Nuptiality and fertility of birth cohorts

The impact of changes in age patterns of nuptiality on the net reproduction rate is examined using life table techniques and assuming that age-specific fertility within marriage and fertility outside of marriage are fixed. In the second section, a standardization technique is used to investigate the impact of changes in nuptiality on age-cumulative measures of marital fertility. Examples using data for selected generations of Australian women demonstrate the extent to which recent changes in average completed family size in Australia were affected by changing nuptiality patterns.     

Was hat Carl Rogers Wirtschaftsinformatikern im Zeitalter des Internet zu sagen? Studie zur Einführung der Lehrveranstaltung „Personzentrierte Kommunikation” an der Universität Wien

The increasing influence of the Internet on higher education evokes the question: What effects will this cause? We employ new media in order to supplant traditional lecturing by intensive interaction among all participants. This shall lead to more motivation and deeper, more significant learning involving the whole person. In this article we share our experience in designing and facilitating a course called ?Person Centered Communication” targeted at exposing business informatics students to the Person Centered Approach. We offer a mix of theory, exercises, self experience, various online-reflection processes such as reaction sheets, self-evaluation, team-assignments, and peer-evaluation of the cooperative elaboration of a self-chosen theme in the scope of Person-Centered Communication. The current study follows an extended action research methodology and encompasses the motivation, planning, performing, evaluation, and learning from our experience. The main result was that whereas the encounter groups were perceived as highly challenging, students unanimously agreed to have profited a lot for their future job and private lives. They mentioned that the online reflections provided complementary means to deepen their experiences and to get into contact with themselves.     

The Position of the Customs Law in the Legal System

The article considers the position of customs law in the legal system. It starts with changes concerning the phenomenon known as customs policy. The customs policy of the European Union is a foundation of the Union and an essential element in the functioning of the single market. All these changes have to be regulated by law; one of the branches is financial law. It represents a system of legal rules regulating the social and economic relationships that emerge in the process of generating, distributing, and using the centralised and decentralised monetary funds (financial resources) in the environment of the state and of self-governing administrative units, in the interest of providing for financial coverage of the fulfilment of their respective functions. The Slovak legal system and its individual branches including financial law can be characterised on the basis of certain principles. These represent basic goals, rules, and requirements expressing the substance and main focus of a particular branch of law. These principles are described. The second part of the article concerns the position of customs law, which here represents a system of legal rules regulating the social and economic relationships emerging in the process of movement of goods over the customs border. Customs law has its own development and is given a new dimension and dynamics by the common European area in the form of the European Union. The article concludes with the position of customs law, defining it as a subsection of financial law.     

Career Research From an Action Perspective: The Self-Confrontation Procedure

A videotape playback procedure (self-confrontation) following a career-related conversation is proposed as a means of studying career development from an action perspective. This perspective is premised on an understanding of career development as intentional, goal-directed, and occurring in a social context. In this article, a career conversation between a parent and an adolescent is used to illustrate the procedure. During the individual playback, the participants are asked for their thoughts and feelings (cognitions) while the conversation took place, and their interpretation of it. The categories used in the analysis are described. This procedure provides contextually-sensitive and empirically-grounded data useful for researchers and practitioners.     

Making Career Theories More Culturally Sensitive: Implications for Counseling

The primary question addressed in this article is whether and how career theories can be more culturally sensitive without losing value as conceptual explanations or their usefulness for counselors. Contextual action theory is identified as a means to develop culturally sensitive explanations. Six steps are proposed and illustrated, including using the naive observations and subjective reports and recognizing ongoing processes. The use of these steps in counseling is also addressed.     

Social Costs of Gambling in the Czech Republic 2012

Evidence about social costs of gambling is scarce and the methodology for their calculation has been a subject to strong criticism. We aimed to estimate social costs of gambling in the Czech Republic 2012. This retrospective, prevalence based cost of illness study builds on the revised methodology of Australian Productivity Commission. Social costs of gambling were estimated by combining epidemiological and economic data. Prevalence data on negative consequences of gambling were taken from existing national epidemiological studies. Economic data were taken from various national and international sources. Consequences of problem and pathological gambling only were taken into account. In 2012, the social costs of gambling in the Czech Republic were estimated to range between 541,619 and 619,608 thousands EUR. While personal and family costs accounted for 63% of all social costs, direct medical costs were estimated to range from 0.25 to 0.28% of all social costs only. This is the first study which estimates social costs of gambling in any of the Central and East European countries. It builds upon the solid evidence about prevalence of gambling related problems in the Czech Republic and satisfactorily reliable economic data. However, there is a number of limitations stemming from assumptions that were made, which suggest that the methodology for the calculation of the social costs of gambling needs further development.     

Prerequisites for quantification in the empirical sciences

The present paper discusses the usual classification of qualitative, comparative and quantitative concepts in the language of empirical sciences. The quantification of empirical properties is introduced on the basis of quasi-serial order formed by means of implicitly defined qualitative and comparative concepts and the concept of relative coincidence. The paper introduces conditions of additivity of quantitative concepts relative to the fundamental concepts of quasi-serial order and the corresponding aggregative operations which are based on analogues of Tarski's postulates for the operation of addition.     

Low species richness of non-biting midges (Diptera: Chironomidae) in Neotropical artificial urban water bodies

Chironomid assemblages of 22 artificial water bodies, mainly fountains, in two South American cities were surveyed. We found surprisingly low diversities, with a total of 11 taxa, averaging two taxa per site. The typical fountain assemblages mainly consisted of common species that have a wide distribution pattern and are tolerant to organic pollution. Also taxa independent of the natural aquatic sources, such as tap-water and semi-terrestrial species were represented. There was no significant difference between the taxa richness of the two S. American regions, however, the assemblage structures of the water bodies of Quito and Bogotá differed significantly. There was no correlation between sample similarities and distances among the sites either. The low number of taxa recorded can be attributed to the combination of naturally limited species pool and the heavy pollution in natural water bodies as colonization sources.     

The Joint Action of Parents and Adolescents in Conversation About Career

Analyses of 14 videotaped parent—adolescent career conversations reveal the socially constructed nature of career. These analyses are used to identify joint actions in career conversations, determine their patterns, and address their meaning for the participants. Joint action refers to the action that people take together or that occurs between them. The participants used 3 superordinate joint actions (struggle, exploration, and negotiation) and several subordinate joint actions. Three patterns of joint actions were also identified. The joint actions had particular meaning for both career and the relationship between the participants.