Licensing and training requirements for direct care workers in Japan: what can the United States and Japan learn from each other?

Shortages of direct care workers have been of concern both in the United States and in Japan. This article compares issues surrounding long-term care provisions in the two countries and introduces Japan's unique licensure and certificate system for direct care workers. Japan has established three levels of direct care worker certificates and a direct care licensure, which can be potentially used as a career ladder. Studies show that this system has resulted in different work conditions and benefits between different certificate and licensure levels but had a limited impact on hourly wage and task differentiation. Implications for the United States are also discussed.     

日本传统戏曲与中国民俗艺能之继承关系与应用立体坐标法解释

文章利用立体坐标法对中日民间艺术进行数字化记录,将日本的传统艺术"能乐"和民俗艺术"花祭"与中国江西省石邮村的"傩舞"进行对比,认为亚洲各国各地区之间的艺能表现,在通过肢体动作来表现情感、传达思想等方面具有普遍的共通性。     

Positive Feedback Model for City Vitalization

Abstract  In the present study, we first attempt to construct a model for the dynamics of city images, in which intra- and intercity communications promote the joint possession of city images by residents and the establishment of a city identity. It is suggested that community spirit, which emerges strongly associated with city identity, urges citizens to voluntarily take part in a city's cultural events. The voluntary participation of citizens may change various aspects of a city's functions and physical structure, and as a result the city becomes vitalized in a bottom-up way. Based on this model, we propose a new planning method to facilitate city vitalization as a substitute for hardware-oriented planning. Finally, to ascertain the effectiveness of the new planning method, we focus on Iida City, which has recently successfully established its identity as a puppet drama town.     

萧红作品的魅力——一个外国读者看萧红

正如众多的研究学者和读者所阐述的那样,萧红作品的最大魅力是它美丽而丰富的语言.这也是笔者从二十几岁到现在一直倾心于萧红的重要理由之一.然而,汉语毕竟不是笔者的母语,这就使得笔者经常要与"到底自己能够理解多少萧红的作品"这样一个疑惑作斗争.今天,我想利用这个机会,谈一谈作为一名外国读者足被萧红作品中的那些语言表达所吸引,以与中国读者们进行交流.     

Designing Response Categories of Agreement Scales for Cross-national Surveys in East Asia: The Approach of the Japanese General Social Surveys

The existing cross-national surveys use various types of scales including 2-point, 3-point, 4-point, and 5-point scales, and the translations of response statements vary depending on responsible organizations even within the same country. This paper examines how differences in response categories of the agreement scale may impact the distribution of responses in cross-national surveys and reports the strategies for designing the agreement scale for the East Asian Social Survey (EASS) project. Among the four EASS countries and region, the response pattern of the Japanese is somewhat different from that of Taiwanese, Korean, and Chinese people; the Japanese prefer to give a mid-point or close-to-the-middle response instead of a definite expression of agreement or disagreement. Social surveys in Japan often handle this tendency by avoiding the use of strong adverbs and excluding mid-point and off-scale options from agreement scales. Based on examinations of existing surveys results and conducting pretests, the following strategies to ensure procedural equivalence as well as interpretive equivalence in the EASS project were contrived: (i) The agreement scale was designed to have a sufficient variability in response distributions for all countries and the region; a 7-point scale with the adverb "strongly" at both ends and a mid-point was adopted. (ii) The translations of response statements as well as questions for all teams were carefully checked and adjusted through several languages.     

Perceptions of child abuse: a comparison of three professional groups in Japan

Japan passed its Child Abuse Prevention Act on 20 November 2000. In these early years following the passage of this Act, it is especially important to attempt to define what constitutes child abuse. Definitions and practical responses may be coloured by perceptions of service providers, and since professional culture is believed to influence individuals, this study compared the perceptions of (a) social workers, (b) physicians, (c) lawyers, and (d) the general public. Results suggested less disagreement in perceptions than was anticipated. When differences were observed, they were correlated more frequently with age and gender rather than with profession.     

Large sample theory for a multivariate structural relationship with replication

For a multivariate structural relationship, where the replicated observations are available and the covariance matrix of the observational error is not restricted to diagonal, we consider the generalized least-squares estimators of the unknown structural parameters. The estimators are proved to be asymptotically normally distributed using the Liapunov central limit theorem under mild conditions on the incidental parameters. Their asymptotic covariance matrix is also derived.     

Social Work Development in Japan

With the enactment of the Certified Social Workers and Care Workers Act in 1987, Japanese social work would seem at last to have achieved social recognition and a secure position in Japanese society. However, when one examines the roles, working conditions, education and training of social workers, there are significant differences to be observed from the norms of western social work. In this paper the author sets out the unique characteristics of social work in Japan and reviews the pattern of its development in historical, cultural and political terms.     

The <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-hop connected dominating set problem: approximation and hardness

Let G be a connected graph and k be a positive integer. A vertex subset D of G is a k-hop connected dominating set if the subgraph of G induced by D is connected, and for every vertex v in G there is a vertex u in D such that the distance between v and u in G is at most k. We study the problem of finding a minimum k-hop connected dominating set of a graph (\({\textsc {Min}}k{\hbox {-}\textsc {CDS}}\)). We prove that \({\textsc {Min}}k{\hbox {-}\textsc {CDS}}\) is \(\mathscr {NP}\)-hard on planar bipartite graphs of maximum degree 4. We also prove that \({\textsc {Min}}k{\hbox {-}\textsc {CDS}}\) is \(\mathscr {APX}\)-complete on bipartite graphs of maximum degree 4. We present inapproximability thresholds for \({\textsc {Min}}k{\hbox {-}\textsc {CDS}}\) on bipartite and on (1, 2)-split graphs. Interestingly, one of these thresholds is a parameter of the input graph which is not a function of its number of vertices. We also discuss the complexity of computing this graph parameter. On the positive side, we show an approximation algorithm for \({\textsc {Min}}k{\hbox {-}\textsc {CDS}}\). Finally, when \(k=1\), we present two new approximation algorithms for the weighted version of the problem restricted to graphs with a polynomially bounded number of minimal separators.     

An Application of Machine Learning for Predicting Rearrests: Significant Predictors for Juveniles

This study examined the influence of the individual and social background in predicting the rearrest of 1124 juveniles who were first brought into the juvenile detention center in a midsized county in California. Independent variables include demographic characteristics, first offense type, gang affiliation, usage of drug, and family characteristics. Using cross-validation to choose an appropriate machine learning model for predicting rearrest, this study identified that the most important predictors of subsequent arrest are age at first arrest, drug usage, gang affiliation, and family with government assistance. Despite the fact that blacks are overrepresented in the juvenile detention population, race was not a significant predictor for rearrest. Future research would continue to explore the utilization of machine learning adding nontraditional variables to enhance the prediction of recidivism.