Time‐change models for asymmetric processes

Many records in environmental sciences exhibit asymmetric trajectories. The physical mechanisms behind these records may lead for example to sample paths with different characteristics at high and low levels (up–down asymmetries) or in the ascending and descending phases leading to time irreversibility (front–back asymmetries). Such features are important for many applications, and there is a need for simple and tractable models that can reproduce them. In this paper, we explore original time‐change models where the clock is a stochastic process that depends on the observed trajectory. The ergodicity of the proposed model is established under general conditions, and this result is used to develop nonparametric estimation procedures based on the joint distribution of the process and its derivative. The methodology is illustrated on meteorological and oceanographic data sets. We show that, combined with a marginal transformation, the proposed methodology is able to reproduce important characteristics of the data set such as marginal distributions, up‐crossing intensity, and up–down and front–back asymmetries.     

Using theory of change as a framework for examining community context and philanthropic impact

As part of the process of examining their theory of change (TOC) and reflecting on grant making activity, one Midwestern foundation employed a multipronged strategy to assess 209 community-based mental health grants across seven years of funding. This article details the evaluation approach, which comprised these areas of the TOC: grantees’ use of evidence-based interventions, cultural competency, quality improvement, community collaboration, and use of integrated care. Inductive analyses identified grantees’ use of innovative practices, trauma-informed care, and use of validated instruments. In an iterative exercise spanning multiple years, the foundation and researchers found ways to gather information about community capacity and impact while simultaneously minimizing grantee data collection/reporting burden. Findings revealed that community agencies were improving in their uptake of evidence-based interventions and use of validated instruments. Community grantee use of trauma informed care also improved over the study period. Grantee desire to collaborate and coordinate services within the community was also strong. The research also revealed that in multiple domains (such as technology and non-profit operating costs) grantees needed support in building agency capacity. These findings shed light on which aspects of the foundation’s TOC were being addressed through funding, and which areas of the community needed additional support.     

Analysing facilitating and hindering factors for implementing gender equality interventions in R&I: Structures and processes

This article analyses the facilitating and hindering factors that have affected the implementation of gender equality interventions in research and innovation in Europe. It applies the evaluation framework developed in the EFFORTI project that recognizes the complexity of evaluating gender equality interventions in R&I, the importance of factoring in context to any sound evaluation as well as the need to distinguish between the design and implementation of interventions in evaluations. It is based on the analysis of 19 empirical case studies carried out throughout Europe and focuses on those structural and procedural factors that have either facilitated or hindered the implementation process of these interventions. Findings include how the governance framework; top-management commitment; bottom-up participation; framing synergies with other initiatives, strategies for tackling resistance; resources; sustainability of actions; gender competence, experience and knowledge and transparency, targets, standards and monitoring; and accessible data and information all contributed to the successful implementation of the interventions.     

Seeing the system: Systemic gender knowledge to support transformational change towards gender equality in science

Scholars agree that gender inequality is systemic and that participants in gender equality interventions need knowledge on gender inequality processes. However, a detailed view on the specific characteristics of this knowledge is as yet missing. This article aims to contribute to gender equality interventions by conceptualizing and visualizing systemic gender knowledge as an important condition for transformational change. Combining gender and participatory system dynamics literature, this article first introduces the concept of systemic gender knowledge. This concept captures two main characteristics that make gender knowledge systemic: knowledge on the interaction of gender inequality processes and endogenous thinking, here implying a focus on the organization as the relevant level of analysis. In addition to this conceptual contribution, the research contributes methodologically to the gender inequality intervention literature by designing a visualization process, translating written texts into system dynamics models which enable exploration of systemic gender knowledge. Finally, the research contributes empirically by exploring the systemic gender knowledge of participants in two science research institutes of a Dutch university, finding shifts in both characteristics of systemic gender knowledge. This enables researchers to discern whether gender equality interventions lead to increases in systemic gender knowledge, thus supporting transformational change.     

Crafting social change: former global factory workers negotiating new identities in Sri Lanka’s villages

This article explores how former factory workers negotiate new identities in villages, as new brides, mothers and daughters-in-law, after 5–6 years of employment in an urban Free Trade Zone. I argue that their performances of self-discipline and disavowal of transgressive knowledges allow them to make use of the limited social, economic and political spaces available while gradually reshaping local understandings about the good daughter-in-law. Former workers’ strategic deployment of social conformity represents the foundation on which their entry into village social, economic, political spaces is based on. Although individual social conformity would conventionally be identified as everyday politics, I argue that former workers’ performance of self-discipline and social conformity is strategic and leads to changes in gender norms and village social hierarchies and thus represents a form of politics that is in between everyday and transformative politics – politics that creates conditions of possibility for social transformations.     

A Study of Clinical Change in Individual Career Counseling

This study examined the clinical significance of career counseling effects. Participants were 111 university students (83% women) who participated in individual career counseling sessions at their university. All participants completed the French version of the Outcome Questionnaire–30.2 (OQ‐30.2; Lambert, Finch, Okiishi, & Burlingame, 2005) immediately before the 1st session (pretest) and at the beginning of the last session (posttest). The OQ‐30.2 assesses 3 client life domains: subjective discomfort, problems in interpersonal relationships, and problems in social role satisfaction. Using Jacobson and Truax’s (1991) statistical approach to assessing clinical change, the authors compared clients’ pretest OQ‐30.2 scores with their posttest scores. Among clients with a “dysfunctional” score (n = 59) at the study’s inception, 34% recovered and 14% improved, whereas 41% of clients with functional scores (n = 52) at the study’s inception improved. The results suggest that individual career counseling can make a difference in the lives of many clients; they also highlight the importance of further outcome research that accounts for possible variability in clients’ responses to career counseling.     

Building Virtual Age-Friendly Communities in Minecraft

A key theme of Age-Friendly Honolulu’s initiative is intergenerational exchange. The initiative believes that youth need to be aware of aging issues, demographic change, and think critically about the potential impact on their lives. The goal of the Age-Friendly Honolulu Youth Engagement Initiative is to teach youth about the role of the built environment and community features in promoting active aging and engagement among older adults. This article describes a new program in the field that teaches youth and older adults to assess the built environment and then use design thinking and Minecraft (a popular video game in which players use 3-D blocks to create virtual lands) to develop and envision ideas to improve the livability of their neighborhood.     

基于增长核算分析的中国经济增长来源研究

应用新经济增长理论的增长核算分析框架,研究中国改革开放以来,物质资本、人力资本和全要素生产率（TFP）对经济增长的贡献,以及产权结构、对外开放等制度变迁对TFP的影响。研究发现,改革开来以来,全要素生产率的增长是经济增长的主要推动力,其次是物质资本存量的贡献,而人力资本对经济增长的贡献最低,并且逐期下降。实证分析也表明,由于中国正处于经济转型期,用＂索洛剩余＂衡量的TFP的增长不能简单地理解为技术进步;所有制结构和对外开放等制度变迁是推动中国TFP增长和经济增长的十分重要的两个因素。