MEASURING LEVELS OF PARTY IDENTIFICATION DOES QUESTION ORDER MATTER?

This article examines whether asking the vote question beforeparty identification alters the strength of partisanship andits relationship to vote choice. It employs the 1992 BritishElection Survey, which included a random split half-sample experiment,and the 1992–93 American Election Study Panel, where thequestion order for party identification and the vote were changed.The results show that altering the question ordering had verylittle effect in Britain and no significant effect in the UnitedStates. These results are consistent with the notion that partyidentification is one of the more enduring and stable componentsof mass political behavior in both presidential and parliamentarysystems.     

Poverty in People with Disabilities: Indicators from the Capability Approach

People with disability are particularly exposed to poor living conditions: on one hand they have more difficulties in getting an income cause to their inabilities, on the other hand conditions of poverty increase the risk of disability. However, little rigorous quantitative research has been undertaken to measure the real impact of disability on poverty. Methods based on monetary set (income and consumption) may not reflect the real possibility to convert resources into the fulfilment of personal goals. The capability approach, developed by A. K. Sen, offers a useful framework for the evaluation and assessment of individual well-being considering both monetary and non-monetary resources. The study describes a methodology, derived from the capability approach, to estimate the additional income needed for various types of household with and without disabled members to ensure the same satisfaction with economic resources. The method has been applied to the Italian contest, where 2.6 million people with disability live, and then the results are compared with the findings from an analogous study conducted in UK. The study reveals that disabled people in Italy need an income level two times higher to enjoy the same level of economic satisfaction, while in UK 50% of extra resource are sufficient. The findings suggests that traditional evaluations based on consumption lead to an underestimation of the needs of household containing disabled members. It follows that the financial benefits envisaged by actions planned by government through current instruments may not be completely effective.     

Mortality Peaks in Italy in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries: Trends by Age and Sex

Infant and youth mortality fell steeply between the Unification of Italy and the 1930s, particularly due to the decline in infectious and parasitic diseases. A number of mortality crises, however, at times halted this decline: the 1908 Calabria-Sicily earthquake, the 1915 Marsica earthquake, World War I and 1918 Spanish INFLUENZA outbreak.This paper focuses as the repercussions of these events on the general survival status of young people from birth to puberty, as well as the main pathologies responsible for the rise in mortality.An analysis of differences in mortality according to sex during the various crises was also performed to ascertain whether the more difficult survival conditions during these periods affected males and females equally.     

Strongly chordal and chordal bipartite graphs are sandwich monotone

A graph class is sandwich monotone if, for every pair of its graphs G ₁=(V,E ₁) and G ₂=(V,E ₂) with E ₁⊂E ₂, there is an ordering e ₁,…,e _k of the edges in E ₂∖E ₁ such that G=(V,E ₁∪{e ₁,…,e _i }) belongs to the class for every i between 1 and k. In this paper we show that strongly chordal graphs and chordal bipartite graphs are sandwich monotone, answering an open question by Bakonyi and Bono (Czechoslov. Math. J. 46:577–583, 1997). So far, very few classes have been proved to be sandwich monotone, and the most famous of these are chordal graphs. Sandwich monotonicity of a graph class implies that minimal completions of arbitrary graphs into that class can be recognized and computed in polynomial time. For minimal completions into strongly chordal or chordal bipartite graphs no polynomial-time algorithm has been known. With our results such algorithms follow for both classes. In addition, from our results it follows that all strongly chordal graphs and all chordal bipartite graphs with edge constraints can be listed efficiently.     

Hope Floats: African American Women's Survival Experiences after Katrina

This article describes how 15 African American women 18 to 55 years of age coped with traumatic life events during and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The study's main question is how did African American women cope with traumatic events during and following Hurricane Katrina? Second, we explore how the intersection of race, gender, and social class influenced their experiences. An exploratory design of primary and secondary data using grounded theory methods generates a mid-level theory about resilience, spirituality and coping among Black women in the aftermath of the storm.     

Parental military service and adolescent well‐being: mental health,social connections and coping among youth in the USA

The association between parental military work factors and adolescent's well‐being was examined. Data were collected from 1036 military youth. Using a within‐group design, we examined adolescent's well‐being related to parental absence, school and neighbourhood transitions, paygrade/rank and participation in military‐sponsored activities, and differentiated outcomes by sex and age. Two parental work factors primarily influenced adolescent's well‐being, parental paygrade/rank and engagement in military‐sponsored activities. Parental paygrade/rank was the only factor uniformly related to poorer well‐being, and this variable likely represents a more complex set of family circumstances. Engaging in military‐sponsored activities served as a resource and was related to enhanced well‐being. Individual‐level differences and implications for social workers are discussed.     

Adolescent Risk Behavior Patterns: Effects of Structured Time-Use,Interpersonal Connections,Self-System Characteristics,and Socio-Demographic Influences

The relationships between risk behaviors and factors representing multiple ecological layers are examined among a sample of youth in grades seven through 12 (n = 2,701). Our primary interest is in the relationship between structured time-use as a protective factor and youth risk behavior patterns. Two other layers of protective factors are also examined, those dealing with interpersonal connections and with self-system characteristics. Concomitant demographic factors in the study are age, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. Stepwise multiple regression analysis reveals that less risk behavior is associated with greater attachment to school, greater school success, closer relationships with parents, and greater participation in structured time-use; significant predictors of more risk behavior are being older, being male, and having one good friend. Implications for professional practice include employing a comprehensive, ecological approach to prevention and intervention, and enacting social support initiatives at multiple levels.