A mediational model of workplace flexibility,work–family conflict,and perceived stress among caregivers of older adults

As an increasing number of employees become caregivers, the role of workplace resources in supporting caregivers has attracted the attention of researchers, employers, and policy-makers. Workplace flexibility is one type of resource that has attracted particular interest, with research exploring whether flexibility (that is, giving employees some control over when and/or where work gets done) is related to important outcomes for both employees and employers. This investigation develops and tests a mediational model explicating the process through which workplace flexibility – operationalized in three distinct ways – impacts caregiver stress among US employees. Using a sample of 211 caregivers from the National Study of the Changing Workforce (2008), results show that work-to-family conflict mediates the relationship between perceived workplace flexibility and caregiver stress as well as the relationship between access to flexible work options and caregivers stress. However, the mediational model is not supported when flexibility is operationalized as respondents’ formal use of flexible work options. Implications for employers and future research are discussed.     

Estimating educational production functions: The problem of multicollinearity

This article attempts to address the problem of multicollinearity in the estimation of educational production functions. Past studies consistently indicate the seeming lack of importance of school input variables such as teacher salary, class size, and expenditure per student in influencing educational outcomes. Our ordinary least squares results were consistent with these past studies, but collinearity diagnostics revealed the presence of at least four potentially serious sources of collinearity within the data, possibly degrading the coefficients on the school input variables. Ridge regression and principal components regression techniques were employed in an effort to “solve” the collinearity problem. The coefficients of the school input variables continue to have the hypothesized signs, but with smaller standard errors. The results indicate that researchers should be cautioned against reaching the conclusion that school input variables don't matter on the basis of ordinary least squares estimates of these parameters.     

绿色妈妈:爱护地球,从家做起

美国加利福尼亚州有这样一群"绿色妈妈",她们聚集在空气清新的客厅里,一边喝着红酒,一边说笑.她们的谈话很快就热烈起来--她们讨论的不是文学名著,也非名人八卦,而是各种可在家里落实的环保措施,比如抗菌洗手液的缺点、如何改造洗衣房以及在非能源使用高峰时段(晚7点后)只用冷水和生物降解洗涤剂洗衣服.     

‘Racial’ referents: images of European/Aboriginal relations in Australian feature films, 1955–1984

The article discusses fifteen feature films which re-present aspects of European/Aboriginal relations. Through an analysis of the narrative structures of the films, three basic themes are identified and outlined, each of which could be implicated in the processes through which racist ideology inheres in the encoding/decoding nexus. The concept of ‘racial’ register is utilised to signify the limits to these forms of representations. It is argued that at both the levels of the narrative theme (intertextual) and the syntagmatic (intratextual), the ‘racial’ register works to reconstruct ‘race’ as an overdetermined ideological notion which cements ideas of essential difference and fixes them to ideas of place. The article concludes with an examination of three films which lie partially outside the ‘racial’ register.     

The wisdom of family therapists

This qualitative research study explored the ways in which family therapists (MSWs) perceive the family treatment process. A purposive sample of eight practicing clinical social workers were selected for face to face interviews which explored the workers' perceptions of the family treatment process. Findings revealed that although certain consistent themes appear to exist among family therapists, family therapy practice may well be much more idiosyncratic than commonly believed.     

Evaluating new product decision processes

The development of a new product is often a sequential-decision process with many available stages at which the product may take any one of a number of alternate courses of action. This paper identifies an efficient algorithm for solving this sequential-decision process. A computer program, involving the algorithm, has been written to solve problems containing up to one thousand stages. Input into the program includes the subjective probabilities of success for each decision branch, the cost associated with each decision stage and level, the rate for discounting all monetary values to the present plus an indicator for each decision stage and level of the desired decision criterion. The algorithm utilizes the dynamic-programming solution approach. The output of the algorithm contains the minimum, or maximum, expected discounted decision values for each stage and level of the network. The algorithm and computer program have been primarily utilized in the pharmaceutical industry. An illustrative, exemplary use of the algorithm in this industry is presented.     

Family Structure and Child Well‐Being: The Significance of Parental Cohabitation

Data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (N = 35,938) were used to examine the relationship between family structure and child well‐being. I extended prior research by including children in two‐biological‐parent cohabiting families, as well as cohabiting stepfamilies, in an investigation of the roles of economic and parental resources on behavioral and emotional problems and school engagement. Children living in two‐biological‐parent cohabiting families experience worse outcomes, on average, than those residing with two biological married parents, although among children ages 6–11, economic and parental resources attenuate these differences. Among adolescents ages 12–17, parental cohabitation is negatively associated with well‐being, regardless of the levels of these resources. Child well‐being does not significantly differ among those in cohabiting versus married stepfamilies, two‐biological‐parent cohabiting families versus cohabiting stepfamilies, or either type of cohabiting family versus single‐mother families.