INQUIRY

The following interview with Frederica P. Perera, DrPH, was conducted in December 2006. Dr. Perera is professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and serves as director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH). A pioneer in the field of molecular epidemiology, she is internationally recognized for her research on environmental causes of cancer, developmental disorders, and asthma. The CCCEH focuses on the effects of ambient air pollution, environmental tobacco smoke, and pesticides on health outcomes in children and adults, and is currently conducting two major studies in New York City, a third study in the urban area of Krakow, Poland, and a fourth research project in Chongqing, China.     

Work Incentives at the Extensive and Intensive Margin in Europe: The Role of Taxes,Benefits and Population Characteristics

Social Indicators Research - Tax and benefit systems play an important role in determining work incentives at both the extensive and the intensive margin of labour supply. The aim of this paper is...     

Additive manufacturing technology adoption: an empirical analysis of general and supply chain-related determinants

Despite experiencing immense growth in the past decade, additive manufacturing (AM) technologies—colloquially known as 3D-printing—are still rarely used in industrial fabrication. Being at the interface between technology, innovation, behavioral science and operations management research, this paper identifies multifaceted factors that determine the decision to adopt AM technologies for the production of industrial parts. A review of the relevant literature revealed eight potential factors. These can be classified into four interdisciplinary categories: technology-related factors, firm-related-factors, market structure-related factors, and supply chain-related factors. Special focus is placed on the impact of supply chain-related issues, because there are indicatives that these aspects have an influence on the decision to adopt AM technologies since AM may offer distinct opportunities for both, the supply- and demand-side of a firm’s operations. No work in the field of manufacturing technology adoption has examined the role of such inter-organizational factors before. The results of an empirical study among 195 firms indicate that demand-side benefits and compatibility are the main determinants of AM technology adoption. This suggests that not only intra- but also inter-organizational factors should be considered when investigating the adoption of technological innovations. Furthermore, it is carved out that the adoption of AM technologies has an interdisciplinary nature.     

Early Word Recognition in Sentence Context: French and English 24‐Month‐Olds' Sensitivity to Sentence‐Medial Mispronunciations and Assimilations

Recent work has shown that young children can use fine phonetic detail during the recognition of isolated and sentence‐final words from early in lexical development. The present study investigates 24‐month‐olds' word recognition in sentence‐medial position in two experiments using an Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm. In Experiment 1, French toddlers detect word‐final voicing mispronunciations (e.g., bu z [by z ] for bu s [by s ] “bus”), and they compensate for native voicing assimilations (e.g., bu z d evant toi [bu zd ?vɑ?twa] “bus in front of you”) in the middle of sentences. Similarly, English toddlers detect word‐final voicing mispronunciations (e.g., shee b for shee p ) in Experiment 2, but they do not compensate for illicit voicing assimilations (e.g., shee b th ere). Thus, French and English 24‐month‐olds can take into account fine phonetic detail even if words are presented in the middle of sentences, and French toddlers show language‐specific compensation abilities for pronunciation variation caused by native voicing assimilation.     

Sexually transmitted disease services at US colleges and universities

The authors' objectives in this study were to describe the proportion of schools providing and the percentage of students with access to HIV and sexually transmitted disease (STD) education, treatment, and prevention services at 2-year and 4-year US colleges and universities. The authors mailed self-administered questionnaires to a stratified random sample (n = 910) of the 2,755 US schools with an enrollment of more than 500 students; 736 (81%) returned the survey. Four hundred seventy-four schools (60%) had a health center, representing 73% of students. Schools with a health center or housing for students were more likely to provide STD education; 52% of the schools made condoms available to students. Sixty percent of schools with health centers could test for both Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae, but only 67% of these schools screened women for these infections. Although most schools provided some prevention education, access to prevention, testing, and education should be increased at schools where these services are possible but not available.     

Managerialism and Beyond: Discourses of Civil Society Organization and Their Governance Implications

Different disciplinary, theoretical, and empirical lenses have contributed to a kaleidoscopic picture of the governance of civil society organizations (CSOs). Most of the time, CSO governance is contrasted with corporate governance in business organizations; only rarely is the broad variety of CSOs taken into account. To widen this perspective, we develop an empirically grounded typology of five discourses of organization in CSOs: managerialist, domestic, professionalist, grassroots, and civic discourse. We argue that each of these discourses gives specific answers to the three core questions of governance: To whom is the CSO accountable, i.e., who are the key actors who need to be protected by governance mechanisms? For what kind of performance is the CSO accountable? And which structures and processes are appropriate to ensure accountability? The way in which different discourses answer these questions provides us with a deeper understanding of the reasons behind the manifold notions of governance in CSOs.     

Systemic differences in views on risk: A comparative case vignette study of risk assessment in England,Norway and the United States (California)

This article examines how child welfare workers from three countries assess risk to a child in the context of different risk assessment tools, child welfare systems and welfare regimes. Previous research suggests that there are distinct differences between child protection-oriented child welfare systems such as England and the U.S., and family service-oriented child welfare systems such as Norway (Gilbert et al., 2011). We use a case vignette method to analyze how 299 child welfare workers from England, Norway and California (U.S.) assess risk. The case vignette describes the case of ‘Beatrice’, a nine year-old girl of Black African descent who was born with an organic heart disease and a cleft palate. We found that respondents from California assessed the risk to be the lowest, followed by respondents from England and Norway. The risk factors that respondents highlighted as important for their assessment also varied significantly between countries, displaying different perceptions of elements in a case constituting risk. Respondents from Norway, who, comparatively, practice within the context of the least regulated assessment platform, identified the most homogenous assessments and types of reasoning, whereas both the assessment of risk levels and identifications of risk factors were more heterogeneous among workers in England and California. We argue that the different risk assessment tools only partly influence what workers identify as risk factors in a case, and that type of welfare states and child welfare systems is also an influence. This study thus supports existing scholarship on the distinctions between child welfare systems. However, we also found significant differences in perceptions of risk factors between England and the United States.     

Pension Reforms in Europe and Life-course Politics

In recent years, somewhat drastic pension reforms have taken place in all European countries. The pension systems developed in the last century are no longer considered to be suited to the changing demographic constellations in European countries, and the financial sustainability of these systems is under threat. Moreover, the changing political and economic set‐up in European countries is also used to justify reforming the different pension systems. Different reasons can be given to explain the various pension reform measures without, however, there being any integrated coherence. We suggest that a politics of social policy, and of pension policy in particular, based on a life‐course perspective, facilitates the understanding of the whole range of pension reform measures. In the past, the elaborated pension systems were attuned to a normative standard biography. A new standard biography, with different phases and more transitions and combinations, enables one to understand the variety of the ongoing pension reform measures. Such a life‐course perspective integrates sequences of learning, working and caring considered necessary for the polity. In other words, it is based on a conception of human potential, and it integrates, to some extent, the previously separate domains of labour market policy, education policy, care policy and pension policy. However, recent theoretical and empirical studies of the life course lead to a critical evaluation of the new standard biography, with the conclusion that the new standard is one‐sided and scientifically unsound, entailing challenges for social policy.     

Shifting the Pension Mix: Consequences for Dutch and Danish Women

All European countries are aiming to reform their pension systems in line with two conceptual ideas: firstly, that systems should combine public, occupational and private pensions; secondly, that entitlements should be individualized. The Dutch and the Danish pension systems already consist of these three different pensions with relatively individualized entitlements and in a way form an ideal type of pension system. However, these systems are far from ideal since they are deeply gender biased. The positive effects of citizenship‐based state pensions conceal the negative ones. In addition, recent developments in the combination of the pension schemes counteract the positive effects. Given the male‐oriented norm when it comes to full pension entitlements, and given the fact that life courses are still gendered, these countries’ systems and developments have negative effects for women.     

European Pension Reforms: Individualization, Privatization and Gender Pension Gaps

European pension reforms individualize and partly privatizepension entitlements. As a consequence, state and individualresponsibilities require redefinition. Moreover, when individualizationis statutorily introduced, equal opportunities need to be guaranteed.However, equal opportunities are a long way from being implemented.The various pension-determining factors (for instance, labor-marketparticipation, wages, care) are still subject to, among otherthings, gender distinctions. This article analyzes the interrelationshipof (reformed) welfare arrangements, changed flows of resources,and female life courses in order to gain a better understandingof the gendered norms of pension entitlements.