The use of digital media: To support and enhance vulnerable children’s perspectives,voices and choices

The article reports findings from a study that explored the potential of digital media to create new possibilities for professional caregivers to encounter 10 vulnerable children (7–17 years old) as subjects (rather than objects) and participants in their own lives. Five professionals received training in media pedagogy and experimented with new ways to communicate with children. Digital communication was found to expand the children's ability to engage in dialogue. Professionals need to find the courage to engage in digital communication on a child's terms as it helps generate a relationship that offers children new opportunities for raising their voices.     

Helmut K. Anheier and Stefan Toepler (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Nonprofit Management

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

The Enduring Significance of Ethno-Racial Inequalities in Poverty in the U.S., 1993–2017

Population Research and Policy Review - Ethno-racial inequality in poverty is an enduring but misunderstood problem. Most prior research relies on the flawed official poverty measure, data with...     

Nested or Networked? Future Directions for Ecological Systems Theory

Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory (EST) is among the most widely adopted theoretical frameworks for studying individuals in ecological contexts. In its traditional formulation, different levels of ecological systems are viewed as nested within one another. In this article, we use Simmel's notion of intersecting social circles and Bronfenbrenner's earlier writing on social networks to develop an alternative ‘networked’ model that instead views ecological systems as an overlapping arrangement of structures, each directly or indirectly connected to the others by the direct and indirect social interactions of their participants. We redefine each of the systems discussed by EST—micro, meso, exo, macro, and chrono—based on patterns of social interaction, and then illustrate how this alternative model might be applied in the classic context of the developing child. We conclude by discussing future directions for how the networked model of EST can be applied as a conceptual framework, arguing that this approach offers developmental researchers with a more precise and flexible way to think about ecological contexts. We also offer some initial suggestions for moving a networked EST model from theory to method.     

Outranking methods for multicriterion decision making: Arrow’s and Raynaud’s conjecture

 Outranking methods constitute a class of ordinal ranking algorithms for multicriterion decision making. This paper is concerned with four such methods: K?hler’s primal and dual algorithms, and Arrow–Raynaud’s primal and dual algorithms. Arrow and Raynaud made the conjecture that these four methods yield the totality of “prudent orders” whenever the outranking matrix has the “constant sum” property. This paper shows that their conjecture is not valid. Received: May 29, 1995/Accepted: November 13, 1995     

ANALYZING COMOVEMENTS IN HOUSING PRICES USING VINE COPULAS

Prior to the housing crisis, the Gaussian copula provided the basis for estimates of the degree of diversification of structured mortgage‐based securities. The Gaussian copula's popularity stemmed not only from its link to the familiar normal distribution, but also from the fact that, unlike other copula‐based models, it readily extends to higher dimensions. But the Gaussian copula has asymptotic independence, such that events, regardless of the strength of their correlation, become independent if one pushes far enough into the tails. Instead, this article forms multivariate models of housing price comovements using vine copulas. These more flexible models not only fit the data better, but they also uncover far stronger correlations between housing price movements, especially during extreme market swings. (JEL G21, C32, C51)     

Book Review: Sigrid Betzelt and Rudolph Bauer,Nonprofit-Organisationen als Arbeitgeber,Leske+Budrich,Opladen, 2000, 116 pp.

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -