The quality of urban life and the perception of livability: A case study of neighbourhoods in Benin City,Nigeria

Third World cities face many persistent planning problems. The problems persist partly because planning has not been sufficiently responsive to local peculiarities. This lack of responsiveness is in turn because of the gross scale at which problems are conceived and attacked. One of the persistent problems in all Nigerian cities is their poor environmental quality. This study, therefore, seeks to investigate the environmental problems of Benin City, capital of Bendel State of Nigeria. Six environmental dimensions are measured and analysed. A composite conceptual index of quality of life is derived from the six dimensions, and compared with an index of perceived quality for each area. The study adopts the neighbourhood as the unit in collecting and analysing data, and in proposing solutions. It is recommended that planning administration in Benin City must be decentralized, if it is to be more responsive to intra-city environmental eccentricities, and improve the quality of life.     

Interviewing by comment: An adjunct to the direct question

Interviewing by direct question has long been the sociologist's favored means of collecting data. This article seeks to expand understanding of the research interview by proposingthe comment as a supplementary data gathering technique. Several methodological and theoretical considerations are discussed that indicate the appropriateness of interviewing by comment for the general purpose of discovery and for eliciting information about certain behaviors, events, and relationships. In order to demonstrate concretely the utility of interviewing by comment, eight types of comments that can be employed for a variety of research purposes are presented and illustrated.An earlier edition of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, Toronto, Canada, 1981.     

Social indicators of marital instability,U.S.A., 1920–1969

A social indicators model which included demographic variables (birth rate and aged child ratio), economic variable (unemployment) and marriage rates (control variable) was utilized in explaining changes in divorce rates over time. Analysis of time series data for two distinctive periods in the U.S.A. (1920–1940 and 1946–1969) revealed the following significant results:

1. Demographic changes in the age structure of the population while controlling for marriage rates explains significantly larger amounts of the variance in marital instability than economic changes alone (unemployment).
2. In the post-World War II era unemployment was not found to be a statistically significant predictor of marital instability when control for demographic changes were established.
3. In the post-World War II era marriage rates appear to be a significant predictor of divorce rates when control for demographic changes were maintained.
4. In the post-World War II era marriage rates were found to be more sensitive to changes in economic conditions than marital instability (divorce rate).

     

The estimation of normal mixtures with latent variables

This paper considers the class of normal latent factor mixture models. It presents a method for estimating the posterior distribution of the parameters, derives analytical expressions for both the first and second derivatives of the posterior kernel (the score and Hessian), and provides posterior approximations that can be computed relatively quickly.     

Racial Imagery and Support for Voter ID Laws

Previous research suggests that calls for voter ID laws include racialized appeals and that racial attitudes influence support for such laws. This study uses an experiment to test whether exposure to racial imagery also affects support for voter ID laws. The data come from a survey experiment embedded in the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (N = 1,436) randomizing the race of a voter and poll worker shown to respondents (African American voter and poll worker, white voter and poll worker, or no image). The results show that white respondents who saw an image of an African American voter and poll worker expressed greater support for voter ID laws than those in the no image condition, even after controlling for the significant effects of racial resentment and political ideology. Exposure to an image of a white voter and poll worker did not produce a similar effect. The findings provide new evidence that public opinion about voter ID laws is racialized.     

Enabling social support and resilience: outcomes of Family Group Conferencing in public mental health care

Family Group Conferencing (FGC) is a decision-making model where clients with their social network formulate their own plan. There is little experience with FGC in mental health care. We studied the outcomes of 41 conferences in a public mental health setting in the north of the Netherlands. We interviewed 312 respondents out of a total of 473 conference participants. In 33 cases, it was possible to obtain scores from 245 respondents on scales ranging from 0 to 10 about the situation prior and after the conference on three outcome measures, namely the quality of: (1) social support, (2) resilience and (3) living conditions. In the 33 cases, t-tests and multilevel analyses indicate on all of the three outcomes measures significant positive changes after the conferences. On average, the scores on the quality of social support (5.04–6.73), resilience (4.09–6.32) and the living conditions (3.73–6.64) had been increased since the conferences were organised. The results are modest but remarkable. That the impact of FGC is not more substantial can be explained. The clients referred to a conference in this particular study, mostly had a limited network and few recourses from whom little support could be expected.     

Group Career Construction Counseling: A Mixed‐Methods Intervention Study With High School Students

This study investigated the value of group career construction counseling in a high school context. The author used purposive sampling to select participants who had sought career counseling. A mixed‐methods intervention study design was also used. Participants (N = 57) completed the Career Adapt‐Abilities Scale–South Africa (CAAS‐SA) before the 1st and after the 2nd intervention. The Career Interest Profile and the Maree Career Matrix were used to facilitate the intervention, and the CAAS‐SA was used to test the research hypotheses. The findings revealed that the boys’ and the girls’ career adaptability had improved meaningfully on all of the CAAS‐SA subscales. No gender‐based differences were found. However, differences were detected between both the boys’ and the girls’ pre‐ and posttest Control and Confidence subscale scores. The findings demonstrate the value of career construction counseling in group settings. More longitudinal research with diverse participants is needed.     

‘Come and live here and you'll experience it’: youths talk about their deprived neighbourhood

This study examined youths' lived experiences of a deprived neighbourhood in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Previous studies assume that deprived neighbourhoods pose serious risks for youths. What is largely missing from these studies, however, are the experiences of young people themselves. Do they indeed experience their neighbourhood as hostile and unsafe? Do they really experience a lack of resources? We conducted a qualitative study among youths aged 13–18 living in Feijenoord, a district of Rotterdam. The research demonstrates how important it is to discover youths' views on and experiences of their environments, as their experiences are very diverse and often differ from the hegemonic discourse. While the respondents were aware of problems, such as crime and violence, they also pointed to several positive aspects of their neighbourhood. In the eyes of the youths, their neighbourhood has both instrumental and affective meaning. Neighbourhood effect research might benefit from paying more attention to the idea that place can have multiple meanings, and from looking at the perceived neighbourhood strengths instead of only focusing on the deficits in deprived neighbourhoods.     

The magic matrix as a smart machine evaluator: Machine performance measurement,level of competitiveness

Today's competitive environment compels companies to be the best at the work they do. Machining efficiency establishes the plant level of performance and thus the ability to compete in the market. However, as product mix changes, and new machines possessing more and better capabilities are introduced, machining efficiency varies over time. Therefore, continuous evaluation of machine fitness for product mix has to be made. This is a huge task and is seldom done due to a lack of efficient tools to perform such an evaluation. This paper presents a computerized method that may be used to perform the evaluation task and establish the company level of competitiveness in an honest, and just way, free from improper influence. Conclusions drawn, and actions and decisions made as a result of the evaluation, are the prerogative of management. The evaluation method employs a matrix concept, which is fully described in this paper.     

Patient compliance,physician empathy and financial incentives within a principal-agent framework

Compliance with medication regimens among patients with chronic conditions in the U.S. and other developed countries averages only 50%. Numerous studies have attributed poor compliance to physicians’ failure to exhibit sufficient empathy with patients’ problems. Can financial incentives help modify physicians’ empathic behavior? In view of contradicting evidence in the health psychology literature, the present paper addresses this question from a rational-choice perspective, introducing a principal-agent model of physician empathy and patient compliance. The model allows the physician to exhibit empathy with the patient, to which the patient responds by choosing his desired level of compliance, which the physician takes into account when determining the level of empathy she exhibits. The model is first applied to rationally substantiate the evidence that patient compliance rises with physician empathy, and subsequently to examining the relationship between physician empathy and the physician's fee. The analysis reveals that the physician will exhibit less empathy in response to a higher fee, implying that the higher the fee the less compliant her patient will be.