Multifunctional teasing as a resource for identity construction in the talk of British Bangladeshi girls1

This paper explores how multifunctional teasing is used as a resource for the construction of linguistic identities, establishing a link between previous research on teasing and the field of language/discourse and identity. I draw on a corpus of 38 episodes of teasing contained in 80 minutes of spontaneous talk between five adolescent Bangladeshi girls who formed a friendship group at their comprehensive school in East London. The qualitative analysis of the data reveals that the teasing in this group can serve four main functions: an accomplishment of fun‐based solidarity; a release of underlying tensions; a display of toughness; but also a display of respect for other speakers’ dispreference for taboo subjects. Building on Ochs’(1992) notion of indirect indexicality my discussion of the data will focus on the social meanings of these different functions of teasing which range from maintaining and managing friendship to (re)negotiating class and culture‐related identities. I shall argue that the identity work achieved by and in the teasing needs to be seen in relation to stereotypical notions and ideologies about class, gender and culture‐specific (language) practices which shape the girls’ construction of themselves as British Bangladeshi working‐class adolescents.     

Why Are They Leaving? Factors Affecting Intention to Leave among Social Workers in Child Welfare

This article addresses a topic that has not previously beenresearched in Sweden, i.e. factors associated with the intentionof social workers to leave their place of work. A comprehensivequestionnaire was distributed to 309 social workers in childwelfare in the County of Stockholm (drop-out rate: 3 per cent).The study comprised a total of forty-two workgroups. All thesocial workers handling referrals and investigating the situationof children and youth in these areas were included. One of themost striking results was that although 54 per cent of the socialworkers had been at their current workplace for two years orless, 48 per cent intended to leave their jobs. A logistic regressionanalysis showed that the variable of greatest importance forthe intention to leave the workplace was lack of human resourceorientation within the organization, i.e. the extent to whichpersonnel are rewarded for a job well done, feel well takencare of and where management is interested in their health andwell-being. A final conclusion of this study is that when measuringthe impact of different aspects of work tasks compared withsome aspects of organizational culture, it becomes clear thatthe latter seem to be most important in this respect.     

Psychometrics of the students´ attitudes towards addressing sexual health scale for students in social work

Previous research regarding social work related to sexual health and sexuality shows the importance of competence in this field for social workers and therefore is a need to explore students´ attitudes, knowledge and view on working with sexual health in their future profession. This project aims to psychometrically test the questionnaire Students’ Attitudes towards Addressing Sexual Health (SA-SH) for students in social work. The results show good content validity, construct validity, internal consistency and intra-rater reliability for the SA-SH for students in social work (response rate of 91%, 242 students).

The SA-SH can therefore be recommended to be used to measure attitudes, believed competence, and knowledge regarding sexual health among social work students, and to follow up educational interventions.     

Religion,governance and performance: evidence from Islamic and conventional stock exchanges

Based on a dataset of 31 conventional and Islamic stock exchanges we compare financial performance across these two groups for 2007–2011 period. Our results suggest that CEs and IEs are differently exposed to institutional constraints and have different drivers of profitability. Islamic stock exchanges’ performances are essentially driven by traditional listing and trading services and are affected by institutional factors such as the degree of foreign trading openness of their economies and measures of society development. Furthermore, they ensure greater stability during crisis, although Shari’ah compliant investments don’t affect their revenue generation. Conventional stock exchanges have higher trading intensity, higher level of revenues’ diversification and high capital investments, as they operate with different business models. Our results could have relevant business and strategic implications for further convergence between the two groups. Moreover our analysis could be significant for firms wishing to list their shares into Shari’ah Compliant Stock Exchanges or into Conventional ones and traders choosing the most convenient trading venue.     

A parametric model fitting time to first event for overdispersed data: application to time to relapse in multiple sclerosis

In this article, we propose a parametric model for the distribution of time to first event when events are overdispersed and can be properly fitted by a Negative Binomial distribution. This is a very common situation in medical statistics, when the occurrence of events is summarized as a count for each patient and the simple Poisson model is not adequate to account for overdispersion of data. In this situation, studying the time of occurrence of the first event can be of interest. From the Negative Binomial distribution of counts, we derive a new parametric model for time to first event and apply it to fit the distribution of time to first relapse in multiple sclerosis (MS). We develop the regression model with methods for covariate estimation. We show that, as the Negative Binomial model properly fits relapse counts data, this new model matches quite perfectly the distribution of time to first relapse, as tested in two large datasets of MS patients. Finally we compare its performance, when fitting time to first relapse in MS, with other models widely used in survival analysis (the semiparametric Cox model and the parametric exponential, Weibull, log-logistic and log-normal models).     

Work/life balance policy in Germany: Promoting equal partnership in families

Across the OECD, public policies seek to support parents in achieving their desired work/life balance. This article introduces the background to and issues at stake in promoting equal partnerships in families in Germany. Families in Germany face considerable challenges to spending more time together and achieving a more gender‐balanced reconciliation of work and family life, as paid work hours for fathers are long on full‐time jobs and many women are in part‐time jobs. Family policy can play an important role and Germany has made substantial progress in supporting families ahead of and after the birth of a child. Important in this regard are the parental leave reforms of 2007 and 2015 and the extension of childcare supports that better enable fathers and mothers to combine work and family commitments. The article assesses recent developments in family policies in Germany while also drawing from the experiences of countries with longstanding policies to support work/life balance and strengthen gender equality.     

Maternal labor market return and domestic work after childbirth in Britain and Germany

This study investigates how the duration of maternal labor market interruptions and mothers' employment status after return relate to the division of domestic work in couples after childbirth in West Germany, East Germany, and Britain. It extends the literature by considering how these two aspects of postnatal labor market return decisions of mothers may give rise to or counteract growing gender inequality in domestic work afterbirth events. Using data on 826 British and 1614 German new parent couples based on the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) (1991–2008) and on the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) (1990–2010), I apply fixed-effects panel models. Mothers perform more housework with increasing length of their employment interruptions across the three contexts. For childcare, longer time-outs increase mothers' childcare share in West Germany but not in East Germany. This result is in line with institutional variations in day-care provision. Across contexts, mothers' full-time returns are associated with a larger reduction in their domestic work share than short time-out. After mothers returned to part-time employment, couples show no or much weaker compensating behaviors for longer previous maternal time-outs than after a full-time return.     

‘There is Nothing Here for Us..!’ How Girls Create Meaningful Places of Their Own Through Movement

This article focuses on how girls create places of meaning and opportunity through collective movement. It is based on an ethnographic study of the everyday experiences and mobility of 10–13 year old girls living in a suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark. 1 The girls ventured for a sense of freedom and a ‘place of their own’ to pursue their interests and social relationships. For some girls the creation of places where they felt ‘at home’ would entail breaking rules and transgressing spatial boundaries set by adults.