Cuando los delitos son episodios sociales

Resumen

En este trabajo se estudia la percepción del delito desde la perspectiva de los episodios sociales. Los objetivos más importantes de nuestra investigación fueron: a) aislar y comparar las dimensiones que subyacen a la percepción del delito en tres grupos de sujetos: delincuentes institucionalizados, profesionales del sistema penal y grupo de personas no vinculadas al sistema penal; y b) ver si existen diferencias en la percepción de tres de los tipos de delitos establecidos en el Código Penal español. La muestra estuvo compuesta por un total de 272 sujetos, todos ellos varones, procedentes de los tres grupos en estudio. Las puntuaciones dadas por estos sujetos a 22 episodios delictivos fueron sometidas a escalamiento multidimensional. Se obtuvo un espacio multidimensional de cuatro dimensiones para cada uno de los grupos y se constataron diferencias entre ellos. Las puntuaciones de los episodios en cada dimensión permitieron discriminar de forma significativa entre los tres tipos de delitos. Los resultados se discuten integrando la perspectiva de los episodios sociales y la teoría de la atribución.     

Peripheries,suburbanisms and change in sub-Saharan African cities

The ‘revisionist’ view of South African history has an advantage in understanding the role of values in terms of class structures, as opposed to liberal orthodoxy that sees ‘race’ as an autonomous variable: a view that is both static and unhistorical. The problem of explaining these values, however remains for class analysis can be accused of economic determinism. Pluralism may, therefore, be of use as a supplement to class analysis by interpreting values in a subjective sense. Class becomes only one of a number of forms of political consciousness (i.e. religious, ‘tribal’ or ethnic) and the analysis shifts to a market of competing political ideologies. This view is explored empirically by the example of the rise of a segregationist ideology in South Africa in the twentieth century.     

How Objects Believe for Us: Applications in Organizational Analysis

This paper analyzes the concept of belief in contemporary organizations. Most studies tend to envisage belief as something internal to the thinking and feeling person. We argue, however, that belief does not only reside ‘inside’ the individual subject but also in an external economy of objects and rituals. What we call the ‘objectivity of belief’ highlights how various things such as commodities, artefacts, machines and even other people may believe in our place. We develop these ideas by drawing on a rich tradition of social theory that includes Marx and ?i?ek, and apply it to the study of objects, belief and power in contemporary organizations.     

Educational Differences in Completed Fertility: A Behavioral Genetic Study of Finnish Male and Female Twins

Despite the large body of research on educational differences in fertility, how genetic and environmental influences may contribute to educational differences in completed fertility is not well understood. This study examines the association between educational level and completed fertility in a sample of Finnish male and female twins born between 1950 and 1957 with register-based fertility follow-up until 2009. The results show that poorly educated men and highly educated women are least likely to have any children and have lower completed fertility in general. Behavioral genetics analysis suggests that the association between education and having any children in both sexes is influenced by factors shared by co-twins and that these factors are genetic rather than common environmental. No evidence of a causal pathway between education and having any children independent of these shared influences is found. These findings suggest that familial factors may play a role in the process through which educational differences in completed fertility are formed.     

The Educational Homogamy Gap Between Married and Cohabiting Couples in Latin America

The explosive expansion of non-marital cohabitation in Latin America since the 1970s has led to the narrowing of the gap in educational homogamy between married and cohabiting couples (what we call “homogamy gap”) as shown by our analysis of 29 census samples encompassing eight countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama (N = 2,295,160 young couples). Most research on the homogamy gap is limited to a single decade and a small group of developed countries (the United States, Canada, and Europe). We take a historical and cross-national perspective and expand the research to a range of developing countries, where since early colonial times, traditional forms of cohabitation among the poor, uneducated sectors of society have coexisted with marriage, although to widely varying degrees from country to country. In recent decades, cohabitation is emerging in all sectors of society. We find that among married couples, educational homogamy continues to be higher than for those who cohabit, but in recent decades, the difference has narrowed substantially in all countries. We argue that assortative mating between cohabiting and married couples tends to be similar when the contexts in which they are formed are also increasingly similar.     

Validation of the Flourishing Scale and Scale of Positive and Negative Experience in Portugal

The Flourishing Scale (FS) and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) created by Diener et al. (Soc Indic Res 97:143–156, 2010) are instruments that assess psychological flourishing and feelings (positive and negative, and the difference between the two). In this study, the psychometric properties of both scales were explored by using two Portuguese samples (I: n = 734; II: n = 194). Reliability analysis and a multi-group confirmatory factorial analysis (MCFA) of both scales were performed. To examine the validity of FS and SPANE we analyzed their correlations with other well-being and happiness measures. Results showed that the Portuguese versions of both scales have good psychometric properties, and they also showed convergent validity. Results also demonstrated the unidimensional structure of the FS and a two-factor solution for the SPANE. The multi-group CFA of both scales evidenced an invariant structure. Both Portuguese versions of the scales behave consistently with the original and may be used in future studies of well-being.     

Multidimensional Measurement of Poverty Among Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Since the seminal work of Sen, poverty has been recognized as a multidimensional phenomenon. The recent availability of relevant databases renewed the interest in this approach. This paper estimates multidimensional poverty among women in fourteen Sub-Saharan African countries using the Alkire and Foster multidimensional poverty measures, whose identification method is based on a counting approach. Four dimensions are considered: assets, health, schooling and empowerment. The results show important differences in poverty among the countries of the sample. The multidimensional poverty estimates are compared with some alternative measures such as the Human Development Index, income poverty, asset poverty and the Gender-related Development Index. It is found that including additional dimensions into the analysis leads to country rankings different from those obtained with the mentioned four measures. Decompositions by geographical area and dimension indicate that rural areas are significantly poorer than urban ones and that a lack of schooling is, in general, the highest contributor to poverty. The paper also conducts robustness and sensitivity analyses of the multidimensional estimates with respect to the number of dimensions in which deprivation is required in order to be considered poor, as well as to the poverty lines within each dimension. Several cases of dominance between countries are found in the first robustness test.     

How Cognitive Interviewing can Provide Validity Evidence of the Response Processes to Scale Items

The current theory about validity reflected in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA et al. in Standards for educational and psychological testing, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 1999), offers no clear indications about the methods for gathering validity evidence about the response processes. Cognitive interviewing (CI) can play an important role answering the current demand about empirical and theoretical analyses of the response processes as a source of validity evidence in psychological testing. CI can provide validity evidence for investigating substantive aspects of construct validity and for contributing to the explanations for item and test scores (Zumbo in Handbook of statistics, vol 26, Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 45–79, 2007; The concept of validity: revisions, new directions and applications, IAP—Information Age Publishing Inc., Charlotte, NC, pp. 65–82, 2009). The aim of the study was to illustrate the use of cognitive interviewing method for gathering validity evidence on response processes. The search for evidence about the “response process” was guided by an argument-based approach to validity (Kane in Psychological Bulletin 1992; Educational measurement, American Council on Education/Praeger, Washington, DC, pp. 17–64, 2006). 21 cognitive interviews were carried out during the cognitive testing of the APGAR psychological scale intended to measure the “family support” construct. Cognitive interviewing provided validity evidence that explains how respondents interpret and respond to the APGAR items. Respondents maintained a shared interpretation of “family concept” while answering the APGAR scale items. Nevertheless, they included in the concept of family not only family members they live with but also other family members and even friends. CI participants were also capable of classifying their answers about the family support perception following a polythomous response system. Lastly, the role of CI in the Kane’s argument-based approach and Zumbo’s contextualized view of validity will be discussed.     

Subjective mortality hazard shocks and the adjustment of consumption expenditures

I estimate the effect of shocks to subjective mortality hazards on consumption expenditures of retired individuals using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. I measure mortality expectations with survey responses on survival probabilities. To create plausibly exogenous variation in mortality hazard, I use the death of a sibling as an instrument. My results show that survey responses contain economically relevant information about longevity expectations and confirm the predictions of life-cycle theories about the effect of these expectations on intertemporal choice.     

A note on “Re-examining the law of iterated expectations for Choquet decision makers”

This note completes the main result of Zimper (Theory and decision, doi:10.1007/s11238-010-9221-8, 2010), by showing that additional conditions are needed in order the law of iterated expectations to hold true for Choquet decision makers. Due to the comonotonic additivity of Choquet expectations, the equation E[f, ν(dω)] = E[E[f(ω _{i, j} ), ν(A _{i, j} |A _i )], ν(A _i )], is valid only when the act f is comonotonic with its dynamic form, that we name “conditional certainty equivalent act”.