The effect of number of siblings on adult mortality: Evidence from Swedish registers for cohorts born between 1938 and 1972

Demographic research has paid much attention to the impact of childhood conditions on adult mortality. We focus on one of the key aspects of early life conditions, sibling group size, and examine the causal effect of growing up in a large family on mortality. While previous studies have focused on low- or middle-income countries, we examine whether growing up in a large family is a disadvantage in Sweden, a context where most parents have adequate resources, which are complemented by a generous welfare state. We used Swedish register data and frailty models, examining all-cause and cause-specific mortality between the ages of 40 and 74 for the 1938–72 cohorts, and also a quasi-experimental approach that exploited multiple births as a source of exogenous variation in the number of siblings. Overall our results do not indicate that growing up in a large family has a detrimental effect on longevity in Sweden.     

“Unnatural Fornication” Cases Under State-Socialism: A Hungarian–Slovenian Comparative Social-Historical Approach

This comparative social-historical study examines different versions of state-socialist body politics manifested in Hungary and Slovenia mainly during the 1950s by using archive material of “unnatural fornication” court cases. By analyzing the available Hungarian “természet elleni fajtalanság” and Slovenian “nenaravno ob?evanje” court cases, we can shed light on how the defendants were treated by the police and the judiciary. On the basis of these archive data that have never been examined before from these angles, we can construct an at least partial picture of the practices and consequences of state surveillance of same-sex-attracted men during state-socialism. The article explores the functioning of state-socialist social control mechanisms directed at nonnormative sexualities that had long-lasting consequences on the social representation of homosexuality in both countries.     

我国生育意愿及其影响因素研究综述：1980～2015

2016年1月1日起实施的全面二孩政策能否有效地鼓励民众的生育行为,这关乎到我国未来几十年合理调整人口结构、稳固新常态发展的成功与否。本文通过对我国1980-2015年有关生育意愿的国内外文献总结回顾,将生育意愿的内涵界定为数量、时间、性别、动机四个维度,并在此基础上结合国内外学者们的研究归纳得出影响生育意愿的五个方面因素：政策、经济、观念、教育、年龄,以期在新政策背景下展望未来,借鉴国外发展的经验,做好养老、医疗、就业、教育方面的准备措施来迎接全面二孩时代,并为有关生育意愿的进一步研究提供参考。     

西方“超老化观感”研究述评

“：超老化观感”在本质上反映了一个元观念的转变①,即从一个物质的和理性的世界观转向一个更超越自然的世界观,并且通常伴随着生活满意度的增加;这一转变经历了在自然、自我、社会与个人的关系这三个方面的变化;其关键特征有追求沉思与积极独处、高度自我控制的活动与高生活满意度和获得成熟与智慧;其发展受年龄、性别、种族、生活环境或文化背景等多重因素的影响“。超老化观感”理论在护理、心理咨询、教育等多个领域有独特的实践应用价值,因而,加强该理论的本土化研究将对我国老年学学科建设及老龄事业的发展有重大的指导意义。     

川南苗族丧葬仪式中的史诗唱述及音乐样态研究

近年来,苗族史诗及苗族仪式音乐的研究成果很多,但大多侧重对仪式中史诗唱诵的文本译介或价值分析,缺少对音乐的描写及调查研究.我们注意到,苗族史诗的唱述是与其民族的民俗生活环境密切相关.为此,本文结合田野调查资料,聚焦于川南苗族丧葬仪式上苗族史诗的唱述音乐之民俗环境、音乐形态、史诗语言韵律等方面进行分析.研究显示,苗族史诗的唱述音乐作为较特殊类别的仪式音乐,由多种乐器声响和人的声音相交融,是其民族的音乐、语言和信仰观念的综合表达.把握其唱述与传承的相关关系,对拓展民族音乐学的视野具有学术的意义.     

适应性市场假说及其在中国资本市场的实证

金融危机近些年爆发频繁,传统市场理论如有效市场假说和行为金融面对复杂的现实金融世界未能给出合理解释.Lo提出的适应性市场假说则弥合了这两个学派的分歧,逐渐引起了学术界的重视.本文尝试从动态市场效率、时变贝塔和技术交易策略演变这三个角度对适应性市场假说能否解释我国资本市场进行实证研究.研究发现:我国股票市场效率在动态变化,无效的时段与金融危机或政策巨变等重大事件联系密切;股市风格指数贝塔随市场环境变化而改变;技术交易策略绩效随投资者适应环境变化而演变.研究结果表明,适应性市场假说相比有效市场假说和经典资本资产定价模型,能够更好地解释我国资本市场上述现象.最后对投资者如何根据市场环境变化制定适应性投资策略给出几点建议.     

The efficiency of mutual fund companies: Evidence from an innovative network SBM approach

This paper is the first DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) evaluation of the efficiency of a sample of mutual fund companies in a large Euro fund industry, i.e. Spain. Our novel network model links the efficiency of the core activities (portfolio management and marketing/distribution) of a mutual fund company to the efficiency of its operational management function. Our results highlight the important networking effects at the marketing stage and question the prime role of portfolio management skills in the overall efficiency of a mutual fund company. The evaluation of robust efficiency clusters indicates that the efficiency rankings obtained with our network model persist significantly along our sample period. Finally, the application of the SBM (Slacks-Based Measure) Variation III to our network model allows us to identify a large number of globally inefficient but locally efficient companies with reference to competitors with similar management resources.     

The methodology of a multi-model project examining how facebook infrastructures social relations

It is the purpose of this paper to make explicit the methodology (the theory of the methods) by which we conducted research for an Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project on the relationship of values to value. Specifically, we wanted to study the imperative of Facebook to monetize social relationships, what happens when one of our significant forms of communication is driven by the search for profit, by the logic of capital. We therefore wanted to ‘get inside’ and understand what capital's new lines of flight, informationally driven models of economic expansion, do to social relations. Taking up the challenge to develop methods appropriate to the challenges of ‘big data', we applied four different methods to investigate the interface that is Facebook: we designed custom software tools, generated an online survey, developed data visualizations, and conducted interviews with participants to discuss their understandings of our analysis. We used Lefebvre's [(2004). Rhythmnanalysis: Space, time and everyday life. London: Continuum] rhythmanalysis and Kember and Zylinska's [(2012). Life after new media: Mediation as a vital process. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] ideas about ‘lifeness’ to inform our methodology. This paper reports on a research process that was not entirely straightforward. We were thwarted in a variety of ways, especially by challenge to use software to study software and had to develop our project in unanticipated directions, but we also found much more than we initially imagined possible. As so few academic researchers are able to study Facebook through its own tools (as Tufekci [(2014 Tufekci, Z. (2014). Big questions for social media big data: Representativeness, validity and other methodological pitfalls. In ICWSM ‘14: Proceedings of the 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, pp. 505–514. [Google Scholar]). Big questions for social media big data: Representativeness, validity and other methodological pitfalls. In ICWSM ‘14: Proceedings of the 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (pp. 505–514)] notes how, unsurprisingly, at the 2013 ICWSM only about 5% of papers were about Facebook and nearly all of these were co-authored with Facebook data scientists), we hope that our methodology is useful for other researchers seeking to develop less conventional research on Facebook.     

Women who sacrifice themselves for everybody: qualitative research with mothers of disabled children

This study, from a feminist perspective, aimed at examining the experiences of women whose children with cerebral palsy received a treatment at a physiotherapy and rehabilitation center located in Ankara, Turkey. The study intended to reveal the perceptions of in-family roles of women with disabled children, their participation in public life, and their self-concept within the scope of feminist social work. Thus, the objective of the present study was to contribute to the understanding of the fact that non gender-blind services should be developed in this field on the basis of social justice and human rights, which constitutes the fundamental philosophy of social work. Qualitative research method was employed in the study where data were analyzed through content analysis. The findings of the study were interpreted under four main themes: the lives of the women with disabled children after their disabled children were born; being a woman within the scope of family life, participation in decision-making processes, and domestic division of labor; participation in public life and relations with women's associations; the self-sacrifice; and the suggestions of women concerning self-realization within the scope of self-concept.     

What ‘works’ when retracing sample members in a qualitative longitudinal study?

Attrition represents a significant obstacle to overcome in any longitudinal research project. It is, perhaps, most keenly felt when the data collected are from a qualitative study, since, unlike quantitative longitudinal research, weighting factors cannot be applied to ‘correct’ for any biases in the achieved sample and even a small number of ‘lost’ respondents can equate to a large percentage of the original sample. It is perhaps because of qualitative longitudinal research’s (QLR) reliance on, generally speaking, smaller samples that few have been able to shed much light on which re-contacting procedures are associated with achieving higher rates of retention. In this article, using data from a fifth sweep of a larger but particularly challenging cohort of 199 former probationers, we explore the strategies which helped us maintain high levels of retention in a QLR study. The article contains many practical suggestions which others planning or undertaking similar studies may find useful.