Psychological Differences Between HIV-Positive Mothers Who Disclose to All, Some, or None of Their Biological Children

This study explored the psychological differences between HIV-positive women who disclosed their serostatus to all, some, or none of their biological children. Data from this project come from a larger, longitudinal investigation of the disclosure process of HIV-infected women. Data were obtained regarding the disclosure processes and the psychological adjustment of women with children ( n  = 90) based on measures of depression, anxiety, and stress. Results suggest that women who disclose to all, some, or none of their children are not significantly different with regard to emotional well-being. Implications for marriage and family therapists are provided.     

Chinese Beliefs in Luck are Linked to Gambling Problems via Strengthened Cognitive Biases: A Mediation Test

Problematic patterns of gambling and their harms are known to have culturally specific expressions. For ethnic Chinese people, patterns of superstitious belief in this community appear to be linked to the elevated rates of gambling-related harms; however, little is known about the mediating psychological mechanisms. To address this issue, we surveyed 333 Chinese gamblers residing internationally and used a mediation analysis to explore how gambling-related cognitive biases, gambling frequency and variety of gambling forms (‘scope’) mediate the association between beliefs in luck and gambling problems. We found that cognitive biases and scope were significant mediators of this link but that the former is a stronger mediator than the latter. The mediating erroneous beliefs were not specific to any particular type of cognitive bias. These results suggest that Chinese beliefs in luck are expressed as gambling cognitive biases that increase the likelihood of gambling problems, and that biases that promote gambling (and its harms) are best understood within their socio-cultural context.     

Confidence intervals for nonparametric quantile regression: an emphasis on smoothing splines approach

In this paper we consider the problem of constructing confidence intervals for nonparametric quantile regression with an emphasis on smoothing splines. The mean‐based approaches for smoothing splines of Wahba (1983) and Nychka (1988) may not be efficient for constructing confidence intervals for the underlying function when the observed data are non‐Gaussian distributed, for instance if they are skewed or heavy‐tailed. This paper proposes a method of constructing confidence intervals for the unknown τth quantile function (0<τ<1) based on smoothing splines. In this paper we investigate the extent to which the proposed estimator provides the desired coverage probability. In addition, an improvement based on a local smoothing parameter that provides more uniform pointwise coverage is developed. The results from numerical studies including a simulation study and real data analysis demonstrate the promising empirical properties of the proposed approach.     

Career Maturity and Quality of Life in Korean Adolescents: A Cross‐Lagged Panel Design

This study investigated the effectiveness of a short‐term career exploration program for enhancing career maturity and quality of life in Korean adolescents. It further tested causality between career maturity and quality of life defined as school satisfaction and subjective well‐being. We used a cross‐lagged panel design to examine the links among career maturity, subjective well‐being, and school satisfaction, measured both before and 4 weeks after a career exploration program for 224 Korean middle school students. Study results indicated that 4 weeks after the program implementation, there were significant increases in career maturity, subjective well‐being, and school satisfaction. A significant causal relationship from the pretest score of career maturity to the posttest score of school satisfaction was found. Results suggest that the implementation of a short‐term career exploration program designed to increase career maturity also significantly promotes school satisfaction. Limitations of the study are discussed along with suggestions for future research.     

Spill‐Up and Spill‐Over of Trust: An Extended Test of Cultural and Institutional Theories of Trust in South Korea1

In comparison to the heated debate over the origins of trust in political institutions, few studies have empirically examined the linkage between trust in political and nonpolitical institutions at the individual level. In this study, we utilize a two‐step methodology to investigate attitudes toward the government in the broader context of attitudes toward related nonpolitical institutions in South Korea. Results from latent class analysis reveal that political trust is an integrated part of a more general set of attitudes toward social and economic institutions. In addition, results from multinomial logistic regression analysis corroborate past studies that found a positive relationship between perceptions of institutional performance and trust in institutions while partially supporting theories advocating the importance of interpersonal trust for institutional trust. This study points to the possibility of interpersonal trust “spilling up” to trust in institutions and the likelihood that trust in one institution “spills over” to trust in other related institutions.     

Study of social interaction among students of Vision Schools in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to examine the social interaction among students of various ethnic groups at Vision Schools in Malaysia. The focus is mainly on Malays, Chinese and Indians with a sample size of 642 students. This research applies the quantitative and qualitative approach. For the qualitative approach, the researcher used focus group interviews and observations to examine social interaction among students of various ethnic groups. In this research there is one independent variable to explain and predict eleven independent variables. Hypotheses were analysed using post-hoc and multivariate analysis at a p < 0.05 significance level. Findings of the study indicated there were significant difference in the mean score levels for all the independent variables. Study showed high social distance scale for Malay and Chinese students. All the dependent variables effected social interaction among students. Based on the results various suggestions have been recommended and it is hoped that these suggestions will help those involved in teaching and learning to have a better understanding concerning social interaction among Malay, Chinese and Indian students at Vision Schools in Malaysia.     

Household empowerment as the key to eradicate poverty incidence

The current study aimed to investigate how the household empowerment can potentially reduce the rural poverty incidence. The data were collected through multistage random sampling from the rural households of 24 villages in Southern Punjab, Pakistan. A total of 600 households were selected as sample pool. Face‐to‐face interviews with the household heads were conducted. The household empowerment was measured through an index that was adopted from Abrar‐ul‐haq (“An assessment of the role of household empowerment in alleviating poverty in Southern Punjab, Pakistan” (Ph.D. Dissertation), School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia, 2017). The binary logit model was used to analyze the impact of household empowerment with other control variables on poverty incidence. The results of the current study confirm the negative nexus between household empowerment and poverty incidence of rural households as the study reported that the probabilities (odds ratio: 0.877) of being poor are reduced by increasing the empowerment (in every aspect, economically, politically, and socially) of the households, and the results are statistically significant at the 1% level of significance. Based on empirical results, this study suggests that household empowerment has significant potential to reduce poverty incidence in the rural areas of Southern Punjab, Pakistan.     

Supervisory coaching and performance feedback as mediators of the relationships between leadership styles,work engagement,and turnover intention

Human resource development (HRD) is key to organizational success. With some HRD roles devolving to leaders in recent years, a gap in understanding is now evident in how leaders’ leadership styles shape development-oriented behaviours that may effectively assist them in fulfilling their HRD roles, and the corresponding effects that this has on employee work engagement and turnover intention. This study compared the effects of transformational and transactional leadership styles on employee attitudes (i.e. work engagement and turnover intention) through leaders’ behaviours (i.e. supervisory coaching and performance feedback). This study used a multilevel approach (i.e. matching leaders to multiple subordinates) with 500 employees, nested in 65 workgroups from private organizations in Malaysia. As hypothesized, we found a link between transformational (but not transactional) leadership and higher levels of supervisory coaching and performance feedback, and that these job resources mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement. Furthermore, we found that work engagement mediates the relationships of both supervisory coaching and performance feedback to turnover intention. Overall, the study results reveal one way in which Asian leaders can effectively facilitate some aspects of HRD through development-focused behaviours which serve as job resources to boost work engagement and reduce turnover intention.     

A new look at married women’s labor force transitions in Japan

In this paper, we examine educational differences in married women’s labor force attachment in Japan using 10 waves of data from a nationally representative survey. Results of discrete-time multi-state hazard models of labor force exit and entry indicate that university graduates are both more likely to remain in and less likely to reenter the labor force relative to women with a high school education or less. Their relatively low likelihood of labor force exit reflects educational differences in occupational characteristics, especially employment in full-time, standard jobs. However, junior college and university graduates remain substantially less likely to reenter the labor force net of family circumstances, characteristics of previous employment, and efforts to control for unobserved characteristics. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that tension between emerging incentives to remain in the labor force and lingering incentives to remain out of the labor force are both relatively strong among highly educated women. We conclude with speculation about the implications of these educational differences in married women’s employment for stratification.     

A new asylum law for the KRI and Iraq: Reality or wishful thinking?

Despite having its own internal population displacement due to conflict and civil war, Iraq and the Kurdistan Region continue to accommodate large numbers of refugees from Iran, Palestine, Syria and Turkey. However, Iraq has not ratified the internationally recognized legal framework for the protection of refugees. Currently, the protection offered to asylum seekers in Iraq is regulated by secondary legislation, mostly in the form of administrative circulars. The lack of an applicable law regulating the status of asylum seekers has led to local-level ad hoc policy implementation. Similarly, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has no legal provisions in its domestic legislation to regulate the status of refugees. This study presents: (a) the argument that Iraq must adopt legislation to regulate the entry, exit and stay of migrants, in line with international protection for both asylum seekers and the provision of adequate rights to refugees, and in accordance with international human rights standards; (b) a proposal for provisions for such legislation in Iraq; and (c) a timely impetus to re-energize local strategies aimed at filling these normative legal gaps through domestic agreements rather than regional and/or international ones.