Deconstructing Immigrant Illegality: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Stress and Health Among Undocumented College Students

Research has established that being undocumented is a risk factor for mental and physical health conditions. Much of this work emphasizes undocumented immigrants’ chronic stress, yet key questions about pathways to health remain. The mere state of being undocumented is viewed as a general stressor, without considering actual levels of stress or identifying dimensions of documentation status that contribute to overall stress levels. Drawing on surveys and interviews with undocumented students at the University of California, we uncover the everyday manifestations of four dimensions of immigrant “illegality”: academic concerns, future concerns, financial concerns, and deportation concerns, and their association with reported stress levels and self-rated health. Survey data establish undocumented students’ high levels of stress and poorer health, in comparison to previous research on other national samples. In a structural equation model, we found academic and future concerns to be significantly associated with higher stress, which was in turn, associated with poorer self-rated health. Financial concerns were not associated with higher perceived stress but were directly associated with poorer self-rated health. Notably, deportation concerns did not have any significant independent associations with stress or health. We use our qualitative data to identify specific stressors embedded within these four dimensions. Our findings inform understandings of the health risks arising from documentation status.     

‘No,living well does not mean being rich’: Diverse understandings of well-being among 11–13-year-old children in three Ethiopian communities

Participatory research into how people living in material poverty define and experience well-being and ill-being is increasingly common in developed and developing countries. Such research highlights the importance of experiential aspects, such as being respected and able to preserve one's dignity, and having meaningful choices. Nevertheless, these findings rarely cover children's experiences and are often not contextualized or triangulated with other data. The paper will extend this exploration using data from qualitative research with a sub-sample of children aged 11–13 in three urban and rural communities, drawn from Young Lives, a long-term international research project investigating the changing nature of childhood poverty in four countries, including Ethiopia. Firstly, it addresses how understandings of a good life and what is needed to achieve one varies between communities and amongst children of different backgrounds living in those communities; for example, boys and girls and children from richer or poorer households. Secondly, the study examines how one's place in social relationships also contributes to how children perceive and understand what a good life is. The paper confirms the importance of allowing children to take at least a ‘partial role’ in measuring and monitoring their well-being (Ben-Arieh 2005, 575) and provides examples of how this might be done.     

Infants' Response to Maternal Mirroring in the Still Face and Replay Tasks

Infants' response to maternal mirroring was investigated in 4‐month‐old infants. Mother–infant dyads participated in the still face and replay tasks. Infants were grouped by those whose mothers did and did not mirror their behavior in the interactive phases of the tasks. In the still face task, infants with maternal mirroring showed more attention, smiling, and positive vocalizations across the phases, although both groups of infants demonstrated the still‐face effect with attention and smiling. Infants' social bidding to the mother during the still‐face phase correlated with mothers' mirroring behavior. In the replay task, infants with maternal mirroring demonstrated carryover effects with smiling; infants without maternal mirroring showed no awareness of change in their mothers' behavior. In both the still face and replay tasks, infants with maternal mirroring were more engaged with their mothers. Results suggest that maternal mirroring of infants' behavior affects infants' detection of, and response to, reciprocal interaction.     

The Last Rogue of History: Picaresque Elements in Sasha Sokolov’s Palisandriia

This article takes a detailed look at the way in which the Habsburg Monarchy’s policy towards Serbia subtly shifted between 1881, when the Monarchy forced a secret treaty of alliance on the Serbian government, and the end of the Serbo-Bulgarian War of November 1885. Gustav von Kálnoky, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, inherited a policy largely shaped by his Hungarian predecessor, Count Gyula Andrássy, which relied on controlling Serbia through the person of its ruler, the wayward Milan Obrenovi?. The Austrophile and highly unpopular Milan, however, was a disastrous instrument of Austro-Hungarian control, and by the end of the Serbo-Bulgarian conflict, by which point Milan was pleading to be allowed to abdicate, Kálnoky had come to the conclusion that this “personal policy” was a failure, and that the Monarchy was better off relying on the outright coercion of Serbia. The article reconsiders some of the key stages in this development, in particular Andrássy’s memorandum of 24 November 1885, and Kálnoky’s reassessment of the value of the secret treaty of 1881, which depended solely on the guarantee of the Serbian monarch and, as a result, threatened to become worthless without his presence on the throne.     

Vulnerable young people and substance misuse: expanding on the risk and protection‐focused approach using social psychology

This paper critically reviews recent research exploring risk and protective factors for the development of problematic substance use in populations of young people. Specific populations of young people who are most vulnerable to developing problematic patterns of use are identified, and alterations to methods of data collection which would improve the ability of local authorities to monitor these populations and more efficiently target them for early preventative interventions are highlighted. It is argued that social‐psychological research techniques and approaches should be used to complement a risk and protection‐focused approach in order to improve the design and evaluation of interventions, and provide decision‐aids for practitioners when assessing the needs of vulnerable young people. Examples are provided to demonstrate the utility of social psychology in this regard, and the paper concludes with specific recommendations for future research and services. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Causality and interdependence analysis in linear econometric models with an application to fertility

This paper is an applied analysis of the causal structure of linear multi-equational econometric models. Its aim is to identify the kind of relationships linking the endogenous variables of the model, distinguishing between causal links and feedback loops. The investigation is first carried out within a deterministic framework and then moves on to show how the results may change inside a more realistic stochastic context. The causal analysis is then specifically applied to a linear simultaneous equation model explaining fertility rates. The analysis is carried out by means of a specific RATS programming code designed to show the specific nature of the relationships within the model.     

A Comparison of Hierarchical Methods for Clustering Functional Data

Functional data analysis (FDA)—the analysis of data that can be considered a set of observed continuous functions—is an increasingly common class of statistical analysis. One of the most widely used FDA methods is the cluster analysis of functional data; however, little work has been done to compare the performance of clustering methods on functional data. In this article, a simulation study compares the performance of four major hierarchical methods for clustering functional data. The simulated data varied in three ways: the nature of the signal functions (periodic, non periodic, or mixed), the amount of noise added to the signal functions, and the pattern of the true cluster sizes. The Rand index was used to compare the performance of each clustering method. As a secondary goal, clustering methods were also compared when the number of clusters has been misspecified. To illustrate the results, a real set of functional data was clustered where the true clustering structure is believed to be known. Comparing the clustering methods for the real data set confirmed the findings of the simulation. This study yields concrete suggestions to future researchers to determine the best method for clustering their functional data.     

A comparison of test statistics for the recovery of rapid growth‐based enumeration tests

This paper considers five test statistics for comparing the recovery of a rapid growth‐based enumeration test with respect to the compendial microbiological method using a specific nonserial dilution experiment. The finite sample distributions of these test statistics are unknown, because they are functions of correlated count data. A simulation study is conducted to investigate the type I and type II error rates. For a balanced experimental design, the likelihood ratio test and the main effects analysis of variance (ANOVA) test for microbiological methods demonstrated nominal values for the type I error rate and provided the highest power compared with a test on weighted averages and two other ANOVA tests. The likelihood ratio test is preferred because it can also be used for unbalanced designs. It is demonstrated that an increase in power can only be achieved by an increase in the spiked number of organisms used in the experiment. The power is surprisingly not affected by the number of dilutions or the number of test samples. A real case study is provided to illustrate the theory. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

新型现代农业技术推广困境的话语分析——以水稻强化栽培体系（SRI）在四川省Y村的推广为例

文章从水稻强化栽培体系在四川省Y村推广初期取得良好效果之后未能得到可持续应用的现象出发,以SRI为例分析了导致新型现代农业技术话语弱化的因素及其对新型现代农业技术推广和应用产生的不利影响.研究发现,推广主体权力的弱化和农户对知识体系的模糊性认识导致新型现代农业技术无法建构起有效的话语,而农民在考虑到技术“比较效益”之后选择的外出务工和“消遣经济”的道路,则进一步弱化了新型现代农业技术话语,同时,也对我国农业经济的发展和进步造成了严重影响.     

Prioritizing parental autonomy: Adult children's accounts of feeling responsible and supporting aging parents

Adult children's accounts of responsibility for aging parents were explored using data from multiple, in-person, semi-structured qualitative interviews with 28 participants in Victoria, Canada. An emphasis on respecting parental autonomy and individual responsibility was present in varying forms. Controlling or bossy behaviour was often criticized in others. For some adult children, protecting this ideal made it difficult to talk about feeling responsible for their parents; others defined it as part of their filial responsibility. These findings illustrate how adult children actively employ a framework of individualism in the praxis of parent support, in order to set limits on care provision as well as cope with guilt and helplessness (e.g., arising from parents' active attempts to exert their own agency). Findings are discussed in relation to the broader level structural–cultural tension between filial responsibility and individualism.