Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) Perceptions and Health Care Experiences

The goal of this study was to explore attitudes, health knowledge, and experiences with health care setting and providers among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ) individuals and to identify areas for improvement. Members of Equality Florida? residing in the five counties of the Tampa Bay region were recruited through e-mail invitation to complete a 60-item questionnaire assessing demographics, attitudes, and experiences with health care providers (HCPs). Additional open-ended questions focused on experiences with HCPs and suggestions for ways to improve HCPs' cultural competency. A total of 632 respondents completed the survey of which 41% were gay men and 29% were lesbian. The majority of participants were White, non-Hispanic (93%), married/partnered (78%), and had health insurance (88%). The majority (67%) reported they always or often disclosed their sexual orientation/identity to an HCP and few had negative reactions in the health care setting (<10%). Health care settings with equality signs and gender-neutral language were perceived as safer. Participants' responses suggested need for policy changes and improved cultural competence among HCPs. Results show high rates of sexual orientation disclosure, greater acceptance from providers of LGBTQ status, and the need for examination of hospital policies and improved cultural competency.     

Business Groups as Hierarchical Clique Structures: A Conceptual and Methodological Discussion as it applies to the Mexican Experience

The hierarchically nested set of business groups that result from 110 Mexican firms sharing corporate directors (i.e. interlocking directors) is analysed using social network tools. It is argued that these groupings are one of the many dimensions that should be employed to understand the complex nature of ‘business groups’ broadly understood. The hypothesis that business groups are responses ‘to market failures that arise in the particular institutional contexts of emerging economies’ (Khanna and Rivkin, Strategic Management Journal, 22 (2001), p. 46) is tested using the groups constructed from data on interlocking directorates. The results show that as firms belong to more of the same sets of groups, their financial performance tends to be more similar, thus supporting the idea that ‘groups can make up for under‐developed institutions, thereby reducing transaction costs’ (Khanna and Yafeh, Journal of Economic Literature, 45 (2007), pp. 340–341).     

Adult self-sufficiency and social adjustment in care leavers from children's homes: a long-term assessment

This paper presents a study carried out in Spain that followed up 260 young people, the majority of them adults, who had been in residential care for significant periods. The follow‐up takes place between 1 and 9 years after participants had left residential care, and assesses their level of social and work integration, as well as considering the incidence of problems related to marginalization and social exclusion. Furthermore, it analyses the reasons for the child being taken into care, the socio‐family context, length of stay, changes in placement and other features or incidents in relation to the residential care. The data show that close to 15% have serious problems (drug dependence, delinquency, etc.), 25% receive help from the social services and the rest manage independently to a greater or lesser extent. We discuss the significance of these data, especially the relationship between the final result and the initial and process variables.     

Likelihood ratio ordering of order statistics,mixtures and systems

Let X=(_X1,_X2,…,_Xn)$\mathit{X}=(X_1,X_2,\dots ,X_n)$ be an exchangeable random vector, and denote _X1:i=min{_X1,_X2,…,_Xi}$X_{1:i}=\min \{X_1,X_2,\dots ,X_i\}$ and _Xi:i=max{_X1,_X2,…,_Xi}$X_{i:i}=\max \{X_1,X_2,\dots ,X_i\}$, 1?i?n$1?i?n$. These order statistics represent the lifetimes of the series and the parallel systems, respectively, with component lifetimes _Xi$X_i$. In this paper we obtain conditions under which _X1:i$X_{1:i}$ (or _Xi:i$X_{i:i}$) decreases (increases) in i in the likelihood ratio (lr) order. An even more general result involving general (that is, not necessary exchangeable) random vectors is also derived for general series (or parallel) systems. We show that the series (parallel) systems are not necessarily lr-ordered even if the components are independent.     

Critical success factors for cross-functional teamwork in new product development

There is consensus that the effective implementation of cross-functional teams is critical to new product success. However, such teams face particular challenges because of well-documented barriers between functions. Furthermore, there is little evidence-based guidance for practitioners on how to achieve effective cross-functional teamwork. In order to address this gap, the literature on cross-functional teamwork was analysed to identify critical success factors. Using a heuristic team effectiveness model, these were categorized into six groups: task design, group composition, organizational context, internal processes, external processes and group psychosocial traits. Recent theory on group effectiveness has increasingly recognized the significance of a supportive organizational context, and this is particularly pertinent for cross-functional teams. Key success factors include strategic alignment between functions, a climate supportive of teamwork and team-based accountability. The findings are integrated into a diagnostic model which is intended to be of practical benefit to people designing, leading and facilitating cross-functional new product development teams.     

Legalism and creativity: tax non-compliance in the eyes of the economic elite

This paper analyzes elite tax compliance from a sociological perspective in order to examine how different tax behaviors are justified or how they embody different taxpayers’ subjectivities. Drawing from the case of Chile and using a qualitative approach based on 32 interviews conducted with members of the economic elite, it is argued that forms of non-compliance -such as evasion and avoidance- are grounded in different ‘repertoires of evaluation’ while denoting a plurality of distinctions and criteria of evaluation which relate to the legal culture in which the tax system operates. Findings show that legalism -a literal conception of the rules- does not always favor tax compliance and that it may even go against the purpose of tax collection when a creative use of the law prevails. Furthermore, legalism and creativity allow for the main justifications for challenging tax payment as well as the perceptions and beliefs that underlie the everyday relationship between taxpayers and the state to be understood.     

Metrics and barycenters for point pattern data

We introduce the transport–transform and the relative transport–transform metrics between finite point patterns on a general space, which provide a unified framework for earlier point pattern metrics, in particular the generalized spike time and the normalized and unnormalized optimal subpattern assignment metrics. Our main focus is on barycenters, i.e., minimizers of a q-th-order Fréchet functional with respect to these metrics. We present a heuristic algorithm that terminates in a local minimum and is shown to be fast and reliable in a simulation study. The algorithm serves as a general plug-in method that can be applied to point patterns on any state space where an appropriate algorithm for solving the location problem for individual points is available. We present applications to geocoded data of crimes in Euclidean space and on a street network, illustrating that barycenters serve as informative summary statistics. Our work is a first step toward statistical inference in covariate-based models of repeated point pattern observations.     

Description of a subfamily of the discrete pearson system as generalized-binomial distributions

In this paper we prove that a subfamily of distributions of the discrete Pearson, system, containing the Pólya distribution without replacement and hence the hypergeometric distribution, can be described as generalized-binomial distributions, i.e., the distribution of the number of successes which occur in independent trials. It is also shown that the probability of success will necessarily be different in each trial, with the exception of deterministic ones. As a consequence, all the properties of the generalized-binomial distribution will apply to this subfamily. Thus, applications to hypothesis testing and confidence intervals in the Pólya distribution are considered.     

An evaluation of change-point estimators for a sequence of normal observations with unknown parameters

Performance of maximum likelihood estimators (MLE) of the change-point in normal series is evaluated considering three scenarios where process parameters are assumed to be unknown. Different shifts, sample sizes, and locations of a change-point were tested. A comparison is made with estimators based on cumulative sums and Bartlett's test. Performance analysis done with extensive simulations for normally distributed series showed that the MLEs perform better (or equal) in almost every scenario, with smaller bias and standard error. In addition, robustness of MLE to non-normality is also studied.