Self-Other Agreement in Happiness and Life-Satisfaction: The Role of Personality Traits

The aim of the current study is to examine the role of personality traits in self-other agreement in happiness and life-satisfaction which are often seen as the essential components of subjective well-being (SWB). Self-reports on the SWB measure and the NEO Personality Inventory-3 were obtained from 1,251 Estonians aged between 18 and 86 years. Other-ratings on the same measures were provided by knowledgeable informants. The measure of SWB showed significant self-other agreement, r = .55 (p = .000). We found this agreement to be transmitted (i.e., mediated) through the self- and other-rated personality facet scores of N3 (Depression) and E6 (Positive Emotions), Z = 2.8001–11.7142. The findings suggest that when an informant evaluates someone’s happiness or life-satisfaction, his/her rating is inflated by the image held about the personality of this person. Furthermore, self-reported SWB reflects, to some extent, what other people think about one’s personality.     

Social Optimal Location of Facilities with Fixed Servers,Stochastic Demand,and Congestion

We consider two capacity choice scenarios for the optimal location of facilities with fixed servers, stochastic demand, and congestion. Motivating applications include virtual call centers, consisting of geographically dispersed centers, walk‐in health clinics, motor vehicle inspection stations, automobile emissions testing stations, and internal service systems. The choice of locations for such facilities influences both the travel cost and waiting times of users. In contrast to most previous research, we explicitly embed both customer travel/connection and delay costs in the objective function and solve the location–allocation problem and choose facility capacities simultaneously. The choice of capacity for a facility that is viewed as a queueing system with Poisson arrivals and exponential service times could mean choosing a service rate for the servers (Scenario 1) or choosing the number of servers (Scenario 2). We express the optimal service rate in closed form in Scenario 1 and the (asymptotically) optimal number of servers in closed form in Scenario 2. This allows us to eliminate both the number of servers and the service rates from the optimization problems, leading to tractable mixed‐integer nonlinear programs. Our computational results show that both problems can be solved efficiently using a Lagrangian relaxation optimization procedure.     

Webster‐Stratton Incredible Years Basic Parent Programme (IY) in child care placements: residential staff carers' satisfaction results

The aim of the present study was to investigate residential child care staff satisfaction with their involvement in the Webster‐Stratton Incredible Years Basic Parent Programme (IY). In an exploratory, not randomized study, 27 professionals from two different short‐term Portuguese residential child care centres (IG1, n = 15; IG2; n = 12) completed weekly IY evaluations and an overall satisfaction questionnaire at the end of their participation in the IY intervention. The weekly level of satisfaction was assessed with regard to each of the programme's components (content, DVDs, group leaders, group discussion). At the last session, they filled out a questionnaire aimed to evaluate the levels of satisfaction regarding the programme overall, the teaching format, the group leader(s) and the usefulness of specific educational techniques they learned. Data indicated that residential staff carers were highly satisfied with the weekly sessions and with the overall usefulness of the intervention programme. Results are discussed in terms of implications and future research directions.     

A purely non-cooperative model of divided government

In this paper I describe an institutional structure in which there are two branches of the government: the executive one, elected by plurality rule, and the legislative one elected by proportional rule. The resulting policy outcome is described through a compromise between these two branches. Given the presidential result, legislative elections are characterized by essentially an unique Nash equilibrium such that any voter on the left of the corresponding policy outcome votes for the leftist party and any voter on the right votes for the rightist party. Moreover, this equilibrium can be obtained by a process of iterated elimination of dominated strategies. The whole game is then solved by backward induction and dominance arguments.I thank Francesco De Sinopoli, Jean-Francois Mertens, Howard Rosenthal and Jacques Thisse for very helpful discussions.     

'You'll never walk alone': CCTV surveillance, order and neo-liberal rule in Liverpool city centre

This paper is concerned to chart the establishment and uses of CCTV within the location of Liverpool city centre. In doing this the paper seeks to contextualize CCTV within contemporary 'partnership' approaches to regeneration which are reshaping the material and discursive form of the city. Thus CCTV schemes along with other security initiatives are understood as social ordering strategies emanating from within locally powerful networks which are seeking to define and enact orderly regeneration projects. In focusing on the normative aspects of CCTV, the paper raises questions concerning the efficacy of understanding contemporary forms of 'social ordering practices' primarily in terms of technical rationalities while neglecting other, more material and ideological processes involved in the construction of social order.     

Aggregate age-at-marriage patterns from individual mate-search heuristics

The distribution of age at first marriage shows well-known strong regularities across many countries and recent historical periods. We accounted for these patterns by developing agent-based models that simulate the aggregate behavior of individuals who are searching for marriage partners. Past models assumed fully rational agents with complete knowledge of the marriage market; our simulated agents used psychologically plausible simple heuristic mate search rules that adjust aspiration levels on the basis of a sequence of encounters with potential partners. Substantial individual variation must be included in the models to account for the demographically observed age-at-marriage patterns.     

Advocacy for Black and Minority Ethnic Communities: Understandings and Expectations

Recent policy has promoted ‘advocacy’ as a meansof promoting social justice for many disadvantaged groups. Yet‘advocacy’ is a contested concept, and the understandingsthat members of disadvantaged groups themselves have of advocacyhave rarely been explored. Previous research indicates thatunderstandings may vary considerably. Using empirical evidencefrom research conducted in Glasgow, Scotland, this paper examinesthe understandings and expectations of ‘advocacy’held by black and minority ethnic (BME) service providers andpotential service users. The BME service providers believedthat they were offering advocacy, and did so in the contextof a marginalized position for their services. The BME communitymembers supported the development of advocacy services, buttheir own marginalization was in many ways reinforced by servicesthey were already using. They had clear ideas about appropriateadvocacy services for their situation. These ideas were groundedin their current situation, and did not necessarily conformto dominant ideas about advocacy. In conclusion, the prospectsfor successful advocacy are assessed.     

Relationships Between Parents’ And Children’s Salient Values For Future And Children’s Overall Life Satisfaction. A Comparison Across Countries

In this paper, a model is set forth relating (a) overall life satisfaction of children to children’s values and (b) children’s values to parents’ values. Using confirmatory factor analysis models three dimensions of values (materialistic values, capacities and knowledge values and interpersonal relationship values) consistently emerged in 5 countries (Brazil, South Africa, Norway, Spain and India) for both parents and children. There was a considerable amount of missing data, mainly because the parent’s questionnaire was often not returned. Full information maximum likelihood estimators with missing data were thus used.Multiple-group analyses were next performed to assess factor invariance of the three value dimensions across the five countries for both parents and children. This implies testing the equality of factor loadings and intercepts across groups. This equality is required to ensure that factors have the same interpretation in all groups, which is necessary when comparing any aspect of the factor distribution across groups.The only two countries for which the interpretation of value dimensions was invariant for both parents and children were Brazil and Spain. The results of other countries could thus not be compared. Multiple-group structural equation models revealed that both parents and children scored higher on most values in Brazil than in Spain. In both countries, each child value dimension was only significantly predicted by the same value dimension of the parents. R-squares were in the 4–12% range and slightly higher in Brazil. The only value dimension that had some effect on overall life satisfaction was capacities and knowledge, which was so in both countries.Acknowledgements are due to the country project directors and their associates Per Egil Mjaavatn (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway), Usha Nayar (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India), Irene Rizzini (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Rose September (Western Cape University, South Africa) and Ferran Casas (Catalan Network of Child Researchers – XCIII – in co-operation with the University of Girona, Spain) for permitting us to use part of their project and to Childwatch International, Oslo, for sponsorship.     

Predicting burrowing owl flight trajectories in urban environments

Urban Ecosystems - It is important to understand how animals respond to changes in landscape structure, especially when considering habitat alteration and urbanization. Using the burrowing owl...