An integrated system of engaging social workers and community volunteers in social care for the elderly: case studies in Taiwan

Integrating volunteers into social care is widely expected but rarely successful in practice. This paper discusses how the Community Care Centre Plan organising community volunteers to provide services to the elderly in Taiwan. This plan successfully integrated social workers and volunteers in a national system to offer service in local communities, showing a systemic practice of community care and a unique case of community-based and volunteer-based service. The purposes of this paper are to introduce the programme design and to understand how to integrate the mission of social workers and volunteers’ performance. The governmental policy and requirements, the role of social workers and the provision of voluntary community service which contributed to form the system were examined in this paper.     

Measuring Sharedness of Team-Related Knowledge: Design and Validation of a Shared Mental Model Instrument

Many researchers have explored how people share and construct similar mental models in teams. They have claimed that successful team performance depends on a shared mental model of team members about task, team, equipment and situation. Most of the literature has illustrated simplified relationships between a team's mental model and their performance without a valid instrument addressing the confined and relevant constructs of a shared mental model. This paper describes the instrument development steps and the conceptual framework for factors associated with shared mental models. After development and refinement, the instrument was finalized for use to measure team-related knowledge. The final instrument consists of 42 items that are linked to the five emergent factors of shared mental models including general task and team knowledge, general task and communication skills, attitude toward teammates and task, team dynamics and interactions, and team resources and working environment.     

Improving TAIEX forecasting using fuzzy time series with Box–Cox power transformation

Box–Cox together with our newly proposed transformation were implemented in three different real world empirical problems to alleviate noisy and the volatility effect of them. Consequently, a new domain was constructed. Subsequently, universe of discourse for transformed data was established and an approach for calculating effective length of the intervals was then proposed. Considering the steps above, the initial forecasts were performed using frequently used fuzzy time series (FTS) methods on transformed data. Final forecasts were retrieved from initial forecasted values by proper inverse operation. Comparisons of the results demonstrate that the proposed method produced more accurate forecasts compared with existing FTS on original data.     

The Eating Disorders NOS Diagnostic Profile Among College Women

Abstract

The authors examined a proposed profile of eating-related behaviors, associated features, developmental issues, and help-seeking behavior among college women, using an eating disorder response program. The most common symptom scenario was a pattern of regular binge eating, together with daily exercise and occasional purging. The most common associated features were distressing or dysfunctional overconcern about body image and self-esteem, usually with day-to-day stress and intermittent depression. The women who fit this pattern also presented developmental issues of perfectionism, conflictual relationships with parents, and struggles for independence; and they tended to be ambivalent about seeking services. Implications for practice, including the need to develop a framework for eating disorder responses on campus that includes preventive programs and developmental interventions to target emerging and moderate concerns are discussed; limitations and the preliminary nature of the findings are explicated.     

The burdens of social capital: How socially-involved people dealt with stress after Hurricane Katrina

Research shows that those with greater social capital enjoy better physical and mental health. The current study illuminates a paradox of social capital which may afflict those involved in traumatic events. Several years of survey data reveal a dynamic picture of the link between social capital and stress following Hurricane Katrina. Results reveal that initially after Katrina, those who were more socially embedded carried the greatest load with respect to helping the displaced population, thus experiencing more stress. But over time, the most socially-involved then snapped back from their stressful experiences more rapidly than isolates. This confirms that over the course of stressful events, social involvement first exposes people to more stress, but as time passes, provides them a significant buffer against negative psychosocial experiences.     

Comment on “Constrained Optimization Approaches to Estimation of Structural Models”

We revisit the comparison of mathematical programming with equilibrium constraints (MPEC) and nested fixed point (NFXP) algorithms for estimating structural dynamic models by Su and Judd (2012). Their implementation of the nested fixed point algorithm used successive approximations to solve the inner fixed point problem (NFXP‐SA). We redo their comparison using the more efficient version of NFXP proposed by Rust (1987), which combines successive approximations and Newton–Kantorovich iterations to solve the fixed point problem (NFXP‐NK). We show that MPEC and NFXP are similar in speed and numerical performance when the more efficient NFXP‐NK variant is used.     

Benefits of Hybrid Lateral Transshipments in Multi‐Item Inventory Systems under Periodic Replenishment

Lateral transshipments are a method of responding to shortages of stock in a network of inventory‐holding locations. Conventional reactive approaches only seek to meet immediate shortages. The study proposes hybrid transshipments which exploit economies of scale by moving additional stock between locations to prevent future shortages in addition to meeting immediate ones. The setting considered is motivated by retailers who operate networks of outlets supplying car parts via a system of periodic replenishment. It is novel in allowing non‐stationary stochastic demand and general patterns of dependence between multiple item types. The generality of our work makes it widely applicable. We develop an easy‐to‐compute quasi‐myopic heuristic for determining how hybrid transshipments should be made. We obtain simple characterizations of the heuristic and demonstrate its strong cost performance in both small and large networks in an extensive numerical study.     

Inference on Causal Effects in a Generalized Regression Kink Design

We consider nonparametric identification and estimation in a nonseparable model where a continuous regressor of interest is a known, deterministic, but kinked function of an observed assignment variable. We characterize a broad class of models in which a sharp “Regression Kink Design” (RKD or RK Design) identifies a readily interpretable treatment‐on‐the‐treated parameter (Florens, Heckman, Meghir, and Vytlacil (2008)). We also introduce a “fuzzy regression kink design” generalization that allows for omitted variables in the assignment rule, noncompliance, and certain types of measurement errors in the observed values of the assignment variable and the policy variable. Our identifying assumptions give rise to testable restrictions on the distributions of the assignment variable and predetermined covariates around the kink point, similar to the restrictions delivered by Lee (2008) for the regression discontinuity design. Using a kink in the unemployment benefit formula, we apply a fuzzy RKD to empirically estimate the effect of benefit rates on unemployment durations in Austria.     

Frailty modelling approaches for semi-competing risks data

Lifetime Data Analysis - In the semi-competing risks situation where only a terminal event censors a non-terminal event, observed event times can be correlated. Recently, frailty models with an...