Mothering and everyday life during and in the aftermath of domestic violence among women with immigrant backgrounds in Norway

This paper focuses on how immigrant women experience and negotiate their everyday life with children prior to and after leaving a violent partner. Twenty‐three women staying at domestic violence and abuse shelters with their children were interviewed about their experiences with assistance services and their everyday life with their children. At the time of the interviews, most of the women were legally separated or divorced and were either living in or in touch daily with shelters. In this paper, we look at some of the challenges that women face when exposed to violence in a relationship that involves children. Being exposed to violence from a partner raises a number of economic, practical, and emotional concerns, both prior to and after leaving. For the mothers in our study, maintaining a regular routine is key to making the children feel safe in an unpredictable setting. For many, economic dependence on the partner is replaced with economic dependence on assistance services after leaving the partner. Services must recognize that providing help to mothers who have left a violent partner constitutes more than just practical support but is crucial for mothers' ability to re‐establish a predictable everyday life with their children.     

Joint modelling of longitudinal biomarker and gap time between recurrent events: copula-based dependence

In this paper, we will extend the joint model of longitudinal biomarker and recurrent event via copula function for accounting the dependence between the two processes. The general idea of joining separate processes by allowing model-specific random effect may come from different families distribution. It is a main advantage of the proposed method that a copula construction does not constrain the choice of marginal distributions of random effects. A maximum likelihood estimation with importance sampling technique as a simple and easy understanding method is employed to model inference. To evaluate and verify the validation of the proposed joint model, a bootstrapping method as a model-based resampling is developed. Our proposed joint model is also applied to pemphigus disease data for assessing the effect of biomarker trajectory on risk of recurrence.     

The indispensable nature of wives' work for the farm family enterprise

Cet article soutient que les contributions des épouses des exploitants agricoles sont essentielles à la survivance de l'entreprise familiale. Notre étude de cas de St-Charles, Québec, confirme l'importance qu'attachent les autres recherches aux multiples dimensions du rôle de l'épouse de l'exploitant agricole. Cependant, le rapport des biens, les méthodes de la collection des données, le cadre de la recherche et les fémmes elles-mêmes ne tiennent pas compte de ce rôle, le sous-estiment, n'y attachent aucune importance ou le cachent. Cet article met en question un tel traitement et une telle perception du role de la femme dans l'exploitation agricole et revendique l'identification des forces qui ont mystifiées notre opinion du travail en général et du travail des épouses des exploitants en particulier. Toute analyse du domaine de l'exploitation agricole qui omet ou n'attache aucune importance au travail des femmes présente un apercu trompeur des structures agricoles.
This paper argues that the contributions of farm wives are essential for the survival of the farm family enterprise. Our case study of St-Charles, Quebec, confirms the emphasis of other studies on the multi-dimensional role of the farm wife. However, property relations, methods of data collection, research frameworks and the women themselves ignore, underestimate, de-emphasize or conceal this role. This paper questions such treatment and the perception of women's role in farming and calls for the identification of forces that have mystified our view of work in general, and farm wives' work in particular. Any analysis of farming which omits or de-emphasizes wives' work presents a misleading view of agricultural structures.     

On the identification of extreme outliers and dragon-kings mechanisms in the upper tail of income distribution

The presence of extreme outliers in the upper tail data of income distribution affects the Pareto tail modeling. A simulation study is carried out to compare the performance of three types of boxplot in the detection of extreme outliers for Pareto data, including standard boxplot, adjusted boxplot and generalized boxplot. It is found that the generalized boxplot is the best method for determining extreme outliers for Pareto distributed data. For the application, the generalized boxplot is utilized for determining the exreme outliers in the upper tail of Malaysian income distribution. In addition, for this data set, the confidence interval method is applied for examining the presence of dragon-kings, extreme outliers which are beyond the Pareto or power-laws distribution.     

Optimal space coverage with white convex polygons

Assume that we are given a set of points some of which are black and the rest are white. The goal is to find a set of convex polygons with maximum total area that cover all white points and exclude all black points. We study the problem on three different settings (based on overlapping between different convex polygons): (1) In case convex polygons are permitted to have common area, we present a polynomial algorithm. (2) In case convex polygons are not allowed to have common area but are allowed to have common vertices, we prove the NP-hardness of the problem and propose an algorithm whose output is at least \(\left( \frac{OPT}{log(2n/OPT) + 2log(n)}\right) ^{1/4}\). (3) Finally, in case convex polygons are not allowed to have common area or common vertices, also we prove the NP-hardness of the problem and propose an algorithm whose output is at least \(\frac{3\sqrt{3}}{4.\pi }\left( \frac{OPT}{log(2n/OPT) + 2log(n)}\right) ^{1/4}\).     

Factors influencing whistle-blowing in the Iranian health system

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that contribute whistle-blowing in the Iranian health system and also to develop a model for these factors. Four factors were identified by reviewing the relevant literature including organizational culture factors, organizational factors, materiality of wrongdoing, and individual factors. Because of the local focus of this study, the items of each contributing factor were identified by employing Delphi method. Delphi method was conducted four times and 33 items. Subsequently, the model of factors was designed by DEMATEL technique for the first time in the Iranian context. To test the model, a questionnaire with 52 questions was designed, validated, and distributed among target population. Afterward, the model was tested by applying SEM. The final results indicated that the organizational culture, organizational factors, and materiality of wrongdoing have affected whistle-blowing significantly. However, the effect of individual factor was not significant.     

“We are not weak,we just experience domestic violence”—Immigrant women's experiences of encounters with service providers as a result of domestic violence

Domestic violence continues to be a serious social problem and represents a challenge for those who are exposed to it and those in public services. In Norway, a variety of services are provided to help victims of domestic violence and improve knowledge among professionals who meet with adults and children exposed to domestic violence. Studies in Norway show that families with immigrant backgrounds are overrepresented among social service users as a result of domestic violence. However, contextualized knowledge to provide background information about this overrepresentation is limited. This paper explores women's need for support and their experience with service providers when faced with difficult and unpredictable situations, namely, escaping from violence and leaving home with no financial resources or limited supportive network and turning to service providers for support. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 18 women who were staying in or were in touch with shelters with their children or alone. Five central themes emerged in the analysis of these interviews: (a) help becoming a burden; (b) timely economic measures; (c) economic support and domestic violence; (d) displaced focus; and (e) flexibility and the victim's background.     

Expectations and the performance of governance functions between a board,management and other stakeholders: the case of Robotdalen

Previous research has called for an enhanced understanding of the dynamic and interactional aspects of board work in public sector governance. Using a longitudinal case study of Robotdalen, this paper attempts to meet this call through a processual and qualitative study of board work in public organisations. The aim of the paper is to enhance our understanding of the human side of governance and the interactions between a board, the management in the governed organisation and other stakeholders. We do this by addressing the theoretical concept of an expectations gap. The results demonstrated how funding regimes influence governance functions, structures and practices at the organisational level, and how internal actors such as managers also carry out governance functions. Moreover, the results show how an expectations gap shifts and changes over time. In this way we have contributed a more nuanced theoretical understanding of how the governance function is co-produced and the importance of understanding the expectations gap to further understand the dynamics of public sector board work.     

Democratic assessment as scales of justice: the case of three Iranian high-stakes tests

High-stakes tests are often used as instruments of agenda-setting and control in developing areas to enable policy-makers to establish and embed education policy agendas throughout the education system and society. As an alternative method, Critical Language Testing assumes that tests are value-laden instruments and products of political, social, cultural, and ideologically driven educational agendas. This article critically examines three Iranian high-stakes tests (the National University Entrance Exam, the MA/MS Exam, and PhD examinations) to evaluate whether covert policies and agendas are being deployed in the Iranian context. It applies qualitative methods and Strauss and Corbin’s [1998. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. London: Sage] constant comparative method to demonstrate the existence of clear patterns of domination. Democratic testing is therefore suggested as a way forward by which policy-makers can operationalize a just and fair exam whereby testing parties’ ideas, and intuitions are equally taken into account and their rights are protected.