Political opinion leadership and advertisement attitude: The moderating roles of cognitive and affective responses to political messages

Political opinion leadership is a type of viewer involvement measure that may be relevant to predicting the viewer's attitude toward an advertisement with political content. This study was designed to investigate if cognitive and affective responses to political messages in fashion advertisements play any moderating roles in the relationship between political opinion leadership and advertisement attitude. The results suggest that effectiveness of political content in the advertisement for politically involved consumers may be determined by how clearly the message is communicated to the viewers. Discussions were also made as to the distinction between textual and pictorial messages and to how the viewer's recognition of a pictorial message can be a factor affecting the impact of political opinion leadership on attitude toward advertisement with political content.     

Hoarding cases involving older adults: the transition from a private matter to the public sector

Hoarding interventions with older adults require significant resources from multiple public agencies, yet recidivism occurs frequently. To improve services through better coordination, some communities have formed multiagency hoarding teams (MAHT), which include aging services. MAHTs requested this mixed methods study to understand the progression of cases through the public sector. Quantitative data collected on 52 cases involving adults ages 60+ identified steps in this process. Qualitative data collected from MAHT members were the basis for case studies illustrating the progression of cases through the public sector. Findings have implications for social workers involved in local service coordination, training, and policy.     

Passing by the Girls? Remittance Allocation for Educational Expenditures and Social Inequality in Nepal’s Households 2003–2004

We examine the utilization of remittances for expenditures associated with development, specifically children's education. We use household-level data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS II, 2003–04) to separate remittance effects from general household income effects to demonstrate the migration–development relationship reflected in child schooling investment. We find that family-household remittances are spent on education of children, but the expenditures are disproportionately for boys' schooling. Only when girls are members of higher-income households do greater schooling expenditures go to them. This gender-discriminating pattern at the household level contrasts with the call for universal and gender-equal education.     

Citizens Advice Bureaux: Problems of an Emerging Service in Rural Areas

Nineteen eighty nine marked the Golden Jubilee of the CABx in the UK. Over the past 50 years it has established itself nationally as the prime provider of generalist advice, but there are special problems associated with delivering the service in rural areas. These include: the logistical difficulties of serving remote communities with small and scattered populations; maintaining the independence of bureau, especially from the local authorities that mainly fund them; and matching the professional standards now demanded by NACAB. These issues are examined with reference to a questionnaire survey of bureaux managers in Cornwall and Devon carried out as part of the AJRBP project at the University of Exeter.     

Informal social networks in Korea: Covering the cost of major life events

This article investigates an informal voluntary social arrangement for financial assistance with discrete major life events known in Korea as Sang-Ho-Bu-Jo. This informal voluntary arrangement is neither public nor private, but is based on social networks that produce a unique form of civic society. Sang-Ho-Bu-Jo covers people's transitional one-time needs. This study explores the practice of Sang-Ho-Bu-Jo and its origins and provides the first systematic empirical study of this social phenomenon. Three large databases are used to analyze the scope and level of participation, as well as what variables correlate with such involvement. The study finds a high rate of participation, over 80% of households, and an average investment of 2–4% of household expenditure. Sang-Ho-Bu-Jo can help scholars and policy makers worldwide in understanding the role of socialization, social networks, and social capital in explaining innovative informal methods of social care.     

Dynamics of the Welfare Mix in the Republic of Korea: An Expenditure Study Between 1990 and 2001

Although non-State sectors have played an important role in people's welfare, their expenditures have usually been excluded from social policy studies when measuring the welfare efforts of a nation. This article experiments with a new approach synthesizing welfare mix research using an expenditure study as a tool and applies the model to the Korean case. It presents the following major findings: first, the welfare system of the Republic of Korea has presented a genuine welfare mix in which the role of non-State sectors has been of immense importance; and second, the dynamics of the welfare mix since 1997 have been largely due to the growing role of the State in social welfare, both directly and indirectly. Based on these findings, this article ultimately urges the necessity of the welfare mix approach in comparative social policy research.     

Poverty, Socioeconomic Change, Institutional Anomie, and Homicide

Objective. This study examined institutional anomie theory in the context of transitional Russia. Methods. We employed an index of negative socioeconomic change and measures of family, education, and polity to test the hypothesis that institutional strength conditions the effects of poverty and socioeconomic change on homicide rates. Results. As expected, the results of models estimated using negative binomial regression show direct positive effects of poverty and socioeconomic change and direct negative effects of family strength and polity on regional homicide rates. There was no support, however, for the hypothesis that stronger social institutions reduce the effects of poverty and socioeconomic change on violence. Conclusions. We interpret these results in the Russia-specific setting, concluding that Russia is a rich laboratory for examining the effects of social change on crime and that empirical research in other nations is important when assessing the generalizability of theories developed to explain crime and violence in the United States.     

An extended proportional hazards model for interval-censored data subject to instantaneous failures

Lifetime Data Analysis - The proportional hazards (PH) model is arguably one of the most popular models used to analyze time to event data arising from clinical trials and longitudinal studies. In...     

Goodness-of-fit tests for binomial AR(1) processes

The binomial AR(1) model describes a nonlinear process with a first-order autoregressive (AR(1)) structure and a binomial marginal distribution. To develop goodness-of-fit tests for the binomial AR(1) model, we investigate the observed marginal distribution of the binomial AR(1) process, and we tackle its autocorrelation structure. Motivated by the family of power-divergence statistics for handling discrete multivariate data, we derive the asymptotic distribution of certain categorized power-divergence statistics for the case of a binomial AR(1) process. Then we consider Bartlett's formula, which is widely used in time series analysis to provide estimates of the asymptotic covariance between sample autocorrelations, but which is not applicable when the underlying process is nonlinear. Hence, we derive a novel Bartlett-type formula for the asymptotic distribution of the sample autocorrelations of a binomial AR(1) process, which is then applied to develop tests concerning the autocorrelation structure. Simulation studies are carried out to evaluate the size and power of the proposed tests under diverse alternative process models. Several real examples are used to illustrate our methods and findings.     

Asset Ownership of New Asian Immigrants in the United States

This study examined the asset ownership of Asian immigrants using a nationally representative sample of newly legalized immigrants (New Immigrant Survey). Findings revealed that ownership of a business or farm, financial assets, and home ownership were associated with socioeconomic, demographic, and acculturation variables. Family income, education, English fluency, and length of stay were significant in all types of asset ownership. Variances in asset ownership by ethnic groups exist. Asian Indians and Koreans had higher levels of business asset ownership. Korean, and Filipino immigrants were also more likely to be homeowners. Asian Indian and Chinese immigrants were more likely to own financial assets. Vietnamese lagged in business or farm and financial asset ownership. Findings provided insights into the investment decisions of new Asian immigrants for financial educators, researchers, and policymakers.