Berufungscoaching Systemisches Coaching in Phasen der (beruflichen) Neuorientierung

Vocation-coaching — Coaching in phases of personal reorientationA model for a coaching-method, the “Vocation-coaching” is presented, which was used successfully in the last two years. The main aspects of the model, namely discovering — strengthen — transfer, are described. The coaching-techniques which are used within the vocation-coaching are compared to the techniques of the conventional coaching. The target group of the vocation-coaching are individuals at turning points in their lives, especially at turning points in their professions. The needs of these persons are described and compared to the potential use of the method of the vocation-coaching.     

A Swedish Prevalence Study of Deaf People Using Sign Language: a prerequisite for Deaf studies

A widely used estimate claims that one per thousand individuals is deaf, but few recent studies exist on the actual prevalence. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of deaf people, defined as deaf individuals who use sign language as their main mode of communication, in the county of Scania, Sweden. To achieve high validity, data were collected from a large variety of sources including both public institutions and voluntary associations, working with deaf people. The study demonstrates a prevalence of 0.7 per thousand inhabitants, a figure considerably lower than the traditional estimate. One interpretation of this finding is that the prevalence of deafness is on the decrease. Another interpretation reflects the problem to define deafness. As prevalence figures vary with the definition used, one single estimate valid for the prevalence of deafness is not possible to make. We therefore question the traditional one-per-thousand estimate of deafness.     

Emancipation, crime and problem behavior of women: A perspective from Germany

The debate on women and crime has been dominated by two paradigms during the last decades: The “power-paradigm” predicted a steep rise of female crime rates, as a result of the thorough change of gender roles in this period, while the “victim paradigm” directed attention to rising rates of alcohol and drug addiction as well as mental health problems and suicides among women. Both paradigms have been linked by the proposition that the low involvement of women in crime was compensated by their higher rates of all types of passive problem behavior like depression or addiction. In this study, which covers the period from 1965 to 1990, both paradigms are examined by analysing female and male crime rates, as well as respective rates of alcohol and drug addiction, mental disorders, and suicides for all of Germany (before reunification), an urban metropolitan region and a rural state in the North of Germany. The results clearly show that both paradigms were wrong in exaggerating a negative impact of the process of emancipation. Until the early 1980s, female crime rates as well as proportions of other types of problem behavior only slightly gained compared to men, but since 1985 this trend has levelled off and has been inverted, most visible for crime rates. In contrast to both paradigms, these results show that women profited enormously in terms of mental health and other problem behaviors from the opportunities opening up in the process of emancipation. They clearly lend more support to two more recent theories, the “power-control” theory by Hagan and the “control-balance” theory by Tittle that both stress potential gains for women. Susanne Karstedt is an asociologist and criminologist. She is Professor of Criminology at the Department of Criminology of Keele University, Great Britain. In the field of gender studies she has pbulished on female criminality, problem behavior of women in social crises (postwar Germany), on the definition of social problems by the women's movement in the 19th century from a, comparative perspective and on the women's movement from a historical and comparative perspective.     

The effect of product variety on purchase probability

Regarding the effect of product variety on purchase probability, there exist findings which demonstrate a positive effect of variety for small assortments and a negative effect of variety for large assortments. Despite these results, little evidence exists about the causal mechanism of this effect. We conduct a field study among German consumer electronics customers to investigate the previously proposed constructs of anticipated product utility, anticipated regret and evaluation costs. The results suggest that anticipated regret and evaluation costs play a powerful role in explaining the negative link between variety and purchase probability for high variety assortments. Anticipated product utility on the other hand serves to explain part of the positive causality for low variety assortments. The results obtained give rise to recommendations for the planning of assortments.

Can TV shows promote acceptance of sexual and ethnic minorities? A literature review of television effects on diversity attitudes

Until recently, western TV programming rarely featured sexual or ethnic minority members; if present, their representation was mostly negative. Increasingly, though, diverse characters start to play likeable protagonists as well. Thus, television can promote negative diversity attitudes and, at other times, positive ones. The present article reviews and connects theories and research from sociology, psychology, and media and communication studies to clarify the role of television in diversity attitudes formation and to identify directions for future research. Specifically, two research questions are addressed. First, through which processes does television influence diversity attitudes? Second, what features of TV shows contribute to positive diversity attitudes formation among viewers, according to different theories of television effects? Findings indicate that television can entrench existing negative diversity attitudes through the echo chamber phenomenon. However, TV content featuring numerous, likeable, attractive, and typical minority characters that have friendly interactions with the rest of society can promote positive diversity attitudes. Future research should study openness to view content with minority characters, examine the effects of the complete video media diets, check media effects in non-western countries, explore media effects in longitudinal studies and investigate what constitutes attractive, likeable, and typical representation of ethnic and sexual minorities.     

Mother–infant Interaction Quality and Infants' Ability to Encode Actions as Goal‐directed

The current study investigated the relationship between mother–child interaction quality and infants' ability to interpret actions as goal‐directed at 7 months in a sample of 37 dyads. Interaction quality was assessed in a free play interaction using two distinct methods: one assessed the overall affective quality (emotional availability), and one focused on the mother's proclivity to treat her infant as an intentional agent (mind‐mindedness). Furthermore, infants' ability to interpret human actions as goal‐directed was assessed. Analyses revealed that only maternal emotional availability, and not maternal mind‐mindedness, was related to infants' goal‐encoding ability. This link remained stable even when controlling for child temperament, working memory, and maternal education. These findings provide first evidence that emotionally available caregiving promotes social‐cognitive development in preverbal infants.     

Postnatal quality of life — A content analysis of qualitative results to the Mother-Generated Index

Background

The Mother-Generated Index (MGI) assesses postnatal quality of life (QoL) without providing a predefined checklist, thus offering mothers the opportunity to identify areas of life affected by having a baby.

Entropic Latent Variable Integration via Simulation

This paper introduces a general method to convert a model defined by moment conditions that involve both observed and unobserved variables into equivalent moment conditions that involve only observable variables. This task can be accomplished without introducing infinite‐dimensional nuisance parameters using a least favorable entropy‐maximizing distribution. We demonstrate, through examples and simulations, that this approach covers a wide class of latent variables models, including some game‐theoretic models and models with limited dependent variables, interval‐valued data, errors‐in‐variables, or combinations thereof. Both point‐ and set‐identified models are transparently covered. In the latter case, the method also complements the recent literature on generic set‐inference methods by providing the moment conditions needed to construct a generalized method of moments‐type objective function for a wide class of models. Extensions of the method that cover conditional moments, independence restrictions, and some state‐space models are also given.     

Einkommenseinbu?en durch Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland:

The article analyses the consequences of unemployment for earned income after reentering employment. The magnitude of these effects and their changes over the life course are described on the basis of existing research as well as own empirical analyses. The latter are based on administrative data from the German Pension Insurance (Versicherungskontenstichprobe VSKT 2006). Since previous studies differ with regard to both, sample definitions and the applied methods of causal analysis, our own empirical analysis of age- and gender-specific effects is based upon various methods of analysis while using a common dataset. We can show that income and wage penalties due to unemployment increase significantly with age. Moreover, women??s overall financial losses are higher than men??s, especially in the youngest age group.