Supermigrative copulas and positive dependence

Recent investigations about notions of bivariate aging have underlined the need to introduce some new properties of positive dependence for a bivariate random vector. Here, by using the recent notion of supermigrativity of a bivariate copula, a?positive dependence property is introduced and investigated. Comparisons with other notions of positive dependence are also presented.     

Limits and challenges for the participation of migrants' associations in state development policies in Morocco and Mexico

In many developing countries, migrants play an important role by supporting their local communities in their places of origin. An extensive literature has made visible their contribution to local development, thus revealing their involvement in the provision of social services or the construction of infrastructures. In this paper we illustrate the extent and scope of this task and the types of actions that migrants have started up in different countries of the world in general, and the cases of Morocco and Mexico in particular, to examine the achievements and limitations of both states' policies and migrants' associations in regard to their involvement in local development initiatives.     

The NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol: A Meta-Analytic Review

Systematic review and meta-analysis of literature were conducted examining the effectiveness of the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development Investigative Interview Protocol in improving the quality of child forensic interviews. Online databases were searched for journal articles published between the years 2000 and 2013. Measures of interview quality were the type of interviewer utterances and the amount of information provided by children. Five studies met criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Weighted mean of the effect sizes was calculated for each outcome measure. Protocol interviews had more invitations (g = 1.60) and fewer option-posing (g = ?.95) and suggestive prompts (g = ?.63) than standard interviews. Children interviewed by the protocol provided more central details (g = .90) in response to invitations than controls. Meta-analyses of a subset of preschool children samples revealed that protocol interviews had more invitations (g = 1.46), fewer suggestive prompts (g = ?.61), and fewer option-posing prompts (g = ?1.05) than controls. Findings corroborate results from previous studies that suggested the benefits of the protocol on the interviewers’ performance and on children’s informativeness. However, protocol did not show the same performance with regard to preschool children.     

Is There a Motherhood Penalty? Decomposing the Family Wage Gap in Colombia

The aim of this paper is to provide an estimation and decomposition of the motherhood wage penalty in Colombia. Our empirical strategy was based on the matching procedure designed by Ñopo (The Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(2), 290–299, 2008a) for the case of gender wage gaps. This is an alternative procedure to the well-known Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method. Using the cross-sectional data of the Colombian Living Standard Survey, the wage gap was decomposed into four components, according to the characteristics of mothers and non-mothers. Three of the components are explained by differences in observable characteristics of women, while the other is the unexplained part of the gap. We found that mothers earn, on average, 1.73 % less than their counterparts without children and that this gap slightly decreased when the group included older women. It is observed from the results that, once schooling was included as a matching variable, the unexplained part of the gap considerably decreased and became non-significant. Thus, we did not find evidence of wage discrimination against mothers in the Colombian labor market.     

Linking Disconnected Spaces or Venue Shopping? Trade-Offs in Participatory Opportunities in the EU

This article discusses why national civil society organisations (CSOs) use or abstain to use the participatory opportunities that the EU has developed in the last years. This is done by analysing the role of French and Spanish civil society groups in the debates on participatory democracy during the drafting and the referendum debates of the European Constitution (2002–2005). The paper departs from existing assessments of the role of national civil society in the Convention and demonstrates that national organisations built on their expertise on certain EU policies, on access to EU-level political actors and on contacts and alliances with other CSOs. It also differs from previous studies in finding that participation does not entail sharing the interpretive frame promoted by the EU. The finding that access opportunities do not fundamentally influence the frames of the organisations is related to their ability to strategically choose to participate in European and national venues. The paper finds that because of their scepticism on the constitution's participatory framing, French organisations preferred a stronger role at the national level, whereas Spanish organisations did not have real incentives to develop a campaign at the national level. While it is expected that dialogue with CSOs can contribute to bridging the gap between the EU and its citizens, this paper finds that the institutional setting provided incentives for national organisations to get involved only in one of the levels rather than to link them.     

Friendship in children with internalizing and externalizing problems: A preliminary investigation with the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships

This study examined the relationship between friendship representation and internalizing and externalizing problems in school-aged children. One hundred Caucasian 6–7 year-old children (50 males and 50 females) and their mothers took part in the study. The Draw-a-Man Test, the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships, and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL/6-18) were used. Children with internalizing problems, externalizing problems, comorbid internalizing and externalizing problems, and a control group were compared on their pictorial representations of friendship. Results showed that children with externalizing problems included more pictorial indices of each friend's autonomy and a larger imbalance of importance between them; children with internalizing problems drew themselves as less similar to their friends. In conclusion, children's pictorial representation allows exploring some aspects of their tacit knowledge about the relationship with a best friend, which is not easily expressed verbally by young children. Finally, the implications of these findings for theoretical and empirical research development on friendship are discussed.     

An ICT-Driven Hybrid Automation System for Elderly Care Support: A Rehabilitation Facility Study Case

Abstract

The demographic statistics in developed countries suggest growth in the elderly segment of the population. At the same time, other studies forecast a shortage of nurses, increasing the pressure on hospitals to provide treatment for longer periods of time. These trends suggest a need for new ways of taking care of the elderly population that support safe, comfortable, and independent living. Meanwhile, prominent advances in information and communications technology (ICT) have enabled new systems that address various needs of the elderly. This article presents a case study of a rehabilitation facility located in Tampere, Finland, that uses an automation system in which ambient assisted living (AAL) and building automation (BA) system functionalities are combined. It details a field study summarizing the needs of the users, describes functional scenarios supported by the system, and reports the results of the first usability tests suggesting acceptance of a new technology by residents and caregivers. The unique combination of ambient assisted living and building automation offers a safer and more comfortable environment for the elderly as well as helps caregivers on-site in managing their workloads.