paper we explore how young people's evolving understandings of adulthood may contribute towards an understanding of citizenship within the broader context of increasingly extended and fragmented transitions. The paper draws on a unique qualitative longitudinal data set in which 100 young people, from contrasting social backgrounds in the United Kingdom, have been followed over a five‐year period using repeat biographical interviews. We present first the themes that emerged from a cross‐cut analysis of the first of three rounds of interviews distinguishing between relational and individualised understandings of adulthood. We then present a model we developed to capture the ways that young people sought out opportunities for competence and recognition in different fields of their lives. Finally a case study that follows a young woman through her three interviews illustrates how these themes can appear in an individual trajectory. We offer the model and case study as a way of exploring a more subjective approach to citizenship in which participation is not deferred to some distant future in which economic independence is achieved, but is understood as constantly constructed in the present.     

The Secrets of Scheherazade: Toward a Functional Analysis of Imaginative Literature

A functional analysis of selected aspects of imaginative literature is presented. Reading imaginative literature is described as a process in which the reader makes indirect contact with the contingencies operating on the behavior of story characters. A functional story grammar is proposed in which the reader''s experience with a story is interpreted in terms of escape contingencies in which the author initially introduces an establishing operation consisting of a source of tension, which is resolved in some way by the outcome of the story. Although escape contingencies represent the functional basis for the structure of stories, they are to be understood in a context of many other reinforcers for reading fiction. Other contingencies that maintain reading are discussed. Functional analyses of imaginative literature have much to offer, both in improving literary education and in understanding the behavioral processes that occur on the part of the reader.     

Franklin D. Roosevelt's Shangri-La: foreshadowing the Independent Living Movement in Warm Springs, Georgia, 1926-1945

American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is well known to have disguised and minimized his disability in his role as a political leader. Less well known is the remarkable nature of the colony he established for people with disabilities from polio in Warm Springs, Georgia in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. The colony at Warm Springs represents a unique historical community in which disability was not stigmatized; where people with disabilities controlled their own resources and their own lives; and where the medical model of disability was repudiated. As such, the Warm Springs community represents a remarkable period and place in disability history that warrants continued study. New evidence drawn from the archives of the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, the FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York and the personal scrapbooks of former residents of the Warm Springs colony provides further support for the theory that FDR's Warm Springs colony represented an early precursor to the philosophies and values promoted by the Independent Living Movement that emerged 50 years later. The Warm Springs colony offered an unprecedented approach to rehabilitation and independent living for people with disabilities from polio in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, and because of this provides an invaluable lesson from history that deserves ongoing attention.     

Stochastic blockmodels: First steps

A stochastic model is proposed for social networks in which the actors in a network are partitioned into subgroups called blocks. The model provides a stochastic generalization of the blockmodel. Estimation techniques are developed for the special case of a single relation social network, with blocks specified a priori. An extension of the model allows for tendencies toward reciprocation of ties beyond those explained by the partition. The extended model provides a one degree-of-freedom test of the model. A numerical example from the social network literature is used to illustrate the methods.     

Record values and the geometric distribution

Suppose {X_n, n≥1} is a sequence of independent and identically distributed discrete random variables having the common distribution function F(x). The exact distribution of the n-th record value is given under the assumption that F(x) has the geometric distribution. Various properties of the record values and some new characterizations of the geometric distribution are presented.     

Achieving the vision of deinstitutionalization: A role for foster care?

This paper addresses the potential of specialized foster care for deinstitutionalizing young people. We review studies of factors related to recruitment and placement stability. In discussing these respective factors we argue for a more empirically oriented approach to program planning and development. We suggest a strong focus upon systematic study of selection, payment, professional status, training, and relief levels in order to document optimal placement stability in expanding the use of specialized foster care.