Workplace racial composition, perceived discrimination, and organizational attachment

Prior research has devoted considerable attention to the relationship between the racial and ethnic composition of jobs and various indicators of organizational attachment. Fewer studies, however, examine how workplace racial composition affects individuals’ experiences of racial discrimination or how these experiences impact workers’ organizational attachment. To address this lacuna, we first examine the effects of workplace racial composition on perceived racial and ethnic discrimination. Next, we examine whether perceived racial discrimination mediates the association between racial composition and organizational attachment observed in prior studies. Finally, we explore whether these relationships are similar (symmetric) or different (non-symmetric) for non-Whites and Whites. The analyses indicate: (1) working with predominately same-race coworkers tends to diminish perceptions of racial discrimination, (2) perceived racial discrimination mediates some of the effects of racial/ethnic composition on organizational attachment, and (3) some non-symmetric effects between non-Whites and Whites are found. We conclude with implications for future research.     

Participation for children exposed to domestic violence? Social workers' approaches and children's strategies

This article explores social workers' approaches to children exposed to domestic violence and children's strategies in encounters with these professionals in the context of family law proceedings. Investigator approaches as well as child strategies are reconstructed from children's narratives. Furthermore, possible links between the social worker's approach described by a particular child, and the child's own strategies are outlined. Participation can offer children validation of their experiences and support their recovery after exposure to violence. However, it is suggested that it seems to be a challenging task for social workers to both validate children's experiences of violence and simultaneously offer them participation in the investigation process.     

‘Before they kill my spirit entirely’: insights into the lived experiences of American Indian Alaska Native faculty at research universities

American Indian and Alaska Natives (AIAN) comprise about 2% of the US population and 0.5% of the faculty in higher education. While scholars have documented the experiences of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty, the perspectives of AIAN faculty at elite universities are largely absent. Although AIAN faculty share many of the same barriers to success as URM colleagues, their unique status as Tribal peoples and their relationship to settler colonialism pose particular challenges and resistance strategies. Findings from a mixed methods study of 25 AIAN faculty at research universities, employing a decolonizing, survivance-oriented framework, examines their lived institutional experiences. The data yielded five themes regarding (1) institutional climate, (2) mentorship, (3) family–work balance, (4) cultural taxation and role stress, and (5) discrimination. The authors conclude that decolonization involves the repatriation of Indigenous epistemologies and Indigenous ‘place’ in the growth of science, research, and knowledge production, creating liberatory spaces within the academy.     

Reclaiming ourselves through Testimonio pedagogy: reflections on a curriculum design lab in teacher education

This article details one teacher preparation course centering Latin American Testimonio narratives of struggle/survival amid structural oppression for use in secondary curriculum. As our class of predominantly Latina/o students and two Latina instructors engaged Testimonio pedagogy, we fashioned a hopeful alternative to our own experiences of intergenerational oppression. While research indicates that the experiences and histories of pre-service Teachers of Color lend pedagogical strength and critical consciousness to teacher education, three Latina pre-service students highlight the ways in which Testimonio became more than a pedagogical approach. Testimonio’s collectivity, resistance, hope, and assertions of voice and dignity moved through them not as educators first but as (great-grand)daughters of oppressed though still-resilient People(s). Testimonio emboldened these Latina pre-service educators to recognize and validate their own inherited multiliteracies, (re)claim their connectedness to land, and articulate their visions for more equitable schooling. This work advances research into the essentiality of engaging race and ethnicity in K-12 and teacher education curriculum and pedagogy.     

Key Determinants to using Telehealth Technology to Serve Medically Ill and Depressed Homebound Older Adults

Despite the increasing evidence for the effectiveness of telehealth technology in screening and treating chronic diseases, and comorbid depression among older adults, they have been slowly adopted by home health care (HHC) agencies. Therefore, this study aimed to identify factors that determine telehealth technology adoption. Twenty directors from the National Association for Homecare & Hospice member agencies completed a 45-min telephone interview. Questions were asked regarding their perceptions of telehealth, the key determinants of telehealth adoption and use, and recommendations they would give on telehealth adoption. The majority of the participants perceived telehealth as effective for managing symptoms and reducing cost. Meanwhile, some participants had a mixed feeling toward telehealth for depression care as they did not recognize their agency as equipped with the necessary resources and trained staff. Moreover, significant determinants of telehealth adoption included the agency-related characteristics, the patient-home environment, reimbursement and cost-related factors, and staff telehealth perception. Findings imply that there is a need for financial support both at the state and the federal levels to encourage telehealth adoption among HHC agencies. Future studies should consider exploring strategies used by successful programs to overcome barriers.     

‘Are you gonna show this to white people?’: Chicana/o and Latina/o students’ counter-narratives on race,place, and representation

This article explores the recurring narratives on race, place and representation that emerged in the talk of Chicana/o and Latina/o sixth-graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles, California. Discourse analytic methods are used to closely examine how these narratives were constructed within the contexts of everyday classroom interactions. Drawing on the notion of counter-storytelling from critical race theory, the article highlights how these sixth-grade students articulated counter-narratives about who they were and what their community was like – often in direct opposition to what they perceived as white people’s stereotypical assumptions and misperceptions. It is argued that these narratives constitute a powerful and sophisticated critique of dominant narratives that frame working-class Chicana/o and Latina/o students in racist and pejorative terms. The article ends with a discussion of implications for understanding youth agency and the politics of representation.     

Evolution of product quality in European,Japanese and US automotive firms: An exploratory longitudinal analysis

For years we have been hearing that US automobile manufacturers have been losing market share to their Japanese rivals who are reputed to make better quality vehicles. Most such reports are based on the initial quality surveys on new automobiles. In this paper we address two exploratory questions: (1) how does the quality of an automobile change with its age, and, (2) can firm level variables help explain differences quality. To answer these questions, we collected Consumer Reports’ reliability ratings on approximately 300 automobile models made by European, Japanese and US automotive firms during the 1998–2007; and approximately 240 models made by these firms over period of 2008–2015. For both periods we found that not only do automobiles made by Japanese firms have higher initial quality, but, as automobiles get older the difference in the product quality between Japanese versus European and US firms increases. We also found that the more generalist a European or US automobile firm, i.e., the wider is the firm׳s product offering in the marketplace, the lower its overall automobile quality during the 1998–2007 period. Conversely, Japanese generalist firms were found to have higher quality than specialist firms over the same period. The result is partly explained by the fact that Japanese firms have taken a different path to broadening their product variety – they have ensured a high level of quality of their initial offerings before entering newer market segments. The rate of reliability decline was found to be slower for all firms, and the differences in reliability across the 3 groups of firms were much less pronounced during the 2008–2015 period. This improvement may be as result of restructuring done by US automobile firms.     

Adaptive phase I/II clinical trials for drug combination assessment in oncology using the outcomes of each cycle

Many new anticancer agents can be combined with existing drugs, as combining a number of drugs may be expected to have a better therapeutic effect than monotherapy owing to synergistic effects. Furthermore, to drive drug development and to reduce the associated cost, there has been a growing tendency to combine these as phase I/II trials. With respect to phase I/II oncology trials for the assessment of dose combinations, in the existing methodologies in which efficacy based on tumor response and safety based on toxicity are modeled as binary outcomes, it is not possible to enroll and treat the next cohort of patients unless the best overall response has been determined in the current cohort. Thus, the trial duration might be potentially extended to an unacceptable degree. In this study, we proposed a method that randomizes the next cohort of patients in the phase II part to the dose combination based on the estimated response rate using all the available observed data upon determination of the overall response in the current cohort. We compared the proposed method to the existing method using simulation studies. These demonstrated that the percentage of optimal dose combinations selected in the proposed method is not less than that in the existing method and that the trial duration in the proposed method is shortened compared to that in the existing method. The proposed method meets both ethical and financial requirements, and we believe it has the potential to contribute to expedite drug development.     

Variations in the Life Histories of Incarcerated Parents by Race and Ethnicity: Implications for Service Provision

ABSTRACT

Incarcerated parents have complex life histories that often remain unresolved during incarceration, can continue to create barriers to prosocial success on release, and present similar intergenerational challenges for their children. This study examines the life histories of incarcerated fathers and mothers from the Pacific Northwest and how their experiences vary based on race and ethnicity. Five areas examined were exposure to trauma, child welfare involvement, mental health and substance abuse problems, juvenile justice and adult criminal justice involvement, and intergenerational criminal justice involvement. The sample comprised 359 incarcerated parents, and their racial/ethnic composition was 59% White, 14% African American, 11% multiracial, 8% Native American, and 7% Latino. Few differences were found across racial and ethnic groups. Mothers appeared more similar to each other across groups than fathers. Results illustrated similarities yet some surprising differences with national trends on key study variables. Implications for future research and intervention and prevention are discussed.     

Order statistics from trivariate normal and -distributions in terms of generalized skew-normal and skew- distributions

We consider here a generalization of the skew-normal distribution, GSN(λ₁,λ₂,ρ), defined through a standard bivariate normal distribution with correlation ρ, which is a special case of the unified multivariate skew-normal distribution studied recently by Arellano-Valle and Azzalini [2006. On the unification of families of skew-normal distributions. Scand. J. Statist. 33, 561–574]. We then present some simple and useful properties of this distribution and also derive its moment generating function in an explicit form. Next, we show that distributions of order statistics from the trivariate normal distribution are mixtures of these generalized skew-normal distributions; thence, using the established properties of the generalized skew-normal distribution, we derive the moment generating functions of order statistics, and also present expressions for means and variances of these order statistics.Next, we introduce a generalized skew-t_ν distribution, which is a special case of the unified multivariate skew-elliptical distribution presented by Arellano-Valle and Azzalini [2006. On the unification of families of skew-normal distributions. Scand. J. Statist. 33, 561–574] and is in fact a three-parameter generalization of Azzalini and Capitanio's [2003. Distributions generated by perturbation of symmetry with emphasis on a multivariate skew t distribution. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B 65, 367–389] univariate skew-t_ν form. We then use the relationship between the generalized skew-normal and skew-t_ν distributions to discuss some properties of generalized skew-t_ν as well as distributions of order statistics from bivariate and trivariate t_ν distributions. We show that these distributions of order statistics are indeed mixtures of generalized skew-t_ν distributions, and then use this property to derive explicit expressions for means and variances of these order statistics.