Competencies and problem behaviors of children in family foster care: variations by kinship placement status and race

Formal kinship foster care is an increasingly common form of out-of-home placement, and several important distinctions between kinship care and non-relative foster care have been identified. The present study evaluated the behavior of kinship foster children in comparison to non-relative foster children and children in the general population. A geographically and ethnically diverse sample of foster children (N=240) was assessed for competence and problem behaviors using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL: Achenbach, 1991). Kinship foster children closely resembled children in the general population but differed significantly from their counterparts in non-relative foster care, who consistently scored lower on competence and higher on problem behaviors. Substantial proportions of non-relative foster children were in the clinical range on most CBCL measures, but kinship foster children were no more likely than children from the general population to score above clinical cut-offs. Differences between kinship and non-kinship foster children became less dramatic after accounting for child race and gender, which were both associated with kinship status. Child race had a strong main effect for almost all types of problem behaviors, with children of color showing significantly less problematic behavior. Discussion of these results centers on potential explanations for the observed variations in child behavior by kinship status and race.     

Racial segregation and the limits of international undergraduate student diversity

This study challenges the assertion that the influx of Asian international undergraduate students in universities across the United States creates richer educational and social environments. Drawing on qualitative research at a public university with a large number of Asian international students, this article examines how Asian American student leaders and their organization took on the difficult institutional task of actualizing the diversity of these new students in a racially segregated campus. We found that instead of viewing racial segregation practices as possibly tied to racial discrimination and privileges of normative whiteness, students expressed both support and resistance to Asian international students in race-neutral language of comfort and organizational differences that reflects the dominant ideology of colorblindness. We argue that any claims to the benefits of international student diversity must take serious account of colorblind racism and the experiences of racial marginalization and racial segregation among domestic minority and international students.     

Exploring the underlying factors inducing design changes during building production

Although design changes is a significant inhibiting factor to schedule management and cost control in building projects globally, however, the reasons remain largely unknown, and the construction industry is unable to manage the problem effectively. A triangulated approach was employed where 39 reasons were first explored through semi-structured interviews with experienced practitioners. Subsequently, a national survey was used to rank the reasons. ‘Value engineering’, ‘lack of coordination among various professional consultants’ and ‘change of requirement’ ranked the highest. Next, exploratory factor analysis revealed eight underlying factors. Finally, the influence of these manifested factors was validated statistically using partial least squares based structural equation modelling. The three most critical factors found are ‘competency of project team', ‘quality and workmanship’, and ‘site constraints and safety consideration’. This paper contributes to the development of new underlying factors inducing design changes, which largely explain design changes as well as enable practitioners and researchers to devise effective preventive measures in controlling design changes in building projects.     

A New Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Precarious Employment

This article proposes a new methodology to measure precarious employment with a multidimensional approach. The adjusted multidimensional precariousness rate employed to measure job precariousness is calculated on a counting approach and exhibit several advantages, including its decomposability according to the relative contribution to total precariousness of different dimensions and sub-populations. For illustrative purposes, the methodology is applied to the Spanish case using microdata from the Encuesta de Estructura Salarial (Wage Structure Survey) and considering three precariousness dimensions of jobs (low wages, fixed-term contracts and part-time work). The evidence obtained shows that at the beginning of the economic crisis there was an increase in the incidence and intensity of precariousness for new jobs created in the Spanish economy. Moreover, obtained evidence shows that the incidence of precarious employment is particularly high in certain economic sectors and for females.     

Heavy traffic analysis of roving server networks

This article studies the heavy-traffic (HT) behavior of queueing networks with a single roving server. External customers arrive at the queues according to independent renewal processes and after completing service, a customer either leaves the system or is routed to another queue. This type of customer routing in queueing networks arises very naturally in many application areas (in production systems, computer- and communication networks, maintenance, etc.). In these networks, the single most important characteristic of the system performance is oftentimes the path time, i.e., the total time spent in the system by an arbitrary customer traversing a specific path. The current article presents the first HT asymptotic for the path-time distribution in queueing networks with a roving server under general renewal arrivals. In particular, we provide a strong conjecture for the system’s behavior under HT extending the conjecture of Coffman et al.^{[8 Coffman, Jr, E. G.; Puhalskii, A. A.; Reiman, M. I,. Polling systems with zero switchover times: A heavy-traffic averaging principle. Ann. App. Prob. 1995, 5(3), 681–719.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar],9 Coffman, Jr., E. G.; Puhalskii, A. A.; Reiman, M. I,. Polling systems in heavy-traffic: A Bessel process limit. Math. Oper. Res. 1998, 23, 257–304.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]]} to the roving server setting of the current article. By combining this result with novel light-traffic asymptotics, we derive an approximation of the mean path time for arbitrary values of the load and renewal arrivals. This approximation is not only highly accurate for a wide range of parameter settings, but is also exact in various limiting cases.     

Enhancing the intercultural effectiveness of exchange programmes: formal and non-formal educational interventions

This paper examines how the addition of intercultural interventions carried out throughout European credit-bearing exchange programmes can enhance sojourners’ development of intercultural competencies, and it explores how both formal and non-formal pedagogical interventions may be designed and implemented. Such interventions were conducted at a Portuguese university with 31 sojourners throughout one academic year, and their impact was assessed using a mixed methods research design. Sojourners included incoming students of the exchange programmes Campus Europae and Erasmus, as well as highly skilled immigrants. Findings confirm the positive impact of interventions on the development of intercultural competencies and, in turn, their contribution to internationalisation efforts. Implications for further research suggest a need to increase interventions and to develop a systematic approach for fostering intercultural competencies throughout the study abroad cycle.     

The overload at work and outside of work: the case of woman operators of blistering

The internationalization of labor is a prominent feature of the economy today, but is accompanied by adverse effects on operator health. In general, musculoskeletal diseases are the first to appear in this context. The open observations activity and interviews with operators and the hierarchy have been made to discover the organizational constraints. Other interviews were also conducted to account for the determinants of activity outside of work. The use of video has allowed the registration of work cycles, which helped to describe and quantify the postures and gestures to establish a possible link between musculoskeletal diseases and work activity. The collected data were processed using software Actogram Kronos. To understand the process of origin of these diseases, the analysis of the socioeconomic context is also essential because they in part determine the organization of certain companies. The objective of this paper was to discuss the activities of operators of blistering in both work and outside work. The goal is to determine the constraints presents in these two spheres of activity, that may increase the risk of developing musculoskeletal diseases and to define their interaction.     

The ergonomic evaluation of a virtual learning environment usability

The article presents the processes and the results of the application of some ergonomic techniques, used to evaluate the usability of the virtual learning environment adopted by the Distance Education Center of the Federal Institute of Espírito Santo - Brazil.     

Democracy and Growth: Evidence for Portugal (1960–2001)

This paper examines the causal relationship between democracy and economic growth in Portugal over the period 1960–2001 within a VAR model with four variables: output, physical and human capital, and an index of democracy. We apply Granger causality tests and impulse-response functions to analyze causality and check how unexpected changes influence growth. Our main findings point to a bi-directional causality between democracy and growth. The impulse-response analysis suggests that in the short run democracy has a negative effect on growth in Portugal, but in the long run this effect is positive. Furthermore, we find that democracy also causes economic growth by increasing educational attainment.     

The Influence of Materialistic Inclination on Values,Life Satisfaction and Aspirations: An Empirical Analysis

This article attempts to measure the effect ofmaterialistic inclination on the degree of lifesatisfaction. The study is based on a sample of about1600 respondents randomly selected from differentparts of the city state of Singapore. Theserespondents were divided into two distinct groups withhigh or low materialistic inclination. It wasobserved that when these respondents were asked torate the importance of the nine items from Kahle'sList of Values, the ratings of seven of these itemswere found to be significantly different between thetwo groups. The two groups also indicated differentchoices when asked to rate the things they wanted mostout of life. Finally, it was revealed that they alsoreported different degrees of satisfaction withvarious domains in life in general. However, as withregard to satisfaction with life in Singapore inparticular, there were no significant differencesobserved between the two groups.