Changing Policy Environments in Europe and the Resilience of the Third Sector

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In the article, we analyse the impact of changing policy environments on the development of the third sector in Europe....     

Public Concern with Animal Well‐Being: Place,Social Structural Location,and Individual Experience*

Abstract While sociologists and the public at large are increasingly interested in the life conditions of animals, conceptual and empirical development of the topic is limited. This paper seeks to further develop the sociological research on attitudes toward animal well‐being. We build on insights from contemporary stratification theory to explain the nature of animal attitudes and their determinants. We also extend past work by examining a broader range of factors related to attitudes about animal well‐being, focusing on place, other social structural factors, and individuals' unique animal‐related experiences. Data are from a survey of over 4,000 Ohio residents conducted in 2002. We find that childhood experience has the greatest place‐based effect on attitudes. Other findings highlight the importance of social structural factors, suggesting support for the “underdog hypothesis.” Women, people experiencing economic hardship, those with less education, younger and middle aged people, and blacks tend to be more concerned with animal well‐being. Individualized, experiential variables are also important. Our results reflect the complexity of attitudes about animals and point to the need for greater sociological attention to factors left largely unexplored in previous studies, including childhood place‐based factors, economic hardship, and individuals' unique animal‐related experiences     

Confidence bands for Brownian motion and applications to Monte Carlo simulation

Minimal area regions are constructed for Brownian paths and perturbed Brownian paths. While the theoretical optimal region cannot be obtained in closed form, we provide practical confidence regions based on numerical approximations and local time arguments. These regions are used to provide informal convergence assessments for both Monte Carlo and Markov Chain Monte Carlo experiments, via the Brownian asymptotic approximation of cumulative sums.     

Extinguishing the social?: state sponsored self‐care policy and the Chronic Disease Self‐management Programme

The Chronic Disease Self-management Programme (CDSMP) is a psycho-educational programme designed to increase the capacity of people with chronic conditions to self-manage. This initiative forms an integral part of the 'Expert Patient Programme' in the UK and the 'Sharing Health Care' programme in Australia. The aim of this paper is to critically appraise the principles of the CDSMP as a national self-care policy initiative in the context of existing formations and ideological approaches to self-care. Although the CDSMP appears to promote a 'social model' of disability, particularly in its generic manifestation, the use of the notion of self-efficacy as a primary marker of change means that it ultimately falls back onto an individualistic approach. The latter ignores pre-existing traditions of self-help embedded within advanced welfare societies.. We argue that state sponsored polices about self-management would benefit from greater recognition of existing social knowledge and theories about how people respond to being diagnosed with a long-term condition.     

Book Review: Mark Lyons,Third Sector: The Contribution of Nonprofit and Cooperative Enterprises in Australia,Allen $ Unwin,Crows Nest,NSW, 2001, 248 pp., index,references, $29.95(AUD)

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

The Relationship Between Internet Access and Divorce Rate

The rise of the internet has affected the market for romantic partners, arguably lowering search costs. It has been claimed anecdotally that this has led to an increase in divorce. However, a more careful examination of theory suggests that, even if search costs have declined with the rise of the internet, this would not necessarily increase divorce propensity. To examine the issue empirically, this paper employs both state- and household-level data on family structure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey. A comparison of high and low internet penetration states, as well as a micro panel of initially married households with and without internet access, reveals no evidence that the rise of the internet has increased divorce.     

Symbolic Itô calculus in AXIOM: An ongoing story

Symbolic Itô calculus refers both to the implementation of Itô calculus in a computer algebra package and to its application. This article reports on progress in the implementation of Itô calculus in the powerful and innovative computer algebra package AXIOM, in the context of a decade of previous implementations and applications. It is shown how the elegant algebraic structure underlying the expressive and effective formalism of Itô calculus can be implemented directly in AXIOM using the package's programmable facilities for strong typing of computational objects. An application is given of the use of the implementation to provide calculations for a new proof, based on stochastic differentials, of the Mardia-Dryden distribution from statistical shape theory.     

Hard and soft constraints in linear programming

The linear programme and its constraints are split into two parts. The first consists of the traditional structure, the second being akin to goal programming. SOFT constraints are weighted relative to each other and then approximately weighted relative to the HARD constraints. The LP is run four times giving different emphasis to the SOFT and HARD constraints. The manager requesting the LP has then to decide which gives the most appropriate solution.