Frontline managers' perceptions and justifications of behavioural conditionality

The debate on behavioural conditionality is characterised by abundant controversies. Frontline managers have a particularly important role in implementing these policies because their interpretation of the welfare policies regulates the frameworks of street-level bureaucrat's discretionary powers. A nationwide survey among frontline managers in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration revealed that 86% of the managers expressed strong normative support towards welfare conditionality. With this as a backdrop, this paper develops a better understanding of managers' perceptions and justifications of the Norwegian type of behavioural conditionality. Analysis of focus group interview data showed that the managers adopted a broad definition of conditionality, meaning promotion of an overall (re)integration of the client into the society as opposed to the narrow definition focusing solely on labour market integration. Furthermore, the implementation of welfare conditionality primarily was perceived as mild and client sensitive. The managers mainly justified welfare conditionality in terms of care and paternalistic defences, arguing that requirement of work and activities are in the client's best interest, understood in terms of social democratic values.     

Loneliness Literacy Scale: Development and Evaluation of an Early Indicator for Loneliness Prevention

To develop and evaluate the Loneliness Literacy Scale for the assessment of short-term outcomes of a loneliness prevention programme among Dutch elderly persons. Scale development was based on evidence from literature and experiences from local stakeholders and representatives of the target group. The scale was pre-tested among 303 elderly persons aged 65 years and over. Principal component analysis and internal consistency analysis were used to affirm the scale structure, reduce the number of items and assess the reliability of the constructs. Linear regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the association between the literacy constructs and loneliness. The four constructs “motivation”, “self-efficacy”, “perceived social support” and “subjective norm” derived from principal component analysis captured 56 % of the original variance. Cronbach’s coefficient α was above 0.7 for each construct. The constructs “self-efficacy” and “perceived social support” were positively and “subjective norm” was negatively associated with loneliness. To our knowledge this is the first study developing a short-term indicator for loneliness prevention. The indicator contributes to the need of evaluating public health interventions more close to the intervention activities.     

Make Schools,Not War? Donors' Rewriting of the Social Contract in the DRC

The school being one of the most important ‘faces’ of the state at the local level in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, investment in education can play an important role in reconstructing the social contract between the population and the state after violent conflict. However, this is particularly difficult since the state has largely retreated from the education sector since the 1980s, and education is now organised through public‐private partnerships with religious networks. Moreover, schools have been turned into tax units, in response to the retreat of the state and the declining wages of school administrators. This has had a clear effect on donor interventions, which, instead of changing the current system, have become part of existing configurations and led to an expansion of the current system.     

Change and stability in commensality patterns: a comparative analysis of Belgian time-use data from 1966, 1999 and 2004

The decline of the family meal is a popular concern in contemporary Western society. This article assesses how commensality patterns have evolved in Belgium over the last four decades and which factors have an impact on commensality. The study uses Belgian time-budget data from 1966 and 1999 to obtain an insight into the evolution of commensality patterns. Flemish time-use data from 2004 are used to determine the factors that affect commensality patterns. It is concluded that there has been a significant decrease in family commensality between 1966 and 1999, while eating has become more individualized during the same period. This holds for all days of the week and for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The data also revealed that a number of factors that are often assumed to entail the individualization of eating practices, such as the increased availability of products for self-catering, have little impact on commensality patterns in practice. The factor with the strongest impact on commensality patterns is living arrangements. People who live alone generally do not have anyone with whom to share their meals. Married and cohabiting couples, on the other hand, tend to eat together on a regular basis, while parents still share the majority of meal-times with their co-resident children.     

Romantic Relationship Commitment and Its Linkages with Commitment to Parents and Friends during Adolescence

This five‐wave longitudinal study examines linkages between adolescents' perceptions of romantic relationship commitment and the development of adolescents' perceptions of commitment to parents and friends. A total of 218 early‐to‐middle adolescents (39.0 percent boys) and 185 middle‐to‐late adolescents (30.8 percent boys) participated. Multivariate growth curves showed that higher base levels of commitment and a stronger positive development of commitment to parents and friends were associated with higher levels of later commitment to romantic partners. The effects were equally strong in early‐to‐middle adolescence and middle‐to‐late adolescence. Also, commitment to parents and commitment to friends were associated equally strong to romantic relationship commitment. No gender differences were found regarding these linkages. Overall, this study shows the importance of parents and friends for boys and girls regarding committed romantic relationships. The results support the idea of one stable and general working model used in different types of relationships.     

Technology-Based Innovation for Independent Living: Policy and Innovation in the United Kingdom,Scandinavia, and the United States

Interest in utilizing technology to help older adults remain living at home is growing; however, uptake remains low. We present a conceptual framework for understanding independent living technology innovation within health and social services. Public policy and innovation in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia are profiled as case studies. In all profiled countries, independent living technology is more rapidly advancing than associated state policy, regulation, and payment systems. The findings from this comparative analysis reveal areas for further exploration, including policy subsystem environments in which technologies and services are regulated, as well as trends and desires of older adults and their caregivers within particular cultural contexts.     

Interpreting Child Sexual Abuse: Empathy and Offense-Supportive Cognitions among Child Sex Offenders

Researchers have suggested that child sex offenders hold distorted views on social interactions with children. Misinterpreting children’s behavior and intentions could lead to sexually abusive behavior toward children. It is further suggested that the interpretation process is influenced by offenders’ offense-supportive cognitions and levels of empathy. To examine the relationships between these three concepts, 47 contact offenders completed self-reports on offense-supportive cognitions and empathy. Vignettes were developed to assess the extent to which offenders attributed responsibility, benefit, and complicity to children in hypothetical child molestation incidents. This study showed that cognitions that justify sexual offending against children seem to diminish the threshold for sexual assault by assigning more cooperation and willingness of the victim in a child molestation incident.     

The Additive Genetic Gamma Frailty Model

In this paper the additive genetic gamma frailty model is defined. Individual frailties are correlated as a result of an additive genetic model. An algorithm to construct additive genetic gamma frailties for any pedigree is given so that the variance–covariance structure among individual frailties equals the numerator relationship matrix times a variance. The EM algorithm can be used to estimate the parameters in the model. Calculations are similar using the EM algorithm in the shared frailty model, however the E step is not correspondingly simple. This is illustrated re-analysing data, analysed by the shared frailty model in Nielsen et al . (1992), from the Danish adoptive register. Goodness of fit of the additive genetic gamma frailty model can be tested after analysing data with the correlated frailty model. Doing so, a "defect" in the often used and otherwise well behaving likelihood was found