Initiative in work teams: adaptation and validation of the Personal Initiative at Group Level Scale / Iniciativa en los equipos de trabajo: adaptación y validación de la Escala de Iniciativa Personal a nivel Grupal

In this study, we conceptualize personal initiative as a collective construct and adapt and validate a scale to evaluate it with a sample of 308 Spanish participants belonging to 91 work teams. Personal initiative at group level is a behavioural syndrome in which the team shows an approach to work that is self-initiated, proactive, persistent, capable of modifying the atmosphere and pro organization. As a predictive variable, we analysed the climate for initiative as well as personal initiative at group level. The resulting variables that were analysed referred to organization and team performance, with the team productivity and innovation as the criteria, analysing radical innovation. The scale has suitable psychometric properties. The results show that there is a relationship between the two predictive variables. Furthermore, personal initiative at group level is related to team productivity, while the climate for initiative is related to innovation.     

‘What Was I Thinking?!’ Rhetorical Questions as a Technique to Identify and Explore Impasses in Therapy

Rhetorical questions emerging spontaneously in consultations can be used as a tool for developing self‐reflexivity and exploring the therapeutic alliance in the process of therapy with couples and families. This paper presents a technique based on the enunciation of rhetorical questions, which can point to an impasse in the process of therapy and contain a key to its resolution. The technique focuses on the distinctive feature of rhetorical questions as convening a paradoxical injunction: a question not intended as a question, while uttered as such. The technique in four steps is illustrated by examples from therapy, supervision, consultation, and self‐supervision. Its focus is the interlink between the therapeutic relationship and the process of therapy and it is informed by a second‐order cybernetics approach, dialogical practice, and the systemic literature on emotion. The technique can help develop curiosity in working with families, lead to unforeseen developments, and touch on prejudices not made explicit in previous therapeutic encounters. Whether we are acting as supervisors, therapists, or clients, the creation of a ‘secure enough’ context for rhetorical questions becomes critical to allow freeform exploration.     

Ventriloquism,racism and the politics of decoloniality in Ecuador

ABSTRACT

This article discusses two forms of discrimination against indigenous people: ventriloquism and open racism, and argues that a transition from paternalism to open intolerance has taken place in Ecuador in the context of governmental emphasis on natural resource extraction. Ventriloquism, when non-Indians speak for indigenous people, is analysed through the Sumak Kawsay (Good Living) policies of the government of Rafael Correa (2007–2017). Public racism is examined by looking at government repression against indigenous leaders and communities and Presidential speeches. The article concludes that the state’s ventriloquist and racist discourses and practices are equally rooted in the country’s colonial past. These findings are contrasted with the writings of scholars that have called the government of Mr. Correa decolonizing. The article examines the ways in which decolonial theorists informed and promoted the policies of this regime, and argues that decolonial scholars have been insufficiently self-critical and reflective of their own complicity with the state’s repressive project vis-à-vis indigenous communities.     

Link-tracing sampling with an initial sequential sample of sites: Estimating the size of a hidden human population

We proposed a modification to the variant of link-tracing sampling suggested by Félix-Medina and Thompson [M.H. Félix-Medina, S.K. Thompson, Combining cluster sampling and link-tracing sampling to estimate the size of hidden populations, Journal of Official Statistics 20 (2004) 19–38] that allows the researcher to have certain control of the final sample size, precision of the estimates or other characteristics of the sample that the researcher is interested in controlling. We achieve this goal by selecting an initial sequential sample of sites instead of an initial simple random sample of sites as those authors suggested. We estimate the population size by means of the maximum likelihood estimators suggested by the above-mentioned authors or by the Bayesian estimators proposed by Félix-Medina and Monjardin [M.H. Félix-Medina, P.E. Monjardin, Combining link-tracing sampling and cluster sampling to estimate the size of hidden populations: A Bayesian-assisted approach, Survey Methodology 32 (2006) 187–195]. Variances are estimated by means of jackknife and bootstrap estimators as well as by the delta estimators proposed in the two above-mentioned papers. Interval estimates of the population size are obtained by means of Wald and bootstrap confidence intervals. The results of an exploratory simulation study indicate good performance of the proposed sampling strategy.     

A copula-based Markov chain model for the analysis of binary longitudinal data

A fully parametric first-order autoregressive (AR(1)) model is proposed to analyse binary longitudinal data. By using a discretized version of a copula, the modelling approach allows one to construct separate models for the marginal response and for the dependence between adjacent responses. In particular, the transition model that is focused on discretizes the Gaussian copula in such a way that the marginal is a Bernoulli distribution. A probit link is used to take into account concomitant information in the behaviour of the underlying marginal distribution. Fixed and time-varying covariates can be included in the model. The method is simple and is a natural extension of the AR(1) model for Gaussian series. Since the approach put forward is likelihood-based, it allows interpretations and inferences to be made that are not possible with semi-parametric approaches such as those based on generalized estimating equations. Data from a study designed to reduce the exposure of children to the sun are used to illustrate the methods.     

Bayesian robustness of the compound Poisson distribution under bidimensional prior: an application to the collective risk model

The distribution of the aggregate claims in one year plays an important role in Actuarial Statistics for computing, for example, insurance premiums when both the number and size of the claims must be implemented into the model. When the number of claims follows a Poisson distribution the aggregated distribution is called the compound Poisson distribution. In this article we assume that the claim size follows an exponential distribution and later we make an extensive study of this model by assuming a bidimensional prior distribution for the parameters of the Poisson and exponential distribution with marginal gamma. This study carries us to obtain expressions for net premiums, marginal and posterior distributions in terms of some well-known special functions used in statistics. Later, a Bayesian robustness study of this model is made. Bayesian robustness on bidimensional models was deeply treated in the 1990s, producing numerous results, but few applications dealing with this problem can be found in the literature.     

The t-information and its use in multivariate problems and time-series analysis

The second moment of recently introduced scalar inference function can be viewed as generalized Fisher information of the continuous probability distributions. In this paper we call it the t-information and give some possible applications of the new concept.     

Living a Deportation Threat: Anticipatory Stressors Confronted by Undocumented Mexican Immigrant Women

Previous sociological research shows that exposure to stress varies by individuals’ social statuses and is a central mechanism in producing mental health disparities. This line of research suggests that ethnoracial groups are more exposed to racial discrimination, thus negatively impacting their mental health. There has also been a growing literature showing how legal status impacts the mental health of immigrants and their families. However, the sociology of mental health and migration literature has largely remained disparate. This paper bridges these literatures to highlight how living a deportation threat manifests itself as an anticipatory stressor that negatively impacts undocumented Mexican migrant women’s access to resources, social relationships, and social roles. Based on 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews with undocumented Mexican immigrant women from Houston, Texas, my findings reveal living a deportation threat is a perpetual anticipatory stressor that intensifies the effects of avoiding authorities, family fragmentation, and economic uncertainty. I argue this anticipatory stressor transforms into a chronic stressor that undocumented Mexican women confront daily. By situating this study within an anti-immigrant social context, it highlights the social processes and mechanisms that exacerbate the stressors undocumented Mexican immigrant women confront.     

Children’s Strategies for Agency in Preschool

This article is based on an ethnographic study of children’s everyday life in Swedish preschools. The ethnography is used to explore children’s strategies for influencing, defending and constructing the social order of a preschool institution. The focus of our concern is on how the children, in their interactions with each other and with the preschool teachers, manage the collective regulation and how they negotiate their participation in collective activities. There is an inherent tension between free play and the high degree of routinised and collective activities within the preschool institution. The study shows that children are active in playing at the border, acting as if the institution is the children’s place. It also shows how they draw on different strategies as resources for managing the regulations, accounting for personal autonomy and negotiating the social order. In taking a child perspective and acknowledging children as active agents, it is possible to see how they influence and shape their everyday life in a preschool context. In addition, the article illustrates individual children’s strategic and pragmatic use of resources and in doing so contribute to their own childhood and thereby become part of a social and cultural construction process.