Telephone survey respondents' reactions to questions regarding interpersonal violence

Concerns have been raised regarding the appropriateness of asking about violence victimization in telephone interviews and whether asking such questions increases respondents' distress or risk for harm. However, no large-scale studies have evaluated the impact of asking such questions during a telephone interview. This study explored respondents' reactions to questions regarding violence in two large recently completed telephone surveys. After respondents were asked about violence, they were asked if they thought surveys should ask such questions and whether they felt upset or afraid because of the questions. In both surveys, the majority of respondents (regardless of their victimization history) were willing to answer questions about violence and were not upset or afraid because of the questions. More than 92% of respondents thought such questions should be asked. These results challenge commonly held beliefs and assumptions and provide some assurance to those concerned with the ethical collection of data on violent victimization.     

New Public Management Is Dead--Long Live Digital-Era Governance

The "new public management" (NPM) wave in public sector organizationalchange was founded on themes of disaggregation, competition,and incentivization. Although its effects are still workingthrough in countries new to NPM, this wave has now largely stalledor been reversed in some key "leading-edge" countries. Thisebbing chiefly reflects the cumulation of adverse indirect effectson citizens' capacities for solving social problems becauseNPM has radically increased institutional and policy complexity.The character of the post-NPM regime is currently being formed.We set out the case that a range of connected and informationtechnology–centered changes will be critical for the currentand next wave of change, and we focus on themes of reintegration,needs-based holism, and digitization changes. The overall movementincorporating these new shifts is toward "digital-era governance"(DEG), which involves reintegrating functions into the governmentalsphere, adopting holistic and needs-oriented structures, andprogressing digitalization of administrative processes. DEGoffers a perhaps unique opportunity to create self-sustainingchange, in a broad range of closely connected technological,organizational, cultural, and social effects. But there arealternative scenarios as to how far DEG will be recognized asa coherent phenomenon and implemented successfully.     

Using Generational Intelligence to Examine Community Care Work between Younger and Older Adults

Exploring the factors that contribute to sustainable forms of an intergenerational relationship is becoming an important conceptual and practical challenge, not least because of the growing need for an aged care workforce that is both motivated and suitably trained. Generational intelligence is a means of examining interaction between younger and older people which has been applied to community care settings. Dimensions of generational intelligence include recognising and valuing generational differences, finding common ground, plus negotiating social and practical outcomes from the situation. A case study plus a series of qualitative interviews are used to examine the value of this approach both as a means of exploring the processes involved in generational exchange and in providing recommendations for work preparation and training. It is suggested that intergenerational relations have been a missing factor in the understanding of sustainable care and that in future, service delivery should not simply be analysed as comprising professional and lay perspectives but also as containing generationally distinctive perspectives that require negotiation.     

Probabilistic linear solvers: a unifying view

Statistics and Computing - Several recent works have developed a new, probabilistic interpretation for numerical algorithms solving linear systems in which the solution is inferred in a Bayesian...     

The Social Backgrounds of Nazi Leaders: A Statistical Analysis of Political Elites in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933

This article compares the social backgrounds of Nazi leaders and representatives of democratic parties in the Weimar Republic. It does not advance any overarching new narrative on Nazism’s social origins, but rather aims to present a nuanced statistical picture of Weimar’s political elites. The results of this analysis are derived from an index of German members of parliament and from a new dataset, which has recently been collected from the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), Germany’s largest biographical encyclopaedia. Together, these two samples cover more than 2000 German politicians, industrialists, diplomats, political writers, academics, high state officials, and important journalists. This article reveals sociological differences between the politicians who led the Nazi party in parliament and those elites that promoted Nazism in the media, in academia, or within the German civil service. While Nazi politicians in the Reichstag were recruited from a variety of social classes, ranging from industrial workers to members of the aristocracy, National Socialist elites outside the parliament typically belonged to the Bildungsbürgertum and sociologically resembled the highly educated members of democratic and liberal parties. Overall, the picture of a generation of Nazi leaders emerges that was sociologically far more heterogeneous than is often recognized by historians.     

Storifying routines and routinising stories: A dualistic subject positioning analysis of controversies about constraints on patient autonomy

This paper uses subject positioning theory to explore how conflicts between autonomy and protection are managed in the justification of controversial care arrangements for patients with mental/neurological illness. Its basic argument is twofold: firstly, to justify or propose care arrangements at strategic or contentious moments, actors position illness as an actant and make it present in talk‐in‐interaction, exploiting alignments and misalignments between the there and then of reported events and the above and beyond of shared societal discourses to say what matters and what's to be done here and now; secondly, the introduction of authoritative voices from elsewhere involves imbricating narrative and routine sequences in order to prioritise different subjectivities. Dilemmas opposing autonomy and protection may seem less intractable if we adopt a corresponding perspective interplay between narrative and routine situational readings.     

Personal development plans supporting employee learning and perceived performance: the moderating role of self-directedness

Due to developments in the current dynamic business environment which is more global and competitive than ever, employees’ lifelong learning and the way organizations support their continuous development are pivotal. Many organizations introduce personal development plans (PDPs) to support employees’ learning, however, not always taking into account their personal characteristics. This study had a twofold purpose as it was designed to explore on the one hand the relationship between PDPs in the workplace with employee’s undertaking of learning activities and perceived performance, and on the other hand the possible moderating role of employee self-directedness on this relationship. For this study, data collected by means of a questionnaire at two different organizations were used, one organization foregoing profit and one non-profit activity. The results indicated significant positive relations between the individual supporting factor ‘employee learning and reflection’ and the undertaking of learning activities and perceived performance and between employee self-directedness and the undertaking of learning activities and perceived performance. The same accounted for the moderating effect of employee self-directedness on the interaction between learning and reflection and perceived performance. Some findings were surprising, nevertheless resulted in valuable insights and implications for practice.