State,profession, and religion: Reflecting on spirituality and indigenous social work in China in the Yushu Earthquake Relief

ABSTRACT

On April 14, 2010, a massive earthquake measuring 7.1M_s struck the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China. Its scale notwithstanding, it has received much less national and international attention than the also immense Wenchun quake of 2008 in Sichun Province. This field report discusses the contribution of religion and spirituality in postdisaster relief in Yushu. It also calls for critical reflection on the issue of homogenization in the discussion of indigenous social work in China, and perhaps in other multiethnic countries in the world.     

Health Status and Risk Behaviors of Sexual Minorities Among Chinese Adolescents: A School-Based Survey

This study aimed to examine the association between sexual orientation and health disparities among a stratified random sample of 3776 secondary students in Hong Kong. The prevalence of homosexuality and bisexuality were 1.5% and 2.6% in boys and 1.8% and 3.7% in girls, respectively. A total of 10.7% of boys and 8.8% of girls were unsure of their sexual orientation. Homosexual and bisexual boys reported poorer physical and mental health than their heterosexual peers. Homosexual and bisexual boys were more likely to engage in smoking, frequent drinking, and vaginal sex and be subjected to sexually transmitted disease and sexual victimization. However, lesbian and bisexual girls were less likely to engage in risky health behaviors except for smoking and being subjected to sexual victimization. There is a gender-specific problem that may warrant prevention and intervention programs to address the unique health issues facing homosexual and bisexual adolescents in Hong Kong.     

城乡迁移与精神健康:基于上海的实证研究

改革开放以来,中国见证了规模甚巨的城乡迁移运动,社会学界对这一现象进行了广泛的研究,但对进入城市的移民的精神健康问题则少有涉及。本研究基于对上海城乡迁移群体的多阶段抽样调查以了解这一群体的精神健康状况。问卷的分析结果显示,25%的男性和6%的女性精神健康状态不好。进一步的路径分析显示,移民压力、社会支持和迁移意义以不同的路径影响精神健康。论文建议政府和社会各界要充分回应移民群体的精神健康需求。     

Perfect aggregation of Bayesian analysis on compositional data

Sufficiency is a widely used concept for reducing the dimensionality of a data set. Collecting data for a sufficient statistic is generally much easier and less expensive than collecting all of the available data. When the posterior distributions of a quantity of interest given the aggregate and disaggregate data are identical, perfect aggregation is said to hold, and in this case the aggregate data is a sufficient statistic for the quantity of interest. In this paper, the conditions for perfect aggregation are shown to depend on the functional form of the prior distribution. When the quantity of interest is the sum of some parameters in a vector having either a generalized Dirichlet or a Liouville distribution for analyzing compositional data, necessary and sufficient conditions for perfect aggregation are also established.     

A dynamic programming approach of finding an optimal broadcast schedule in minimizing total flow time

We study the problem of (off-line) broadcast scheduling in minimizing total flow time and propose a dynamic programming approach to compute an optimal broadcast schedule. Suppose the broadcast server has k pages and the last page request arrives at time n. The optimal schedule can be computed in O(k³(n+k)^k−1) time for the case that the server has a single broadcast channel. For m channels case, i.e., the server can broadcast m different pages at a time where m < k, the optimal schedule can be computed in O(n^k−m) time when k and m are constants. Note that this broadcast scheduling problem is NP-hard when k is a variable and will take O(n^k−m+1) time when k is fixed and m ≥ 1 with the straightforward implementation of the dynamic programming approach. The preliminary version of this paper appeared in Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Computing and Combinatorics Conference as “Off-line Algorithms for Minimizing the Total Flow Time in Broadcast Scheduling”.     

Attachment to Mothers and Fathers during Middle Childhood: Associations with Child Gender, Grade, and Competence

Attachment relationships of first, third, and fifth graders with their mothers and fathers, and their associations with self‐perceived and teacher‐rated competence, were investigated. Children rated their attachment security with mothers and fathers using the Kerns security scale. Children's perceptions of academic and peer competence were measured using Harter's self‐perception profile, and teachers also rated children's competence. Girls felt greater attachment security to their mothers than to their fathers, and boys felt greater attachment security to their fathers than did girls. Greater attachment security with both mothers and fathers was associated with children's perceptions of greater peer and academic competence, and this association was stronger for older children. A greater sense of attachment security with both parents was associated with greater competence than a sense of attachment security with only one parent. Teacher‐rated competence was significantly related to attachment security with mothers but not fathers.     

Self-management of gestational diabetes among Chinese migrants: A qualitative study

Background

Gestational diabetes mellitus is one of the most common complications of pregnancy. Women with Gestational diabetes are at increased risk of serious health outcomes, such as pre-eclampsia, obstructed labor, and the development of Type 2 diabetes later in life. Chinese migrants, the third largest cultural group in Australia, are more likely to develop Gestational diabetes than Australian-born women. However, to date, Gestational diabetes self-management has not been investigated in this population.

Rural migrant workers in urban China: living a marginalised life

The rural migrant worker population in China is attracting more and more attention because of its magnitude and potential economic and social impact on Chinese society. While literature abounds in describing the demographic trends and economic impacts of rural to urban migration, very few articles have been written about the psychosocial impacts of migration on the lives of rural migrant workers in urban China. Drawing on the concept of marginalisation, this article describes the nature and characteristics of marginalised living experienced by migrant workers. More importantly, it examines the underlying policy issues contributing to such marginalised living. It is argued that the Hukou system (household registration system), the process of decentralisation and the obscure role of trade unions have contributed to the experience of marginalisation of rural migrant workers in urban cities in China. Implications for policy changes are also discussed.     

Ethnic assortative matching in marriage and family outcomes: evidence from the mass migration to the US during 1900–1930

Positive assortative matching in terms of traits such as ethnicity and race has been prevalent in marital formation. One possible explanation for this is that spouses in endogamous marriages possess complementary skills and tastes that increase marital surplus. This paper aims to estimate the effects of ethnic assortative matching on a variety of household outcomes by using the exogenous variation in immigrant flows in the USA during the period 1900–1930 to disentangle the selection effect of partners. The major finding is that the complementarities in home production from same ethnic marriage enhances investment in household public goods such as childrearing and home ownership and reduces the market labor supply of wives. The OLS estimates of the sizes of these effects appear to be substantially biased downward, indicating positive selection into intermarriage in terms of unobservable traits that increase marital surplus.