Staff Reactions Toward Lesbian,Gay, or Bisexual (LGB) People Living in Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACFs) Who Actively Disclose Their Sexual Orientation

Fifty-three staff members currently working in residential aged care facilities located in Barcelona, Spain, were asked about the way they would react if a resident told them that he or she felt sexually attracted and had maintained sexual relationships with another resident of the same gender. Acceptance of non-heterosexual sexual orientation was a frequent answer, and around one in four professionals stated that they would try helping the resident in question, by offering a private space or giving some emotional support. However, some reactions were not consistent with a respectful approach toward sexual diversity, as, for instance, informing the resident’s family or advising the resident to keep his or her sexual orientation hidden. We highlight the importance of developing formal policies and offering formal training to staff in order to address the specific needs of older LGB people living in RACFs.     

A quantification of lobbying benefits with an application to the common agricultural policy

We employ an empirical general equilibrium model of the CAP to determine which factors and countries would be expected to be opposed to or support reform of the CAP. The objective is to determine who are the “friends” and “enemies” of the CAP. The analysis studies the extent to which lobbying activity by these interested parties could be expected to encourage or discourage internal EU reform of the CAP. Several alternative policies to reform the CAP are evaluated in this manner in order to determine if one or another set of policies has a greater chance of being accepted. Specifically, we study the Uruguay Round Agreement, as well as a number of stated negotiating positions presented during the Round. The result will be a summary assessment of the relative politico-economic acceptability of these reform proposals within the EU. Our results lead to a very simple policy conclusion. Given the set of policy packages considered here, there is little doubt that the EU was most inclined to adopt a proposal incorporating compensation payments. Without further disaggregation of the analysis to identify the United States or Japan, we can only note that such a proposal is also the best as far as overall welfare goes for the rest of the world. Our results confirm the importance of sidepayments in the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreement.     

Care management in practice: on the use of talk and text in gerontological social work

Cedersund E, Olaison A. Care management in practice: on the use of talk and text in gerontological social work Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 339–347 © 2010 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and International Journal of Social Welfare. This is a study of encounters between social workers and citizens in one type of welfare organisation, the municipal elder care system. The article sheds light on how older people's claims are dealt with in the processing of home care applications. Twenty encounters between social workers and older people were studied using discourse analysis. The findings reveal that discursive practices are part of the routine when the applications are processed. The application handling follows an agenda‐bound pattern that is visible in the encounters. In these standardised procedures, oral discourse is embedded in routines that also include the use of texts. However, within this institutional order, there is also an important element of negotiation between the parties. It is therefore claimed that the encounters include a negotiated order that does not exist on its own, but is achieved in the ongoing interaction.     

Eliciting Risk and Time Preferences

We design experiments to jointly elicit risk and time preferences for the adult Danish population. Since subjects are generally risk averse, we find that joint elicitation provides estimates of discount rates that are significantly lower than those found in previous studies and more in line with what would be considered as a priori reasonable rates. The statistical specification relies on a theoretical framework that involves a latent trade‐off between long‐run optimization and short‐run temptation. Estimation of this specification is undertaken using structural, maximum likelihood methods. Our main results based on exponential discounting are robust to alternative specifications such as hyperbolic discounting. These results have direct implications for attempts to elicit time preferences, as well as debates over the appropriate domain of the utility function when characterizing risk aversion and time consistency.     

Mapping Civic Engagement in Later Life: A Scoping Review of Gerontological Definitions and Typology Proposal

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Research on older people’s civic engagement has increased significantly in the last two decades, as have policy and...     

Inferring beliefs as subjectively imprecise probabilities

We propose a method for estimating subjective beliefs, viewed as a subjective probability distribution. The key insight is to characterize beliefs as a parameter to be estimated from observed choices in a well-defined experimental task and to estimate that parameter as a random coefficient. The experimental task consists of a series of standard lottery choices in which the subject is assumed to use conventional risk attitudes to select one lottery or the other and then a series of betting choices in which the subject is presented with a range of bookies offering odds on the outcome of some event that the subject has a belief over. Knowledge of the risk attitudes of subjects conditions the inferences about subjective beliefs. Maximum simulated likelihood methods are used to estimate a structural model in which subjects employ subjective beliefs to make bets. We present evidence that some subjective probabilities are indeed best characterized as probability distributions with non-zero variance.     

Voluntary Associations' Impact on the Composition of Active Members' Social Networks: Not an Either/Or Matter

Membership in voluntary associations is often assumed to have a homogenizing or diversifying impact on the social composition of members' personal relations. In this study, we examine these assertions empirically in a sample (n = 818) comprising active members of voluntary associations in a typical midsized Swedish community. We investigate whether people whom active members of voluntary associations have met through their voluntary activities are more or less likely to share their social characteristics than people whom they have met elsewhere. Our results show that acquaintances whom our respondents have acquired within voluntary associations are less likely to share several of their significant social characteristics than other members of their personal networks, but more likely to reside in their vicinity than others. Consequently, our results give fairly robust support to the “integrating hypothesis” according to which voluntary associations contribute to the social diversification of their members' personal networks. We do, however, emphasize the principally important aspects of our results, according to which relations acquired through involvement in voluntary associations may have simultaneously homogenizing and diversifying effects on individuals' personal networks. Furthermore, the effect may also depend on the specific dimension(s) of the networks under consideration.     

Frequentist and Bayesian approaches for a joint model for prostate cancer risk and longitudinal prostate-specific antigen data

The paper describes the use of frequentist and Bayesian shared-parameter joint models of longitudinal measurements of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and the risk of prostate cancer (PCa). The motivating dataset corresponds to the screening arm of the Spanish branch of the European Randomized Screening for Prostate Cancer study. The results show that PSA is highly associated with the risk of being diagnosed with PCa and that there is an age-varying effect of PSA on PCa risk. Both the frequentist and Bayesian paradigms produced very close parameter estimates and subsequent 95% confidence and credibility intervals. Dynamic estimations of disease-free probabilities obtained using Bayesian inference highlight the potential of joint models to guide personalized risk-based screening strategies.     

Prejudices against immigrants in secondary school

This paper presents the results of a study of prejudice against immigrants in secondary schools in the Basque Country, in Spain. We carried out a review of the best-known questionnaires and catalogues on prejudices regarding immigration and we drew up a new questionnaire, with positive and negative scales of prejudices, in order to apply them to secondary school students in Euskadi (the Basque Country). We analysed the responses of almost 1500 students and thus obtained results for the main types of prejudice that exists amongst the students. We subsequently examined these prejudices and compared them with the scientific data, reports and other research that have generated much debate. As a result of this research, we have made available to educators, both inside and outside the classroom, the basis for drawing up strategies and plans for educational interventions with secondary school students. We propose a solid foundation for undertaking an educational programme that will be useful for combating prejudices and xenophobia in schools.     

Should I stay or should I go? Congestion pricing and equilibrium selection in a transportation network

Theory and Decision - When imposing traffic congestion pricing around downtown commercial centers, there is a concern that commercial activities will have to consider relocating due to reduced...