Reorganizations of Gendered Labor During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review and Suggestions for Further Research

Across a range of countries, analysts have found that adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic often exacerbated previously existing labor inequalities between men and women in formal employment markets and households. This has been especially true for mothers with children in their households. Drawing on decades of sociological and feminist scholarship on labor, we suggest the following three strategies to strengthen ongoing research concerning pandemic-induced reorganizations of gendered labor. First, ongoing research should expand considerations of gendered labor to account for more types of work and workers. Second, initial findings should be extended through the continued utilization of diverse methodologies to better account for the ambivalent experiences and meanings associated with emergent reorganizations of gendered work during the pandemic. Finally, ongoing research should pursue intersectional analyses of gendered labor that are sensitive to the complex dynamics of place and time. By expanding and strengthening considerations of gendered labor in these manners, ongoing analyses could generate more comprehensive, precise findings that better guide policy interventions meant to address the gendered inequities being sharpened by the pandemic. Foundational theoretical understandings of gendered labor and its associated inequalities could also be extended.     

Bipartite communities via spectral partitioning

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization - In this paper we are interested in finding communities with bipartite structure. A bipartite community is a pair of disjoint vertex sets S, $$S'$$ such...     

A Bayesian method for safety signal detection in ongoing blinded randomised controlled trials

Sponsors have a responsibility to minimise risk to participants in clinical studies through safety monitoring. The FDA Final Rule for IND Safety Reporting requires routine aggregate safety evaluation, including in ongoing blinded studies. We are interested in estimating the probability that the true adverse event rate in the experimental arm exceeds that in the control arm. We developed a Bayesian approach that specifies an informative meta-analytic predictive prior on the event probability in the control arm and an uninformative prior on that in the experimental arm. We combined these priors with a mixture likelihood that considers each patient in the ongoing blinded study may belong to the experimental or control arm. This allowed us to estimate the quantity of interest without unblinding. We evaluated our method by simulation, pairing scenarios that differed only in whether a safety signal was present or missing, and quantifying the ability of our model to discriminate using signal detection theory. Our approach shows benefit. It detects safety signals more reliably with greater sample sizes and for common rather than rare events. Performance does not deteriorate markedly when historical studies exhibit heterogeneous hazards or non-constant hazards. Our method will allow us to monitor safety signals in ongoing blinded studies with the goal of earlier identification and risk mitigation. Our method could be adapted to use informative priors on both arms or predictive covariates where pertinent data exist. We stress that ongoing safety monitoring should involve a multi-disciplinary team where statistical methods are paired with medical judgement.     

Bear in a Window: Australian children's perspectives on lockdown and experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper examines the reflections of a cohort of Australian children who lived through the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic and experienced being in ‘lockdown’; a state of largely being confined to the home for long periods daily. We report how children reflect on their experiences and illustrate how reflections draw on similar topics focused on localised child concerns regarding health, education, family, digital engagement, mealtimes and food. Further, we argue for the importance of including children's own voices of lived experience in reports regarding life during the pandemic since these perspectives may differ from those reported by adults on children's behalf.     

AIDE: Adaptive intrapatient dose escalation designs to accelerate Phase I clinical trials

Designing Phase I clinical trials is challenging when accrual is slow or sample size is limited. The corresponding key question is: how to efficiently and reliably identify the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) using a sample size as small as possible? We propose model-assisted and model-based designs with adaptive intrapatient dose escalation (AIDE) to address this challenge. AIDE is adaptive in that the decision of conducting intrapatient dose escalation depends on both the patient's individual safety data, as well as other enrolled patient's safety data. When both data indicate reasonable safety, a patient may perform intrapatient dose escalation, generating toxicity data at more than one dose. This strategy not only provides patients the opportunity to receive higher potentially more effective doses, but also enables efficient statistical learning of the dose-toxicity profile of the treatment, which dramatically reduces the required sample size. Simulation studies show that the proposed designs are safe, robust, and efficient to identify the MTD with a sample size that is substantially smaller than conventional interpatient dose escalation designs. Practical considerations are provided and R code for implementing AIDE is available upon request.     

‘It's rewarding because I get the love’: Grandparents raising grandchildren with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder

The aim of this study was to explore the lived experiences of grandparents raising their grandchildren with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Specifically, we sought to identify how caregivers make meaning of their experience, what challenges are faced by grandparents while raising a second generation and what positive experiences are encountered. Ten grandparents raising a child with FASD in Ontario, Canada, participated in semi-structured interviews. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the interviews to determine reoccurring themes. Three main themes were identified: (i) challenges when raising a grandchild with FASD, including kinship adoption struggles and intergenerational issues; (ii) worries about the future, including financial planning and health concerns; and (iii) rewards, such as shifts in priorities and the opportunity to raise a second generation. Grandparents raising their grandchildren with FASD face challenges and thus require specific supports so that they may adequately provide a safe and nurturing home environment for children with often challenging learning and social needs.     

There Goes the Neighborhood: How Racial Threat Shapes the Formation of Integrated and Segregated Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods in the United States are highly segregated by race. Black–white segregation is particularly acute. Although racial segregation has been declining in recent years, it remains extremely high—especially in the largest metropolitan areas. The historical pattern has been that as African Americans move into a neighborhood, whites move out and thus the neighborhood (gradually or rapidly) transitions from predominantly white to predominantly black. A seemingly contradictory pattern has recently been observed: integrated neighborhoods are becoming more common. Why do some neighborhoods transition from white to black and others become integrated? We use racial competition theory to answer this question. We examine the characteristics of stable, integrated neighborhoods and contrast them with segregated predominantly white, predominantly black, and rapidly transitioning neighborhoods in six large metropolitan areas. We find that the location of black neighborhoods is a key factor in whether an integrated neighborhood remains integrated. Specifically, we find integrated neighborhoods are spatially distant from majority black neighborhoods while transitioning neighborhoods are adjacent to them. Our findings support the “sense of threat” hypothesis of racial competition theory.     

ORGANIZATIONAL CHOICE AND SOME CORRELATES OF INDIVIDUALS' EXPECTANCIES1

This study uses expectancy theory to predict the sorority choices of 121 undergraduate students. Results show that the complete, multiplicative expectancy model is only a slightly better predictor of choice behavior than other versions of the model. Several personal and situational correlates of individuals' expectancies of entering sororities also are examined. Results show significant relationships between expectancy and subjects' self-esteem, perception of value similarity with sorority members, and number of perceived friendships with sorority members.