Emotionen und Lebenszufriedenheit in der „Erlebnisgesellschaft“

According to sociological diagnoses of present time, in many western countries a postmodern consumer, entertainment, and event culture has emerged. This paper draws especially on Schulze’s volume on the event society (?Erlebnisgesellschaft“, 1992). On a theoretical level, it is argued that people living in a consumer and event society would act more and more inward oriented: They increasingly strive for pleasing experiences, a high level of well-being, and seek positive affects. Furthermore, they ever more regard their emotions as a criterion for the assessment of their own life. By using data from the European Social Survey 2006, this latter assumption is examined in a comparative perspective for 23 European countries. The findings show that in all countries considered previously experienced positive (negative) emotions lead to an increase (decrease) in people’s life satisfaction. Emotions influence a persons’ life satisfaction substantially. However, multilevel analyses demonstrate that this effect varies between countries: The more a society resembles the ideal type of a consumer and event society, the larger is the impact of a person’s previously experienced emotions on the assessment of his or her own life. Hence, in a consumer and event society life satisfaction catches a strong hedonistic shade.     

Parenting Discrepancy and Child Development in Chinese Context

Although parent–child discrepant perception of the family has been increasingly noted in the west, pertinent research is limited in Chinese societies. In addition, prior pertinent studies predominantly treated parent–child discrepant effects as independent of the general and aggregate family context, which are in fact inseparable. Furthermore, these studies tended to either look at the positive side of child outcomes or those negative ones. The present study, based on a community sample of 223 Chinese parent–child dyads, attempted to examine effects of parent–child discrepancy in effective parenting practices on both children’s positive, i.e. self-control and other perspective taking behavior, and negative outcomes, i.e. internalizing and externalizing problems, directly or indirectly through the mediator of children’s self-concept at the aggregate effective parenting context. Results largely support harmful effects of parent–child discrepancy in effective parenting on the child outcomes directly or indirectly through children’s self-concept. Besides, aggregate effective parenting practices are found to robustly contribute to the child outcomes directly and indirectly through children’s self-concept, even taking parent–child discrepant effects into account. What’s more important, the former is significantly moderated by the latter for its effects on the child outcomes, explicating the conditional nature of parent–child discrepant effects on child development. Contributions and implications of the current study applied in Chinese culture as well as future study directions are also discussed.     

BB see: Transparency legislation and public discussions of wage inequality

Disparities in compensation persist between men and women. Wage transparency, which enables workers to compare their compensation to what others receive in their organization, can be an important tool for redressing specific intra‐firm disparities tied to discriminatory processes. Drawing on newspaper reports about gender pay differentials, we provide the first analysis of whether a public disclosure of pay transparency corresponds to a shift in broader public discourse, as represented by news coverage. Thematic analysis of newspaper coverage of the gender pay gap in Britain before and after the high‐profile release of BBC wage data in 2017 reveals a shift from choice‐based explanations to those emphasizing structural inequality and discrimination. The findings suggest that wage transparency coupled with news media attention may not only identify inequitable pay in firms, but also work more broadly to create space to discuss discriminatory practices and redress for pay disparities.     

Wie die Mutter, so die Tochter?

In analyses that deal with occupational mobility the question as to how the mother’s occupational status influences the process of occupational status attainment usually is passed over. Here we formulate hypotheses on over-time and life course dynamics of her influence: mothers’ (and fathers’) status transfer for cohorts of daughters born between 1927 and 1965 and additionally for labour market careers. Sons are excluded in the analytical model because the mother’s job appears not to be important for their job status locations. The hypotheses are tested in a cluster adjusted regression analysis. The German database contains 4043 job spells of 1760 women and the two pooled Dutch sets of data include 4513 job spells of 1623 female respondents. Our results show that in recent decennia the influence of the occupational status of both parents on their daughter’s job status has decreased in a similar fashion. We conclude that a continuing trend towards a decrease of social inequality in the process of occupational status attainment is applicable to the influence of the father and the mother. Over the course of the daughter’s career, however, her occupational status becomes increasingly related to that of her mother. This result indicates that the occupational role model of the mother seems to be important for understanding patterns of female occupational immobility.     

Improving service approaches and outcomes for people with complex needs through consultation and involvement

Services have not always catered well for people with complex needs. The term 'complex needs' is used here to signify people who have cognitive impairments and communication difficulties that present major challenges for getting one's views and preferences heard and understood, and/or who may not fit into traditional categories of service provision. Current developments in policy and practice, such as the single shared assessment process, emphasise inclusion through user involvement. There is a danger, however, that people with complex needs will be seen as too difficult to involve, and will therefore remain effectively excluded from the decision-making process and from the opportunity to influence service provision. This article explores the current situation in relation to ensuring genuine involvement for people with complex needs, highlights obstacles to progress and examples of good practice, and identifies future directions for research and practice.     

A hierarchical model for space–time surveillance data on meningococcal disease incidence

Summary. We describe a model-based approach to analyse space–time surveillance data on meningococcal disease. Such data typically comprise a number of time series of disease counts, each representing a specific geographical area. We propose a hierarchical formulation, where latent parameters capture temporal, seasonal and spatial trends in disease incidence. We then add—for each area—a hidden Markov model to describe potential additional (autoregressive) effects of the number of cases at the previous time point. Different specifications for the functional form of this autoregressive term are compared which involve the number of cases in the same or in neighbouring areas. The two states of the Markov chain can be interpreted as representing an 'endemic' and a 'hyperendemic' state. The methodology is applied to a data set of monthly counts of the incidence of meningococcal disease in the 94 départements of France from 1985 to 1997. Inference is carried out by using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation techniques in a fully Bayesian framework. We emphasize that a central feature of our model is the possibility of calculating—for each region and each time point—the posterior probability of being in a hyperendemic state, adjusted for global spatial and temporal trends, which we believe is of particular public health interest.     

高等教育制度和教师教育——墨西哥国立师范大学与墨西哥的基础教育教师培训

促进教育公平和提高教育质量的关键在于教师教育的变革。新制定的教育政策的指导方针是把教师的专业发展作为教育成就目标达成以及提高不同社会经济和文化状况下的学生学业成就的中心。高等院校中的教师教育机构应当责无旁贷地承担起教师教育改革的重任。墨西哥国立师范大学必须在充分了解当前基础教育教师现状、本校教师教育优势和问题的基础上,通过内部改革,推动学术的发展,提供优质教育,引领墨西哥的教师教育改革。