The Determinants of Lottery Sales in Portugal

In sum, this paper examines the core determinants of lottery sales in Portugal. With panel data analysis covering 18 Portuguese districts and 5 years, this study explains the variations in a district’s per-capita lottery sales in terms of key theoretical hypotheses such as per capita district income, age, education index, gender and religion. This paper concludes that the richer Portuguese districts spend more than the poorer districts and there is an inverted-U relationship between lottery sales and per capita income. The paper also concludes that married Catholic citizens spend more on lottery products than others and that the level of education returns a negative effect on lottery spending.     

Portuguese Scientists’ Migration: a study on the 2008 crisis aftermath

In the economic and social aftermath of the 2008 crisis there has been an important and growing new wave of highly qualified Portuguese emigration comprising scientists. No or very few public policies have been designed to reverse this phenomenon, risking the consequences of brain drain. International literature argues that professional reasons are central to scientists’ decision to migrate, even after the 2008 crisis. Spending some time in a foreign country to study, research, or teach, is perceived as a common step in an individual academic trajectory and an advantage for a successful professional career in academia. It is also encouraged by European Union policies. Twelve individual portraits of Portuguese scientists living in central Europe reveal how important other factors are to the migration decision‐making process. These factors include the economic crisis, student mobility programmes, and the current Portuguese scientific system revision.     

Accessibility of European museums to visitors with visual impairments

People who have visual impairments exceed 250 million persons worldwide and represent an important cohort of museum visitors. However, they experience many constraints to participation in daily life. Few studies analyse the accessibility of museums to visitors with visual impairments, and many are confined to a single museum and to a small set of strategies for improving accessibility. This article aims to identify a broad set of strategies to increase the accessibility of museums to visitors with visual impairments and analyse the accessibility of museums in four European cities. Conclusions and implications for policy-makers and museum managers, designed to promote the creation of inclusive museums, are presented.     

Life values,family support and psychosocial adaptation among older people in Taiwan: an institutional and community comparison

The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychosocial adaptation among elderly persons in institutional and community settings, and to explore factors influencing their adaptation. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with a convenience sample of 165 residents of four institutions (two assisted-living facilities and two nursing homes) and 209 community-dwelling elders served by a primary care centre, all located in middle Taiwan. A structured interview questionnaire was used to collect data. Results: community-dwelling elderly had significantly higher adaptation scores than those in institutional settings. Factors related to adaptation differed between institutional and community settings, with more variables influencing adaptation in the community than in the institution. Physical functional status was the major influence on adaptation of the elderly in institutions. Dietary support from family was negatively associated with adaptation in this group. Influencing factors for community-dwelling elders were more complicated, including perceived family emotional and economic support, personal life values and physical functional status. Implications: greater support from government, including economic resources and assistance in community care are needed to achieve the policy goal of ‘aging in place’. Further investigation of the influence of family interaction on elders' adaptation is needed.     

The Stability of Social Groups in Childhood and Adolescence: The Role of the Classroom Social Environment.

This study provides a developmental analysis of childhood and adolescent social relationships within the school context. The social groups of 220 fourth graders and 475 seventh graders were tracked over a one year interval. The initial results indicated that approximately 30% of the social groups were identified as stable in that they maintained at least 50% of their membership over the one year interval. However, the stability in group affiliations was a function of the stability of the composition of the classroom. When schools did not promote classrooms as a unit, only 6.8% of social groups were stable, as compared to 55% of groups being stable when the school did promote classrooms as a unit. This school effect in group stability was demonstrated by a high correlation (rs = .97) between classroom stability and group stability. Even in unstable classrooms, individuals were more likely to maintain affiliations when group members were assigned to the same classroom. This work suggests that stable environments promote stable relationships, which in turn, may promote greater continuity in the organization of behavioral patterns.     

Creating Organisational Strength from Operationalising Restrictions: Welfare Non-profit Organisations in the Russian Federation

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - The work of non-profit organisations (NPOs) in non-democratic country contexts tends to be judged on their contribution to...     

A Flexible Evaluative Framework for Order Picking Systems

This paper develops a novel framework to evaluate the integral performance of order picking systems with different combinations of storage and order picking policies. The warehousing literature on order picking mostly considers minimizing either elapsed time or distance as the sole objective, whereas warehouse managers in a supply chain have to look beyond single‐dimensional performance and consider trade‐offs among different criteria. Thus managers still need a unified and efficient framework to select a portfolio of appropriate order picking policies from a multi‐criteria and contextual perspective. Our framework—combining data envelopment analysis, ranking and selection, and multiple comparisons—provides an efficient methodology to simultaneously analyze several interrelated problems in order picking systems with multiple performance attributes, such as service levels and operational costs. We demonstrate our approach through comprehensive evaluations of order picking policies in three low‐level, picker‐to‐parts rectangular warehouses facing demand variations.     

Fear of people with mental illnesses: the role of personal and impersonal contact and exposure to threat or harm

Vignette and laboratory experiments suggest that negative reactions to people with mental illness are a direct consequence of their symptomatic behavior, but because of their poor external validity, these studies cannot tell us whether widespread negative public reactions to people with mental illness actually result from observation of symptomatic behavior. Focusing on perceived danger, we use a large national survey to test the "behavior hypothesis" in the general population. We reason that, if this hypothesis is correct, contact with people with mental illnesses should be associated with more perceived danger, and exposure to threat or harm should mediate this association. On the contrary, respondents with more personal and impersonal contact perceive people with mental illness to be less dangerous. Exposure to threat is more common among people with more contact, but this exposure explains very little of the variance in perceived danger. These findings do not support the conclusion that public fear of people with mental illness is due to the observation of violent behavior.