Deconstructing Gender Differences in Experienced Well-Being Among Older Adults in the Developing World: The Roles of Time Use and Activity-Specific Affective Experiences

Social Indicators Research - Due to declining fertility rates and increasing longevity, the world is growing older. Improving the quality of life of older adults, and not merely preventing deaths,...     

Racialized Tokens: Latina Teachers Negotiating,Surviving and Thriving in a White Woman’s Profession

Previous scholarship on tokenism in professional occupations analyzes the ways white men exclude white women in male-dominated jobs. This study provides a glimpse of one organization, elementary schools, where white women exclude Latina women in a feminized occupation. Drawing on multiple methodologies, this paper analyzes Latina teachers’ workplace experiences in Santa Ana, a Southern California Mexican immigrant city. The article compares the experiences of Latina teachers working at one school where over 70% of teachers are of Latina origin and three schools where 20% of teachers are Latinas. The author coins the term ‘racialized tokens’ to illustrate how the inextricable link of race, gender and class combine to shape the workplace experiences of Latina teachers who work as numerical minorities among a majority of white colleagues. Since Latina teachers are ‘racialized tokens’ in these spaces, the author argues that in the presumably post-racial era of diversity and multiculturalism in the U.S., Latina teachers do not long for racial integration with white women in their workplaces, rather, they choose to self-segregate because of the comfort and safety self-segregation provides.     

Fostering supportive interactions in the neighbourhood: Using visualized narratives

The use of art (e.g. visualized narratives) in social work may stimulate dialogue between community members about family support in their neighbourhood. The Visualized Narratives on Parenting Interactions in the Neighbourhood (VN-PIN) were developed in order to foster this dialogue. The aim of this study was to evaluate the implementation of the VN-PIN in social work practice and to gain insight in mechanisms that stimulate dialogues supported by visualizations. A qualitative process evaluation was conducted to explore the use of the VN-PIN in various urban settings. We observed meetings (N = 14) where the VN-PIN was applied and interviewed professionals and community members (N = 81). The results of this study show that the VN-PIN intervention gives parents a voice and allows them to recognize and reflect on their own parenting behaviour, thereby contributing to mutual exchanges in a supportive community. The conclusion of this study is that the VN-PIN is a useful intervention that social work professionals can use to foster dialogues about parenting within diverse contexts in super-diverse neighbourhoods. The intervention fosters a supportive structure to share experiences of various community members. Future research is needed to further evaluate the experiences and satisfaction of community members with the intervention.     

Inequities in Higher Education: Issues and Promising Practices in a World Ambivalent about Affirmative Action

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the legality of race-based affirmative action at universities in 2003. Although the decisions affirmed the legality of considering race in college admissions decisions, their long-term effects are not entirely clear. They neither resolved conflicts nor solved problems affirmative action was intended to address, namely, disparities in educational outcomes between Whites and ethnic/racial minorities. Although disparities have diminished since 1965, policies and practices to sustain and further increase diversity in higher education without affirmative action are needed. This article provides historical and conceptual grounding for this JSI issue, which examines approaches for attaining campus diversity. Collectively, the issue provides approaches for increasing diversity as well as strategies for managing and benefiting from diversity in postsecondary environments.     

Etherapy: A Training Program for Development of Clinical Skills in Distance Psychotherapy

ABSTRACT

This article describes a project by the Virtual Teaching and Cyberpsychology Laboratory of the National Autonomous University of Mexico developed to (1) implement a teaching program for clinical psychology students to learn therapeutic skills in providing online psychological services; (2) evaluate the students' acquisition of knowledge and skills in diagnosis via the Internet, case formulation of treatment, and adherence to treatment protocols; and (3) incorporate technologies for creating training settings and online professional services in order to develop the students' clinical competency in this treatment modality. A pilot study was conducted with 17 clinical psychology students in the first phase of the teaching program and 6 students during the second phase. Preliminary results indicate that students increased knowledge of Internet-based clinical interventions and improved in clinical skills. It is necessary to continue the evaluation of the teaching program with larger samples, and further research is suggested.     

Personal networks of prisoners prior to incarceration: A comparison with the general Dutch population

This study examines inmates’ core discussion network prior to their incarceration. The core discussion network consists of the immediate social circle of relatively strong ties. The aims of the study are twofold: (1) to describe inmates’ core discussion network prior to their incarceration in terms of network structure, relationship quality and embedded socioeconomic resources; (2) to compare inmates’ core discussion network with the core discussion network of the general Dutch population. Data are analyzed from the Prison Project (n = 1909) and the Survey of the Social Networks of the Dutch (n = 394). Compared with the general Dutch population, prior to incarceration, prisoners generally have a core discussion network that is similar to or even better with respect to network structure and relationship quality. However, prisoners’ core discussion network members seem to lack socioeconomic resources.     

Counterdiagonal/nonpositive tail dependence in Vine copula constructions: application to portfolio management

Statistical Methods & Applications - Accurately modelling the dependence structure between financial assets in a portfolio optimization framework has attracted growing attention in statistical...     

The longitudinal development of students' well-being in adolescence: The role of perceived teacher autonomy support

Although a decline in adolescents' well-being has repeatedly been reported, longitudinal evidence for this development is rare and time-varying factors like teacher autonomy support that could be associated with this trend have sparsely been investigated. Therefore, the present study examined how the temporal development of perceived autonomy support from their German language arts teachers is related to changes in four different facets of students' well-being. Longitudinal data from 3446 adolescents from Germany (N_Schools = 178) on five measurement points (Grades 5–9) were analyzed using latent growth curve models. Satisfaction with school, enjoyment of school, and self-rated health decreased over time, while social integration remained stable. Perceived teacher autonomy support also declined between Grades 5 and 9. Furthermore, baseline levels of perceived teacher autonomy support and facets of well-being were positively related. Finally and most importantly, our results indicated that changes in perceived teacher autonomy support were positively associated with the development of satisfaction with school, enjoyment of school, and self-rated health, but not social integration. The findings suggest that perceived teacher autonomy support plays an important role in the development of students' well-being in adolescence.     

Bounds on Average and Quantile Treatment Effects on Duration Outcomes Under Censoring,Selection, and Noncompliance

Abstract

We consider the problem of assessing the effects of a treatment on duration outcomes using data from a randomized evaluation with noncompliance. For such settings, we derive nonparametric sharp bounds for average and quantile treatment effects addressing three pervasive problems simultaneously: self-selection into the spell of interest, endogenous censoring of the duration outcome, and noncompliance with the assigned treatment. Ignoring any of these issues could yield biased estimates of the effects. Notably, the proposed bounds do not impose the independent censoring assumption—which is commonly used to address censoring but is likely to fail in important settings—or exclusion restrictions to address endogeneity of censoring and selection. Instead, they employ monotonicity and stochastic dominance assumptions. To illustrate the use of these bounds we assess the effects of the Job Corps (JC) training program on its participants’ last complete employment spell duration. Our estimated bounds suggest that JC participation may increase the average duration of the last complete employment spell before week 208 after randomization by at least 5.6 log points (5.8%) for individuals who comply with their treatment assignment and experience a complete employment spell whether or not they enrolled in JC. The estimated quantile treatment effects suggest the impacts may be heterogeneous, and strengthen our conclusions based on the estimated average effects.