Social ties, task-related communication and first job performance of young engineers

This study investigated the relationships among social ties, task-related communication, and first industrial job performance of a group of young engineers by utilizing a cooperative (coop) engineering program as a natural study. The coop arrangement allowed the researcher to examine the work behavior of these young engineers with similar academic training who were working on comparable work assignments in the same set of organizations.The study found that the job performance of the coop engineers was related to the pattern of work- related communication but not the total number of contacts. Specifically, high performance new engineers were integrated more broadly into the interpersonal communication networks than low performance new engineers. Moreover, high performance new engineers exhibited communication patterns similar to those of high performance veteran engineers working on similar types of technical work. Social ties with the company staff was found to be related positively with job performance, but social ties with other coop engineers was found to be related negatively with job performance, a result which challenges an implicit assumption often made by researchers and managers about the organizational socialization of newcomers. Overall, this study provides an integrative framework for relating social ties and communication as key factors for understanding the job performance of young engineers and presents a methodology for assessing their organizational assimilation.     

新形势下高校青年教师思想政治工作初探

通过分析当前高校青年教师的思想政治状况以及思想政治工作中存在的问题,重点论述了新时期要以“三个代表”思想来指导高校青年教师的思想政治工作。     

Uncertain identities and health-risking behaviour: the case of young people and smoking in late modernity

This paper argues that 'uncertain identities' are a distinct contributing factor to the residual and intractable level of smoking among young people. Further, it argues that the significance of this factor is increased by the specific social/historical context of late modernity. Findings from research with 15 to 16 year olds in the East Midlands of England are used to explore the role that smoking is perceived to play in constructing a self identity. A voluntaristic perspective is adopted on the use of tobacco, reflecting both the focus on young people's motivation to smoke and the tendency for many young people to perceive smoking as a matter of personal choice. Smoking was found to have a symbolic significance not only in terms of the presentation of self to others but also in terms of the reflexive construction of the self by those involved. The paper analyses the role of smoking in relation to self-image, self-empowerment and self-affirmation and it is concluded that for many young people smoking has certain benefits in terms of coping with uncertain identities.     

心灵的自醒与铸造——卡里姆作品的“心路历程”探析

苏联作家卡里姆在《漫长的童年》和《普罗米修斯,别扔掉火种》中,艺术地描写了人类的“童年”与“成人”,思索现代社会人性、人的道德情感与理性意识等问题,强调人的心灵的自我觉醒与自我铸造,他的作品是一部心灵发展史。     

Compensatory Weight Control Behaviors of Women in Emerging Adulthood: Associations Between Childhood Abuse Experiences and Adult Relationship Avoidance

Abstract

Objective: To examine correlates of compensatory weight control behaviors among women in transition between adolescence and adulthood. Participants: The authors recruited a sample of undergraduate women (N = 759) at a large northwestern university during the 2009–2010 academic year. Methods: Logistic regression was used to assess relations among childhood abuse, psychosocial functioning, adult dating relationship factors, and women's endorsement of compensatory weight control behaviors. Results: The final model reliably distinguished between participants who endorsed versus denied use of compensatory behaviors (χ²[5, N = 747] = 36.37, p < .001), with global psychosocial functioning and relationship avoidance accounting for the most variance. Conclusions: These findings illustrate the importance of considering childhood abuse histories and adult relationships while assessing young women's compensatory weight control behaviors.     

试论高校青年教师的素养

本文阐述了改革开放新形势和未来的21世纪对高校青年教师素养的要求，分析了目前青年教师队伍中存在的问题，并就如何提高他们的素养提出了建议．     

Postdivorce Father‐Adolescent Closeness

Research indicates that closeness of the father‐child bond following parental divorce is associated with better outcomes for children and adolescents. Unlike other investigations, this study takes a long‐term developmental approach to understanding stability and change in postdivorce father‐adolescent relationship closeness. Drawing on Add Health data (n = 483), we examine factors that explain (a) why some high‐quality father‐adolescent relationships remain the same after divorce whereas others decline, and (b) why some low‐quality relationships are stable following divorce whereas others improve. High mother‐offspring relationship quality and offspring feelings of well‐being prevented close father‐offspring relationships from deteriorating. Offspring’s childbearing and cohabitation following parental divorce increase closeness in father‐offspring relationships that were not close prior to divorce. Although a majority of offspring experienced a decline in closeness following divorce, results from this study show that some very close father‐offspring relationships are maintained and some poor relationships become closer.     

The Changing Institution of Marriage: Adolescents’ Expectations to Cohabit and to Marry

Cohabitation has become part of the pathway toward marriage. Prior work focuses on expectations to marry and has ignored cohabitation. Although most young adults are not replacing marriage with cohabitation, but instead cohabit and then marry, it is important to study adolescents’ joint expectations to cohabit as well as marry. Our analyses draw on recently collected data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (N = 1,293). We find that adolescents are less certain about their cohabitation than marriage expectations. Dating and sexual experience, traditional values, prosocial activities, and parents influence adolescents’ union formation expectations. The findings from this work suggest that adolescents are including cohabitation as part of their future life trajectories but rarely envision cohabitation as substituting for marriage.     

Young adult carers: a literature review informing the re-conceptualisation of young adult caregiving in Australia

The experiences of young adult carers (YACs) have been vastly under-researched, particularly within Australian caregiving literature. This article explores the existence, extent and nature of informal young adult caregiving in Australia, defining YACs as individuals aged between 18 and 25 years who provide unpaid care or support to family members living with chronic illness or disability. The aim of this article is to provide a foundation for the re-conceptualisation of YACs as a distinct carer cohort who, without suitable recognition and specifically targeted support, may experience significantly reduced future life opportunities. The traditional, narrative-based review will first redefine YACs in accordance with overseas literary definitions and will then explore the complex nature and extent of young adult caregiving in Australia. Explanations as to why young adults are increasingly undertaking these informal caregiving roles and how YACs differentiate from their non-carer peers will then follow. Finally, three prominent paradigms, namely the clinical, social capital and carers' rights' perspectives, will be presented to establish a greater understanding of the implications, contextual experiences and unmet civil rights of YACs in Australia.     

Combinatorics and Statistical Issues Related to the Kruskal–Wallis Statistic

We explore criteria that data must meet in order for the Kruskal–Wallis test to reject the null hypothesis by computing the number of unique ranked datasets in the balanced case where each of the m alternatives has n observations. We show that the Kruskal–Wallis test tends to be conservative in rejecting the null hypothesis, and we offer a correction that improves its performance. We then compute the number of possible datasets producing unique rank-sums. The most commonly occurring data lead to an uncommonly small set of possible rank-sums. We extend prior findings about row- and column-ordered data structures.