A model of substance abuse risk: adapting to the Sri Lankan context

This study translated and validated the Substance Use Risk Profile Scale (SURPS) among 13 to 18 year old Sri Lankan adolescents attending school. A standard systematic translation procedure was followed to translate the original SURPS into Sinhala language. A Delphi process was conducted to determine judgmental validity of Sinhala SURPS. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the translated version against the original theoretical model of the SURPS. Test-retest and internal consistency were used to ensure reliability. A few terms in one of the items posed some difficulty in translating into Sinhala. Adequate judgmental validity was determined except for one item, which was modified to suit the Sri Lankan setting. The four subscales introversion/ hopelessness, impulsivity, sensation seeking and anxiety sensitivity showed satisfactory test-retest reliability estimates of .74, .68, .76, and .88, respectively. The Sinhala SURPS is applicable in Sri Lankan context. Several implications based on the results are discussed.     

Impact of customer loyalty and service operations on customer behaviour and firm performance: empirical evidence from UK retail sector

Abstract

Retail networks are striving to achieve competitive advantage by increasing value through loyalty and efficiency with a focus on service operations. As sales promotions have become an integral part of the retail supply chain planning, customer behavioural aspects based on loyalty and service operations have been challenged greatly. Subsequently, management capabilities, such as planning and timely replenishment, have become complicated tasks for many retail store managers. This study develops a model integrating retail network value and efficiencies with customer behaviour and performance. We validate the model using survey data from prominent U.K. retail store customers. Our data analysis shows that both loyalty and service operation attributes have positive significant impact on customer behaviour, while the service operation mediates the relationship between loyalty and customer behaviour. This result gives a new outlook to build managerial capability based on customer loyalty and service operations. Our results specifically show that the service operation attributes will indirectly influence the customers’ buying behaviour even in the presence of loyalty attribute such as promotion schemes. This result sends a strong signal to retail supply chain managers to offer customised promotions considering local community rather than having uniform sales promotion nationwide.     

The Public Face of a Private Domestic Violence

This article looks at violence against women in Indian society and gives an example of a best-practice response to domestic violence. It is divided into two parts. The first part of the paper examines the general characteristics of violence against women within India as a whole and the state of Andhra Pradesh in particular. The second part gives an example of the anti-arrack movement in Andhra Pradesh, a state in India, as an example of women's mobilization against government policy on liquor as a response to domestic violence. The paper aims to reconstruct this movement at the micro level using the experiences of women who were its chief participants.     

A Class of Estimators of Population Variance Using Auxiliary Information in Sample Surveys

This article advocates the problem of estimating the population variance of the study variable using information on certain known parameters of an auxiliary variable. A class of estimators for population variance using information on an auxiliary variable has been defined. In addition to many estimators, usual unbiased estimator, Isaki's (1983), Upadhyaya and Singh's (1999), and Kadilar and Cingi's (2006) estimators are shown as members of the proposed class of estimators. Asymptotic expressions for bias and mean square error of the proposed class of estimators have been obtained. An empirical study has been carried out to judge the performance of the various estimators of population variance generated from the proposed class of estimators over usual unbiased estimator, Isaki's (1983), Upadhyaya and Singh's (1999) and Kadilar and Cingi's (2006) estimators.     

UNMARRIED PARENTHOOD AND REDISTRIBUTIVE POLITICS

Political survey data for nine West European countries show that women have become increasingly left‐wing compared to men, and that this trend is positively correlated with the rise of nonmarriage in these countries. This pattern is mirrored in German longitudinal data (GSOEP), where transitions out of marriage make women, but not men, significantly more left‐leaning. Analysis of public spending data for high‐income OECD countries (1980–1998) suggests that the political impact of nonmarriage extends to the allocation of State resources with increases in nonmarriage first reducing, and then increasing, State redistribution towards children. (JEL: H31, H42, J12, J13)     

“The Paper that You Have in Your Hand is My Freedom”: Migrant Domestic Work and the Sponsorship (Kafala) System in Lebanon

A recent report on migrant domestic work in Lebanon has cited psychological disorder among Lebanese “Madams” as the leading cause of violence against their migrant maids (Jureidini, 2011, www.kafa.org.lb/StudiesPublicationPDF/PRpdf38.pdf ). This report typifies much of the existing scholarship on the experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the Middle East, where the focus is on employer–employee relationships, especially the abusive Arab “Madam.” In this paper, I argue that the portrayal of violations of MDW rights as abuse of one set of women by another is inherently problematic on several fronts. It privatizes the structural problem of workers’ and immigrant rights violations, delegates it to the household, and absolves the state of its responsibility. Moreover, the focus on abusive employers takes attention away from the root of the problem – the inherently exploitative system of migration and recruitment in the region, the sponsorship system. The sponsorship system not only creates conditions for much of these violations, but also systematically produces a new population of readily exploitable worker – the category of “illegal workers.” Oral histories and interviews with individual workers are employed to analyze the process by which illegal workers are “produced” in Lebanon. Finally, focus group discussions highlight critical policy recommendations made by the workers themselves, which address the systemic bases of their exploitation in Lebanon.     

“It May Be Her Eggs But It’s My Blood”: Surrogates and Everyday Forms of Kinship in India

This ethnographic study of commercial gestational surrogacy in a small clinic in western India introduces the concept of “everyday forms of kinship”—kinship ties as the product of conscious everyday strategy, and, at times, as a vehicle for survival and/or resistance. The surrogates’ constructions of kinship as a daily process disrupt kinship theories that are based solely on biology. So, too, do they disrupt the patrilineal assumptions made in studies of Indian kinship. Kinship ties instead find their basis in shared bodily substances (blood and breast milk) and shared company, as well as in the labor of gestation and of giving birth. By emphasizing connections based on shared bodily substance and by de-emphasizing the ties the baby has with its genetic mother and the men involved in surrogacy (the genetic fathers and the surrogates’ husbands), the surrogates challenge established hierarchies in kin relationships—where genes and the male seed triumph above all. Simultaneously, by forming kinship ties with the baby, the intended mother, and other surrogates residing with them, surrogates in India form ties that cross boundaries based on class, caste and religion and sometimes even race and nation. By focusing on the notions of blood (shared substance) and sweat (labor) as basis for making kinship claims, this study both extends anthropological literature that emphasizes the non-procreative basis of kinship and feminist works that denaturalize kinship ties and make visible the labor involved in forming kinship ties and maintaining a family.