Parental Leave Policies and Second Births: A Comparison of Czechia and Slovakia

Population Research and Policy Review - The paper investigates the transition to second births in Czechia and Slovakia in the context of the development of parental leave policies since the...     

What is Integration? A Comparative View from Immigrants and Municipal Policy

The ongoing project of citizenship construction in societies receiving international immigration demands a perspective that takes into account the interests, views and needs of all socio-demographic groups, including those of newcomers as potential new citizens. We interviewed representatives of 16 immigrant associations operating in the Spanish autonomous community of Galicia, reviewed immigration policy in 13 Spanish (Galician) municipalities, and interviewed 20 municipal government staff members who put these into practice. With this research, we aim to explore the perspectives of immigrants with respect to their own integration and to examine how these compare with local policies designed to facilitate these processes. By comparing the immigrant representatives' perceptions with local policy discourses and practice, our study reveals how local integration practice is not only inconsistent with its own policy discourse but also fails to consider and include immigrants' own understandings of what integration means and how it can be achieved.     

Dennis R. Young et al.: Economics for Nonprofit Managers and Social Entrepreneurs

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Racial/Ethnic Minority Community College Students' Critical Consciousness and Social Cognitive Career Outcomes

A need exists to better understand how racial/ethnic minority students' critical consciousness development in response to marginalization may be involved in their educational and career development. We therefore examined the link between critical consciousness development and career decision self-efficacy and career outcome expectations among racial/ethnic minority community college students. Following social cognitive career theory's conceptual pillars, we developed a testable model integrating critical consciousness and social cognitive variables. This model was tested with 135 racially and ethnically diverse community college students. Data analysis included path analyses and tests of model fit using structural equation modeling. Results suggested that (a) higher critical agency is linked to higher career decision self-efficacy and outcome expectations and (b) critical action and reflection have a bidirectional link and predict higher critical agency. Implications for research and practice aiming to close educational and career gaps among racial/ethnic minorities are discussed.     

Archival Work as Qualitative Sociology

Qualitative Sociology -     

Urban vegetation cover correlates with environmental variables in a desert city: insights of mitigation measures to climate change

Urban Ecosystems - Green cover and air quality are important components of life quality and human ecology in arid lands. In the Sonoran Desert of Mexico, Hermosillo is the largest city with a...     

A Multidimensional Approach to Precarious Employment Among Young Workers in EU-28 Countries

This article uses a new multidimensional indicator to measure precariousness among young workers across all EU-28 countries. This indicator measures both the incidence and intensity of precariousness. The analysis has involved five dimensions: wages, type of contract, type of working day, disempowerment, and job insecurity. Our database is the European Union Labour Force Survey for the period 2009–2016. The main indication of precariousness is low wages. We find high rates of precariousness for Mediterranean countries (because of low wages and temporary contracts), Denmark (low wages), and the Netherlands (expansion of involuntary part-time jobs). Central European countries have moderate rates, and most Continental and Eastern countries have low rates. We also find that a higher level of education is related to a lower probability of having a precarious job. Finally, we find a greater probability of having a precarious job among women in most countries, and non-statistically significant differences by country of birth.

     

Comparative Perspectives on Social Indicators

Social Indicators Research -     

Accurate estimation for extra-Poisson variability assuming random effect models

In this study, the components of extra-Poisson variability are estimated assuming random effect models under a Bayesian approach. A standard existing methodology to estimate extra-Poisson variability assumes a negative binomial distribution. The obtained results show that using the proposed random effect model it is possible to get more accurate estimates for the extra-Poisson variability components when compared to the use of a negative binomial distribution where it is possible to estimate only one component of extra-Poisson variability. Some illustrative examples are introduced considering real data sets.     

Accurate computation of single and product moments of order statistics under progressive censoring

An accurate procedure is proposed to calculate approximate moments of progressive order statistics in the context of statistical inference for lifetime models. The study analyses the performance of power series expansion to approximate the moments for location and scale distributions with high precision and smaller deviations with respect to the exact values. A comparative analysis between exact and approximate methods is shown using some tables and figures. The different approximations are applied in two situations. First, we consider the problem of computing the large sample variance–covariance matrix of maximum likelihood estimators. We also use the approximations to obtain progressively censored sampling plans for log-normal distributed data. These problems illustrate that the presented procedure is highly useful to compute the moments with precision for numerous censoring patterns and, in many cases, is the only valid method because the exact calculation may not be applicable.