Testing the acculturation of the 1.5 generation in the United States: Is there a “critical” age of migration?

Review of Economics of the Household - Existing research shows that on average first-generation immigrants earn less than native-born workers in the United States, especially during their first...     

Adapting private family time in child protective services decision-making processes

The Family Group Conference (FGC) is grounded in a rights-based framework, whereby children and their families have the right and responsibility to be primary decision-makers when child protection issues arise, and the statutory agency has the responsibility to convene the entitled members of the family network to lead the decision-making. A distinct core component of FGC—private family time (PFT)—allows families to discuss the information and formulate their responses and plans privately during conferencing. This paper describes how a large child welfare agency in the United States adapted PFT in two ways: (1) including a parent advocate (PA) and (2) abbreviating the amount of time allowed for this discussion. Given the lack of empirical research on the PFT component, this qualitative exploratory study sought to understand the functions and perceived impacts of PA-supported PFT during initial child protective services (CPS) conferences at which decisions of child removal or placement were being contemplated. PFT served multiple beneficial functions and impacted families in several positive ways: families gained greater awareness of safety concerns, felt empowered and confident in the preferred safety and service plan, became increasingly engaged and involved in the case decision-making process and ultimately felt less apprehensive.     

Spectral estimation for locally stationary time series with missing observations

Time series arising in practice often have an inherently irregular sampling structure or missing values, that can arise for example due to a faulty measuring device or complex time-dependent nature. Spectral decomposition of time series is a traditionally useful tool for data variability analysis. However, existing methods for spectral estimation often assume a regularly-sampled time series, or require modifications to cope with irregular or ‘gappy’ data. Additionally, many techniques also assume that the time series are stationary, which in the majority of cases is demonstrably not appropriate. This article addresses the topic of spectral estimation of a non-stationary time series sampled with missing data. The time series is modelled as a locally stationary wavelet process in the sense introduced by Nason et al. (J. R. Stat. Soc. B 62(2):271–292, 2000) and its realization is assumed to feature missing observations. Our work proposes an estimator (the periodogram) for the process wavelet spectrum, which copes with the missing data whilst relaxing the strong assumption of stationarity. At the centre of our construction are second generation wavelets built by means of the lifting scheme (Sweldens, Wavelet Applications in Signal and Image Processing III, Proc. SPIE, vol. 2569, pp. 68–79, 1995), designed to cope with irregular data. We investigate the theoretical properties of our proposed periodogram, and show that it can be smoothed to produce a bias-corrected spectral estimate by adopting a penalized least squares criterion. We demonstrate our method with real data and simulated examples.     

Women's perceptions of their healthcare experience when they choose not to breastfeed

Research questionHow do women who choose not to breastfeed perceive their healthcare experience?MethodThis qualitative research study used a phenomenographic approach to explore the healthcare experience of women who do not breastfeed. Seven women were interviewed about their healthcare experience relating to their choice of feeding, approximately 4 weeks after giving birth. Six conceptions were identified and an outcome space was developed to demonstrate the relationships and meaning of the conceptions in a visual format.FindingsThere were five unmet needs identified by the participants during this study. These needs included equity, self sufficiency, support, education and the need not to feel pressured.ConclusionWomen in this study who chose not to breastfeed identified important areas where they felt that their needs were not met. In keeping with the Code of Ethics for Nurses and Midwives, the identified needs of women who do not breastfeed must be addressed in a caring, compassionate and just manner. The care and education of women who formula feed should be of the highest standard possible, even if the choice not to breastfeed is not the preferred choice of healthcare professionals.     

Impact of funding and value added on Spanish venture capital-backed firms

This paper contributes to the literature on the effect of venture capital (VC) on the economic development of areas in which those specialized investors are active. The work focuses on the separate consideration of two effects that are supposed to explain the superior performance of a large sample of Spanish VC-backed firms, namely funding and value-added services provided by VC managers to their investee firms. The results show that funding is significant regardless of the stage of development of the investee firm. The value added, however, is only significant for the subsample of firms at the expansion stage.     

Reverse logistics drivers: empirical evidence from a case study in an emerging economy

Academic and corporate interest in reverse logistics (RL) has risen considerably in recent years. In this context, the objective of this study was to identify the drivers that enable RL practice in an emerging economy. Firstly, international peer-reviewed publications on RL were used to develop a RL environment framework representing the main RL internal and external influences. Secondly, a case-based research was conducted in a large manufacturing company located in Southern Brazil. The results indicated that the most cited driver in the RL literature, the government and legislation, was not a main influence on the studied company. Environmental legislation is still limited in the country and struggles to provide incentives to increase materials recycling. An economic factor related to materials value recovery was also found to drive the backward flow. Finally, knowledge of the RL driving forces may support industries to better implement and manage reverse flows and to bridge the gap between existing and future solutions for reverse supply chains.     

Global Environmental Change and Historical Transitions

What do transition processes in rural areas in Thailand, biomass consumption in nineteenth-century Austria and the ecology of hunter-gatherers have to do with the appropriation of plant production and global environmental change? More than one might think of in the first place. They are part of a scholarly discourse on our changing relations with the environment. We argue that global change can be analysed in terms of transitions between major modes of subsistence and try to document this with several case studies.     

Trends in Domestic and International Social Work Research: A 10-Year Review of American Research Journals

ABSTRACT

This article presents a typology of international social work research and analyzes trends over a 10-year period (1995–2004) based on reviews of 707 articles from three major American social work research journals: Social Work Research, Journal of Social Service Research, and Research on Social Work Practice. The analysis revealed there was a considerable increase (3.5%) in the total amount of research articles, particularly a higher increase in international social work research (2.8%) than national social work research (0.8%). A small decline was detected in transnational comparative research (?0.4%).