Common Factor Analysis versus Principal Component Analysis: A Comparison of Loadings by Means of Simulations

Common factor analysis (CFA) and principal component analysis (PCA) are widely used multivariate techniques. Using simulations, we compared CFA with PCA loadings for distortions of a perfect cluster configuration. Results showed that nonzero PCA loadings were higher and more stable than nonzero CFA loadings. Compared to CFA loadings, PCA loadings correlated weakly with the true factor loadings for underextraction, overextraction, and heterogeneous loadings within factors. The pattern of differences between CFA and PCA was consistent across sample sizes, levels of loadings, principal axis factoring versus maximum likelihood factor analysis, and blind versus target rotation.     

Parental reaction towards radicalization in young people

This paper focuses on radicalization from a parenting perspective; we propose an approach that sees radicalization as a possibility in adolescent development, and as part of the interaction with the adolescent's social environment and socialization. The aim of the study is to discover how parents react when their adolescent develops extreme ideals. Using 55 in‐depth interviews with young people who have extreme ideals and their parents, the parental reactions towards these ideals are explored. Subsequently, the reactions are categorized according to two dimensions (control and support). This study shows how parents struggle when confronted with radicalization and shift to less demanding responses due to powerlessness, dissociation and parental uncertainty.     

Using work, health and sick leave to predict work disability

In the Netherlands, a situation has developed in which there is one permanently disabled person for every seven to eight people active in the workforce. This is an economic emergency, for which countermeasures have been taken. The employer is made in large part financially responsible for employees' sickness absence and work disability and, at the same time, is obliged to use the professional support of a Health and Safety Service (HSS). It stands to reason that in this situation, making use of the HSS, the employer is motivated to prevent sickness absence and disablement of employees as effectively as possible. Preventing work disability critically depends on being able to predict disability through early identification of the future disabled. In order to develop a prediction procedure at the individual level, the present prospective study was conducted. Some 3,500 employees were followed for up to five years. Predictors of disability were sought among employees'opinions on their health, work, and working conditions as measured by the Questionnaire on Work and Health (QWH), and sick leave data. The QWH items are concerned with health, work and job circumstances. As expected, most (two thirds) cases of disability occur in male employees aged 50 and over. Disability in this group is strongly predicted by complaints about work strain, health, and illness behaviour, with the odds being in the 4 to 6 range. The odds can be raised to over 10 by including sick leave data. These predictions warrant individual preventive interventions. The results, taken together, speak for the predictive validity of the questionnaire and its usefulness to occupational health services in combating disability.     

The perspectives of young children in care about their circumstances and implications for social work practice

Recent reviews of research regarding children in care have concluded that there remains little research which specifically focuses on young children. This paper presents the findings of research carried out with a sample of young children in care (aged 4–7 years) regarding their perspectives of their circumstances. The findings reveal that they have deeply held views regarding living with risk; removal from their families; unresolved feelings of guilt and loss; and not being listened to. This paper considers the implications of these findings for social work practice. It concludes by stressing the capacity of young children in care to express their perspectives, and the importance of practitioners seeking these views and incorporating them into assessment and decision‐making processes.     

Ergonomic risk assessment with DesignCheck to evaluate assembly work in different phases of the vehicle development process

Occupational hazards exist, if the design of the work situation is not in accordance with ergonomic design principles. At assembly lines ergonomics is applied to the design of work equipment and tasks and to work organisation. The ignoring of ergonomic principles in planning and design of assembly work leads to unfavourable working posture, action force and material handling. Disorders of the musculoskeletal system are of a common occurrence throughout Europe. Musculoskeletal disorders are a challenge against the background of disabled workers. The changes in a worker's capability have to be regarded in the conception of redesigned and new assembly lines. In this way ergonomics becomes progressively more important in planning and design of vehicles: The objective of ergonomic design in different stages of the vehicles development process is to achieve an optimal adaptation of the assembly work to workers. Hence the ergonomic screening tool "Design Check" (DC) was developed to identify ergonomic deficits in workplace layouts. The screening-tool is based on the current ergonomic state of the art in the design of physical work and relevant EU legal requirements. It was tested within a federal German research project at selected work stations at the assembly lines at Dr.-Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG / Stuttgart. Meanwhile the application of the screening-tool DC is transferred in other parts of the Porsche AG, Stuttgart. It is also realized as an ergonomic standard method to perform assembly work in different phases of the vehicle development process.     

Social workers' reflexive understandings of their “everyday” communications with children

Over the past two decades, the use of ethnographic research methods, in combination with a range of discursive, conversational, and multimodal analytical approaches, have provided vivid accounts of the complex nature of social workers' everyday communication. This paper discusses the potential and the problems of combining a video‐stimulated recall methodology with an explicit theoretical framework, in order to generate critical reflexive “insider” accounts of social workers' direct encounters with children. The framework employed was based on an adaptation of Goffman's concepts of “framing” and “footing,” which were integrated into an analytical process designed to theorize social workers' critiques regarding the nature of their communication with children. Three detailed case exemplars are used to demonstrate the potential of this methodology to explore the “delicate” agency required by social workers in the practice of authentic communication in complex professional inquiries with children. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the theoretical and practical issues associated with utilizing reflexive methodologies in professional contexts.     

The Intrusiveness of Home-Based Work on Family Life

This research is intended to ascertain factors related to intrusion of home-based work into the life of the family, and identify the relative impact of characteristics of the home-based worker, his or her family, and the business on intrusions. Logistic regression was used to examine three types of intrusions. Seeing clients at home more than once a week is almost exclusively a function of the characteristics of the work; receiving telephone calls daily and frequently sharing space are functions of the characteristics of the work and of the worker. Understanding the nature of intrusions can help advise families contemplating home-based work and help home-working families find a balance between family demands and work.