Social support,self-efficacy and gender as predictors of reported stress among inpatient caregivers

The study examined the predictive role of social support, self-efficacy and gender on self-reported stress among inpatients’ caregivers. One hundred and sixty eight (36 males and 132 females) inpatients’ caregivers were sampled from University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (97) and Niger Foundation Hospital (71) all in Enugu, Nigeria. Three instruments were used for the data collection, namely, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), New General Self Efficacy Scale (NGSES), and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). The study adopted a cross sectional design and Multiple Regression was used for data analysis. Results showed that social support negatively predicted inpatient caregivers’ reported stress (β = ?.28, p < .001). Gender significantly predicted stress among the inpatients’ caregivers (β = .35, p < .001). Findings were discussed and implications of the study highlighted.     

Determinants of child care mode choice: An economic perspective

The author presents evidence indicating that economic and demographic variables are important determinants of the type of child care used by two-earner households. Three conclusions follow from the empirical analysis: (a) Projections for future child care needs could be considerably impoved if, rather than taking into account only the number of children under 6, as done presently, more detailed age categories were considered, as well as trends in male and female wages and labor supply. (b) Subsidies to the formal modes of care may have antinatalist consequences. (c) Unless income tests are used, the benefits from such subsidies are likely to be heavily concentrated in the high-income groups.     

Children’s Perspectives on Everyday Experiences of Shared Residence: Time,Emotions and Agency Dilemmas

Shared residence is often presented as an arrangement that is in the best interests of the child following the divorce of its parents. Based on in‐depth interviews with Norwegian children who have experienced shared residence, this article seeks to explore some dilemmas concerning time, agency and the children’s emotions. Three characteristics of shared residence and time‐sharing are presented — flexibility, ambiguity and rigidity — which points to different challenges in understanding the circumstances in which shared residence become a valuable arrangement for children. The article argues that both time and emotional dilemmas regarding shared residence should be further investigated both empirically and theoretically, and that children’s agency should be acknowledged more fully.     

Conditions determining the local stability of populations

The conditions that determine the local stability classification of an equilibrium population configuration are analyzed. The population investigated is age‐structured and density‐dependent, where density is determined by an age‐weighted population size. Two demographic parameters are introduced: the marginal birth rate and marginal death rate, which describe the marginal density‐dependence of the birth and death rates of the equilibrium population. Certain necessary and/or sufficient conditions determining stability are developed, most of them involving the net reproduction rate of the population, and examples illustrating these conditions are presented.     

Event frequency,excitement and desire to gamble,among pathological gamblers

In this study we compared gambling behaviour of 15 pathological gamblers (PG) and 15 non-problem gamblers (NPG) on two conditions of a commercially available slot machine. One condition used a commercially available two-second event frequency (games per minute), while the other condition used an experimental three-second event frequency. The payback percentage (wins relative to losses) and reward frequency (wins over number of games played) varied randomly across conditions. The results showed that PG had significantly higher measures than NPG on time spent gambling, excitement level and desire to play again in the two-second condition. In the three-second condition there were no differences in excitement level and desire to play again. The number of PG playing the maximum time (60 minutes) was reduced in the three-second version, and reward frequency contributed to reduction in time spent gambling. The results may have implications for understanding behavioural mechanisms of pathological gambling among slot machine players.     

The pioneer revisits her classic

Governing Nonprofit Organizations: Federal and State Law and Regulation. Marion R. Fremont‐Smith. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. 550 pp. $95.00 cloth.     

The impact of employer-sponsored child care on female labor supply behavior: Evidence from the nursing profession

This paper studies the effects of employer-sponsored child care on two dimensions of the labor supply behavior of women with young children: annual hours worked and attachment to the employer. Data from the 1988 Biennial Survey of Illinois Registered Nurses are used in the empirical analysis. The provision of employer-sponsored child care is found to have significant positive effects on both aspects of labor supply.     

Channels of Entry and Preferred Destinations: The Circumvention of Denmark by Chinese Immigrants

As globalization spread during the 1990s, and especially since the turn of the millennium, European states have increasingly claimed their right to assert their sovereignty by regulating migration at the level of the individual (OECD, 2001: 76–81). Political parties have succeeded in gaining support on policy statements pertaining exclusively to migration. For example, recent legislation in Denmark restricts the categories of persons eligible as refugees to “Convention refugees” satisfying only the narrowest international criteria set out in the UN Refugee Convention. The civil rights of asylum seekers are restricted by prohibiting marriage while their applications are under review. To limit family reunification among immigrants, the present Danish Government has even prohibited immigrants with permanent residence status and Danish citizens from bringing non‐Danish spouses under age 24 into the country. These attempts at border enforcement and immigration control have been described by some critics as the endeavours of European Union (EU) members to build a “Fortress Europe” against immigrants from developing countries. Policy decisions and the implementation of various measures from finger printing to radar surveillance to control immigrants have corroborated such perceptions, but this paper will show that gaining entry to a highly controlled country such as Denmark from a poorer country such as the People's Republic of China (PRC) is fairly straightforward. Politicians may wish to convey the impression of being in control of international mobility by launching diverse anti‐immigration acts, but since the immigration embargo of the early 1970s all EU countries have received millions of immigrants, and increasingly permit or accept immigrants of various kinds to reside and work within their borders (Boeri et al., 2002). Immigration from developing countries is not evenly distributed throughout the EU, but rather targets specific destinations. This article will attempt to explain the direction of Chinese immigration flows to Europe in response to labour‐market demand, rather than as a consequence of “loopholes” in a country's legal or welfare provisions. By analysing historical and demographic data on the PRC Chinese in Denmark, I attempt to demonstrate that, despite being a European country with one of the lowest asylum rejection rates for PRC Chinese, the scope of Chinese asylum seekers and regular and irregular migrants arriving by way of family reunification remained limited in the 1990s compared to southern, central, and eastern European countries. My analysis of Danish data in relation to Chinese migration suggest that destinations related to the globalization of Chinese migration is more determined by labour and capital markets than the presumed attraction of social welfare benefits provided by a European welfare state such as Denmark.     

Lead poisoning: The continuing epidemic

The toxicity of lead has been known since antiquity, although its deleterious effects at very low levels, especially for children, have been studied and documented only in this last quarter century. This review provides a brief overlook of the history of lead poisoning, its prenatal and postnatal health effects in children, environmental sources of lead (to which poor and minority group children are disproportionately exposed), legislative and governmental initiatives up to the present, and the efforts needed now to reduce or eliminate exposure to lead and to diagnose and treat lead poisoned children more effectively—at least until preventive measures have dramatically curtailed the pervasiveness of the disease.