Birth preference in women undergoing treatment for childbirth fear: A randomised controlled trial

Background

Childbirth fear is the most common underlying reason for requesting a caesarean section without medical reason. The aim of this randomised controlled study was to investigate birth preferences in women undergoing treatment for childbirth fear, and to investigate birth experience and satisfaction with the allocated treatment.

Accounting for the Performance of Environmentally Significant Behavior: The Symbolic Significance of Recycling

The scientific community has pronounced climate change unequivocal and its consequences disastrous. Yet Americans' behavioral response to the global social problem of environmental degradation has been largely confined to the individual act of recycling. This article examines why Americans are not doing more to address climate change and other environmental issues. Taking a cognitive sociological perspective, I describe how Americans think about environmental issues and pro‐environmental behavior. I draw on Swidler's concept of a “cultural tool kit,” to examine the cultural narratives Americans use to account for the small amount of pro‐environmental behavior they perform. The act of recycling functions as a synecdoche for pro‐environmental behavior in general, allowing individuals to over‐claim the significance of a modest amount of pro‐environmental behavior. I argue that Americans' failure to engage with environmental issues at a collective level is rooted in the individualized culture of American environmentalism.     

Embedded counselling in advisory work with clients in debt

This article addresses the potential for embedded counselling in social work with clients in debt. It is based on experiences from Sweden where budget and debt advisors employed by the municipalities give assistance to clients in financial difficulties. A distinction is made between advice and guidance on the one hand and counselling on the other. As the financial problems often have been long lasting, it is not enough with one-time advice that the client hopefully then follows. The purpose of the article, thus, is to explore the possibilities of incorporating counselling in the role of the advisor.     

Left Behind by Parents in China: Internal Migration and Adolescents’ Well-Being

This study investigates how growing up as a left-behind child due to parents’ labor migration in China is associated with adolescents’ cognitive and socioemotional development, based on data from the China Family Panel Studies. We find that adolescents do worst when both parents are absent in all developmental indicators we examined: short-term and long-term word recall tests, numeracy test, self-concept, and self-expectation of educational attainment. However, the differences between left-behind children and those in rural two-parent families are not statistically significant. Left-behind adolescents do have significantly lower well-being than those in urban two-parent families. These differences can largely be accounted for by father's education, family spending on the adolescent's education, quality of parenting, and the social support available to an adolescent. The gap in Chinese adolescents' development is, thus, not so much related directly to how many parents one grows up with as it is to whether one grows up in a rural or urban environment.     

The Stability of Social Groups in Childhood and Adolescence: The Role of the Classroom Social Environment.

This study provides a developmental analysis of childhood and adolescent social relationships within the school context. The social groups of 220 fourth graders and 475 seventh graders were tracked over a one year interval. The initial results indicated that approximately 30% of the social groups were identified as stable in that they maintained at least 50% of their membership over the one year interval. However, the stability in group affiliations was a function of the stability of the composition of the classroom. When schools did not promote classrooms as a unit, only 6.8% of social groups were stable, as compared to 55% of groups being stable when the school did promote classrooms as a unit. This school effect in group stability was demonstrated by a high correlation (rs = .97) between classroom stability and group stability. Even in unstable classrooms, individuals were more likely to maintain affiliations when group members were assigned to the same classroom. This work suggests that stable environments promote stable relationships, which in turn, may promote greater continuity in the organization of behavioral patterns.     

Older sibling contribution to younger children's working memory and cognitive flexibility

We used structural equation modeling in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort (N = 17,020) to explore the influence of having an older sibling on kindergarten‐age focal children's cognitive self‐regulation. In model 1, we tested how having a sibling who is generally older than the focal child contributes to the focal child's working memory (WM) and cognitive flexibility (CF) upon entering kindergarten. In model 2, we assessed the contribution to the focal child's kindergarten WM and CF of having an older sibling in a non‐proximal age range (age 12–18) or not having siblings relative to having an older sibling in a proximal age range to the focal child (up to age 11). In model 3, we considered the contribution of having an older sister, an older brother, or both an older sister and an older brother of any age. Having an older sibling in general was associated with increased kindergarten WM, whereas having an older sister was related to increased WM and CF. Compared to having a proximal older sibling, having no siblings and having a non‐proximal older sibling were related to decreased WM and CF. Findings have implications for involving siblings in family interventions in early childhood.     

管理团队认知能力、行为整合对决策效果的影响机制研究

现有文献在研究团队决策效果的影响因素时,大部分关注年龄、学历等因素,较少关注非人口统计学特征。根据现有研究结果构建团队认知能力与决策效果的关系模型,利用结构方程模型进行实证研究并指出:团队认知能力的两要素能提升团队决策效果;团队行为整合被看作是团队运作过程的核心,对决策效果产生一定的正向作用,即团队的行为整合程度越高,其决策效果越好;验证行为整合在团队认知能力与决策效果之间具有中介作用。旨为丰富高阶理论、揭示认知能力对决策效果的作用提供借鉴。     

Program Evaluation and Causal Inference With High‐Dimensional Data

In this paper, we provide efficient estimators and honest confidence bands for a variety of treatment effects including local average (LATE) and local quantile treatment effects (LQTE) in data‐rich environments. We can handle very many control variables, endogenous receipt of treatment, heterogeneous treatment effects, and function‐valued outcomes. Our framework covers the special case of exogenous receipt of treatment, either conditional on controls or unconditionally as in randomized control trials. In the latter case, our approach produces efficient estimators and honest bands for (functional) average treatment effects (ATE) and quantile treatment effects (QTE). To make informative inference possible, we assume that key reduced‐form predictive relationships are approximately sparse. This assumption allows the use of regularization and selection methods to estimate those relations, and we provide methods for post‐regularization and post‐selection inference that are uniformly valid (honest) across a wide range of models. We show that a key ingredient enabling honest inference is the use of orthogonal or doubly robust moment conditions in estimating certain reduced‐form functional parameters. We illustrate the use of the proposed methods with an application to estimating the effect of 401(k) eligibility and participation on accumulated assets. The results on program evaluation are obtained as a consequence of more general results on honest inference in a general moment‐condition framework, which arises from structural equation models in econometrics. Here, too, the crucial ingredient is the use of orthogonal moment conditions, which can be constructed from the initial moment conditions. We provide results on honest inference for (function‐valued) parameters within this general framework where any high‐quality, machine learning methods (e.g., boosted trees, deep neural networks, random forest, and their aggregated and hybrid versions) can be used to learn the nonparametric/high‐dimensional components of the model. These include a number of supporting auxiliary results that are of major independent interest: namely, we (1) prove uniform validity of a multiplier bootstrap, (2) offer a uniformly valid functional delta method, and (3) provide results for sparsity‐based estimation of regression functions for function‐valued outcomes.     

企业家认知资源与管理创新决策:理论与案例实验

本文旨在探讨企业家认知资源的异质性及其对管理创新决策的影响。运用案例实验法进行了实证检验,研究结果表明:企业家的经验和社会资本是企业家的异质性认知资源,引致了企业家和非企业家管理决策方案在创新性和适用性上的异质性;在没有社会资本的支持下,企业家经验与管理决策方案创新性之间呈倒U型关系,对方案的适用性有正向影响;而在社会资本可得的情况下,企业家经验与社会资本均对方案的创新性和适用性有显著的增强效应。     

一种分析作用条件与作用效果关系的非参数方法

针对数据平均化处理方法无法观察指标个性差异的不足,给出了一种分析作用条件与综合作用效果关系的非参数方法(Con-Eff),并根据以下3种情况构造了相应的数学模型:①所有观察指标越大越好;②所有观察指标越小越好;③一部分观察指标越大越好,另一部分观察指标越小越好。然后,对模型的含义、模型性质以及模型的求解方法进行了探讨。最后,探讨了该方法在高等学校人力资源管理中的应用。