Methodological challenges in the implementation and evaluation of social welfare policies

As social reality is quite elusive, even regarding seemingly well-recognized everyday concepts and objects, there are always methodological challenges underlying assessments and evaluations of implementation policies. The present article addresses this area of concern by presenting the results of a rereading of an empirical study of elderly home care services. Our results reveal the emergence of a dissolution of common and professional key concepts and objects in these welfare services to a degree that challenges both the implementation policy and the evaluation of policy. We claim that this has methodological implications for evaluation of implementation policies in general.     

Narratives of ICT and Organizational Change in Public Administration

In the last decade the implementation of computerized technology and advanced information systems in public administration has gathered speed. The purpose of this article is to explore the ways in which these changes might be gendered by analysing different narratives of digitalization and organizational change in public administration. The empirical findings indicate that resistance to information and communication technology is explained away by managers as reflecting women's low computer maturity, while the narratives of the case‐workers themselves reflect their resistance to deskilling and simplified work specifications, as well as their experience of a shift in the work object — from working with human beings to working with electronic information. The findings indicate that the increased use of information technology genders resistance to degradation as a feminized fear of technology and low computer maturity.     

Partner relationship,social support and perinatal distress among pregnant Icelandic women

Background

It is inferred that perinatal distress has adverse effects on the prospective mother and the health of the foetus/infant. More knowledge is needed to identify which symptoms of perinatal distress should be assessed during pregnancy and to shed light on the impact of women’s satisfaction with their partner relationship on perinatal distress.

When labor representatives join supervisory boards: empirical evidence of the relationship between the change to parity codetermination and working capital and operating cash flows

We examine how the change to 50% labor representation on German supervisory boards is related to working capital and operating cash flows, since both are proxies for short-term financial policies. We expect the change to be associated with reduced working capital and increased operating cash flows. Using a difference-in-differences model, we compare a sample of listed and non-listed firms that changed to parity codetermination between 1987 and 2014 with two different groups of control firms that did not change their level of codetermination. In line with our hypotheses, the results suggest that a change to parity codetermination is related to lower working capital and higher operating cash flows compared to our control firms. We conclude that firms begin to engage in more efficient working capital management due to the change to parity codetermination on supervisory boards. We also conclude that the positive short-term effects on the firms’ operating performance imply that labor representatives do not bear just the interests of employees in mind, but also those of other stakeholders.     

Extra-planetary mobilities and the media prospects of virtual space tourism

This paper responds to the emergence, proliferation and increasing relevance of various forms of virtual tourism set in outer space. It approaches virtual space tours as a distinct register of the changing nature of travel within global media cultures in their space age, framing them as a part of the ongoing socio-technical momentum of our emerging ‘extra-planetary mobilities’. We consider the extraterrestrial provisions of virtual tourism, including a host of space apps offering Martian tours and explore the ways in which the domestications of outer space through quotidian media practices affect our tourist disposition, altering collective ways of traveling and seeing, performing and consuming and configuring our mediated and embodied senses of place. We suggest that the prospects of mediated space travel are progressively shaping the relationship between human societies and our planetary exterior, sculpting the ambits of a ‘global abode’ beyond the globe.     

The Value of a Statistical Life in Transport: Findings from a New Contingent Valuation Study in Sweden

This article presents the results of a contingent valuation study from Sweden aimed at estimating the value of a statistical life (VOSL) in road traffic safety. Data on respondents' own subjective risk was collected by use of visual aids presented in a mail questionnaire. The relationship between willingness-to-pay (WTP) and absolute risk reduction was estimated by using a non-linear, least absolute deviation estimation method. This study generated an income-adjusted VOSL of SEK22.3 million (US$2.6 million). Analysis of WTP's sensitivity to probability variation indicates that in future studies, valuing risk reductions in road traffic, the magnitude of absolute risk and relative risk reductions to consider should be in perceptible range. On addition it should also be possible for respondents to compare the magnitudes of different risk reductions.     

Women under protection – in hiding from violent men

In Sweden in 2007, 11,047 people, out of a population of around nine million were living under at-risk conditions requiring protective measures for their safety. Sixty per cent were women, most of them hiding from men who had battered them and were still threatening and stalking them. In this research and intervention study, a group of women in hiding were given different kinds of support and 23 women were interviewed. These women struggle to make a living, work or study, and their finances are extremely strained. Their social networks/interactions are nonexistent. Living under constant threat and insecurity has an adverse impact on the women's health. The community is obliged, for economic and security reasons, to support battered women. There are still severe shortcomings with regard to security. One recommendation is the institution of personal protection officers, i.e. specially trained social service caseworkers able to support the woman once protection measures have been decided.     

Harnessing the Theoretical Foundations of the Exponential and Beta‐Poisson Dose‐Response Models to Quantify Parameter Uncertainty Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo

Dose‐response models are the essential link between exposure assessment and computed risk values in quantitative microbial risk assessment, yet the uncertainty that is inherent to computed risks because the dose‐response model parameters are estimated using limited epidemiological data is rarely quantified. Second‐order risk characterization approaches incorporating uncertainty in dose‐response model parameters can provide more complete information to decisionmakers by separating variability and uncertainty to quantify the uncertainty in computed risks. Therefore, the objective of this work is to develop procedures to sample from posterior distributions describing uncertainty in the parameters of exponential and beta‐Poisson dose‐response models using Bayes's theorem and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (in OpenBUGS). The theoretical origins of the beta‐Poisson dose‐response model are used to identify a decomposed version of the model that enables Bayesian analysis without the need to evaluate Kummer confluent hypergeometric functions. Herein, it is also established that the beta distribution in the beta‐Poisson dose‐response model cannot address variation among individual pathogens, criteria to validate use of the conventional approximation to the beta‐Poisson model are proposed, and simple algorithms to evaluate actual beta‐Poisson probabilities of infection are investigated. The developed MCMC procedures are applied to analysis of a case study data set, and it is demonstrated that an important region of the posterior distribution of the beta‐Poisson dose‐response model parameters is attributable to the absence of low‐dose data. This region includes beta‐Poisson models for which the conventional approximation is especially invalid and in which many beta distributions have an extreme shape with questionable plausibility.     

Productive uses of nostalgia in contemporary Slovak fiction: Veronika Šikulová’s and Maroš Krajňak’s experiments with generational memory

This essay examines fictional uses of generational memory and life writing in Veronika ?ikulová’s Miesta v sieti (Dwellings in the web) and Maro? Krajňak’s Carpathia and argues that the representations of the past in these contemporary Slovak novels provide alternatives to pernicious nationalist forms of nostalgia that have been of particular concern in the country in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the 2016 election, in which the neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia (LSNS) won 8% of the vote and seats in the Slovak Parliament. The essay examines representations of time and pastoral borderland spaces in each novel, arguing that the writers’ treatment of nostalgia challenges existing theories of the phenomenon as a form of maladaptation. The novels ultimately suggest a productive compromise between restorative and reflective forms of nostalgia, which is a central distinction in Svetlana Boym’s influential theory of post-socialist nostalgia. The novels’ ultimate achievement is that they avoid the extremes of sentimentality and irony in their treatment of the past and suggest visions of collective identity that provide a counterpoint to nationalist idealizations of the past.     

Long-Term Implications of Welfare Reform for the Development of Adolescents and Young Adults

We draw upon the 3-wave longitudinal dataset called Welfare Children and Families: A Three-City Study to examine the long-term implications for adolescents and young adults (N = 783) of mothers' welfare receipt and labor force participation from 1999 to 2005. In general, changes in mothers' work and welfare patterns were not associated with deterioration or improvement in youth development (ages 16 to 20 years at Wave 3). The few significant associations suggested that youth whose mothers increased employment (net of welfare participation) were less likely to show increases in serious behavior problems and delinquency compared to youth whose mothers were unemployed or employed part-time during the study period. Welfare roll exits (controlling for employment experiences) were unrelated to adolescent and young adult outcomes. Mothers' employment transitions were linked to improvements in household income and mothers' self esteem in addition to reductions in financial strain and their own illegal activities. However, these associations did not explain the relation between maternal employment and youths' improved behavior. These results do not support the predictions of either the supporters or the opponents of welfare reform, an outcome we discuss.