Quantitative sources for studying urban industrial slavery in the antebellum US South

The composition of antebellum Southern urban industrial labour forces is an area requiring careful quantitative analysis. Southern elites worried about slaves in urban industry (especially hired slaves) because they experienced wage‐labour freedoms and so had greater opportunites to resist slavery. The distribution of late antebellum Richmond tobacco factory workers between hired slaves and owned slaves is studied by examining property tax records and census of manufacturing records. Tax records are shown to understate by 11–12 per cent the number of slaves used in factories. This error is due to tax evasion, assessment inefficiency, and seasonal variations between census and tax record collection dates. Furthermore, tax records cannot be used to distinguish between owned and hired slaves in factories, as previous researchers allege. Only the 1860 census of manufacturers explicitly divides the slave force between hired and owned slaves. This record shows that 58 per cent of Richmond tobacco workers were hired slaves, lending credence to the fears of southern elites that urban industry would erode the master‐slave relation they preferred.     

Professional Distance and Social Work: Stretching the Elastic?

Abstract

Professional distance and the parallel concept of models of practice reliant on professional objectivity have been major platforms in professional education. In social work, these ideas are often seen as contentious, unreasonable and, in some cases, unrealistic. Radical, feminist and rural social work approaches, for example, suggest that the expert role is not only inappropriate, but can be counter-productive and disrespectful of the people with whom we work. Postmodern approaches call for a deconstruction of professionalism in favour of context-specific partnerships between worker and client. How can workers ensure good, professional practice within a more flexible approach to professional distance and expertise? What are the issues and how may they be resolved? Are the boundaries of the professional relationship elastic and, if so, what are the consequences for practice and the individual worker? The present article explores the notion of flexible, elastic boundaries using literature and research from radical, postmodern, feminist and rural social work approaches.     

Analysis of human capital development in Puerto Rico: summary and conclusions

This study explored whether perceptions of organizational business ethics differ by hierarchical levels. The study sample included more than 40,000 executives, mid-level managers and non-managerial employees from business organizations in six countries: Brazil, China, Germany, India, the UK and the US. We found that executives provided the most positive assessment of ethical business culture within their respective organizations. Employees’ assessments were less positive, and mid-level managers’ assessments fell in the middle. Organizational size and respondents’ age were not related to differences in responses. Statistically significant differences among hierarchical levels were found in Brazil, the US, Germany, the UK and China. Differences were not significant in India. Executives with longer tenure at the same organization tended to provide higher ratings of organizations’ ethical cultures, while managers’ and employees’ ratings tended to decrease with time.     

On order statistics from thelog-logistic distribution and their properties

The aim of this paper is to derive the exact forms of the p.d.f. and the moments of the rth order statistics in a sample of size n from the Log-logistic (L_l ) distribution. Measures of skewness and kurtosis are tabulated. The recurrence relations between the moments of all order statistics and an expression of the covariance between any two order statistics, x_i and x_jand the distribution of the ratio of X_i to x_j are derived.     

Pathways to parenting stress reduction among parents in South Africa

Parenting stress has a range of effects on parents and their children. Despite existing evidence on the effectiveness of family-based interventions on reducing parenting stress, little is known about the mechanism of change that contributes to its reduction. This study investigates the mechanism of change in a parenting programme (Parenting for Lifelong Health [PLH]) on reducing parenting stress among parents of adolescents in South Africa. A pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted among a total sample of 552 parents and primary caregivers (aged, M = 49.37; SD = 14.69) who were recruited from 40 communities in South Africa's Eastern Cape Province. A mediation analysis was performed to investigate direct and indirect effects using PROCESS macrostatistical software. The findings of the study indicate that parenting stress reduction operates via three significant mediators: improved parent–child relationship (β = 0.058, P < 0.000), reduced parental depression (β = −0.103, P < 0.000) and reduced family financial strain (β = −0.049, P < 0.000). The findings of the study highlight the importance of considering child, parental and contextual factors in the design and development of interventions aimed at reducing parenting stress in families in low- and middle-income settings.     

连云港市海洋经济可持续发展战略研究

根据江苏省委、省政府的"海上苏东"发展战略,对连云港市的海洋经济可持续发展问题进行了系统的研究。结合连云港市特定的地理位置和区位优势,明确指出实施可持续发展战略是连云港市发展海洋经济的必然选择,在此基础上详细地对连云港现有海洋经济发展的状况和拥有的海洋资源、海洋产业基础、海洋环境及海洋科技条件,以及制约其海洋经济可持续发展的因素进行了分析,结合分析提出了强化政府宏观调控、保护海洋环境、合理开发海洋资源、大力实施"科技兴海"等一系列实施可持续发展战略的措施。     

CHOICE-CONSTRAINED CONJOINT ANALYSIS

Choice-constrained conjoint analysis (CCCA) is a new method for metric conjoint analysis studies. It computes part-worth utility functions that account for “revealed preference”—those products a respondent actually selects in an independent choice situation. CCCA uses an iterative penalty function estimation procedure that successively modifies initial regressionderived part worths so that respondent choices (either actual or intended) of real brands are predicted as accurately as possible. The paper first describes the motivation and rationale for CCCA and presents the mathematics of the algorithm. As an illustration, it applies the CCCA model and penalty function estimation procedure to a limited set of synthetic data. A second application of the technique is presented that uses data obtained by a major telecommunications firm that used conjoint analysis to examine the importance of several features of residential communication devices. The paper also discusses potential extensions of the CCCA model and the kinds of marketing applications for which it might be useful.     

REPLY TO: “ON THE SENSITIVITY OF BRAND-CHOICE SIMULATIONS TO ATTRIBUTE IMPORTANCE WEIGHTS”

Our reply to Curry, Louviere, and Augustine's critique of our earlier paper focuses on differences in motivation between our research and theirs. Our interest in the problem relates to the possible incorporation of self-explicated evaluations in conjoint data collection methods; subsequent to the appearance of our original paper, we have developed hybrid models that combine elements of self-explicated (compositional) and conjoint (decompositional) data collection procedures. As far as we can surmise from their critique, Curry, Louviere, and Augustine are concerned with much broader strategic issues relating share of choices in the consumer population to changes in the shape of attribute weight distributions, shape of the Pareto tradeoff boundary, and so on.