Abusive Supervision and Well-Being of Filipino Migrant Workers in Macau: Consequences for Self-Esteem and Heritage Culture Detachment

Abusive supervision in the workplace has been shown to have important direct consequence in work and work relationship, and also indirect consequences to workers’ well-being and relationships outside work. Consequences of abusive supervision have not been studied among migrant workers whose status in the host country of work is dependent on maintaining the work contract. This study investigates abusive supervision in 247 Filipino migrant workers in Macau, who hold temporary work contracts and work visas to engage in various low-skilled work (e.g., domestic helper, security guard, etc.). The study tests a model representing the indirect consequences of abusive supervision on the self-esteem and acculturation orientation of migrant workers, in particular, on the tendency to reject their heritage culture in their attempt to acculturate in the host country. Mediation analysis indicated that abusive supervisory perceptions led to lower self-esteem (b = ?.19), which in turn relates to tendency to reject their heritage culture as part of acculturation (b = ?.45) [indirect effect = .08, 90 % CI .04, .15]. The rejection of heritage culture is interpreted as a coping response to the negative indirect consequences of abusive supervision perceptions that may be partly attributed to being a migrant Filipino worker. The results are discussed in terms of how the acculturation of migrant workers reflects aspects of their well-being that may be adversely affected by vocational-related stress in the host country.     

Latin American convergence and divergence towards the mortality profiles of developed countries

It is uncertain whether Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries are approaching a single mortality regime. Over the last three decades, LAC has experienced major public health interventions and the highest number of homicides in the world. However, these interventions and homicide rates are not evenly shared across countries. This study documents trends in life expectancy and lifespan variability for 20 LAC countries, 2000–14. By extending a previous method, we decompose differences in lifespan variability between LAC and a developed world benchmark into cause-specific effects. For both sexes, dispersion of amenable diseases through the age span makes the largest contribution to the gap between LAC and the benchmark. Additionally, for males, the concentration of homicides, accidents, and suicides in mid-life further impedes mortality convergence. Great disparity exists in the region: while some countries are rapidly approaching the developed regime, others remain far behind and suffer a clear disadvantage in population health.     

Re‐framing the Analysis: A 3‐dimensional Perspective of Prisoners’ Children's Well‐being

This article highlights three dimensions to understanding children's well‐being during and after parental imprisonment which have not been fully explored in current research. A consideration of ‘time’ reveals the importance of children's past experiences and their anticipated futures. A focus on ‘space’ highlights the impact of new or altered environmental dynamics. A study of ‘agency’ illuminates how children cope within structural, material and social confines which intensify vulnerability and dependency. This integrated perspective reveals important differences in individual children's experiences and commonalities in broader systemic and social constraints on prisoners’ children. The paper analyses data from a prospective longitudinal study of 35 prisoners’ children during and after their (step) father's imprisonment to illustrate the arguments.     

‘Rachel's not here’: Constructed dialogue in gossip

Sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that gossip is a co‐constructed phenomenon, which allows participants to establish solidarity and build alignments with each other, while evaluating an absent party. Gossip can also serve important social functions, such as helping to establish and reconfirm group norms and values. The present study provides a detailed analysis of an extended gossip episode that occurred within an institutional context: a study group interaction at a U.S. university. Our analysis shows how, in gossip, constructed dialogue both prompts and legitimizes pejorative evaluations towards an absent third party, and is actually the pivot around which group members negotiate values and norms in the process of arriving at a shared moral stance. Our analysis also demonstrates that alignment in gossip interactions is tenuous and must be continuously renewed.     

Inferences on the Means of Two Log-Normal Distributions: A Computational Approach Test

In this article, we propose a novel approach for testing the equality of two log-normal populations using a computational approach test (CAT) that does not require explicit knowledge of the sampling distribution of the test statistic. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed approach can perform hypothesis testing with satisfying actual size even at small sample sizes. Overall, it is superior to other existing methods. Also, a CAT is proposed for testing about reliability of two log-normal populations when the means are the same. Simulations show that the actual size of this new approach is close to nominal level and better than the score test. At the end, the proposed methods are illustrated using two examples.     

A new long-term survival model with dispersion induced by discrete frailty

Lifetime Data Analysis - Frailty models are generally used to model heterogeneity between the individuals. The distribution of the frailty variable is often assumed to be continuous. However, there...     

Integrating Operational and Organizational Aspects in Interdependent Infrastructure Network Recovery

Managing risk in infrastructure systems implies dealing with interdependent physical networks and their relationships with the natural and societal contexts. Computational tools are often used to support operational decisions aimed at improving resilience, whereas economics‐related tools tend to be used to address broader societal and policy issues in infrastructure management. We propose an optimization‐based framework for infrastructure resilience analysis that incorporates organizational and socioeconomic aspects into operational problems, allowing to understand relationships between decisions at the policy level (e.g., regulation) and the technical level (e.g., optimal infrastructure restoration). We focus on three issues that arise when integrating such levels. First, optimal restoration strategies driven by financial and operational factors evolve differently compared to those driven by socioeconomic and humanitarian factors. Second, regulatory aspects have a significant impact on recovery dynamics (e.g., effective recovery is most challenging in societies with weak institutions and regulation, where individual interests may compromise societal well‐being). And third, the decision space (i.e., available actions) in postdisaster phases is strongly determined by predisaster decisions (e.g., resource allocation). The proposed optimization framework addresses these issues by using: (1) parametric analyses to test the influence of operational and socioeconomic factors on optimization outcomes, (2) regulatory constraints to model and assess the cost and benefit (for a variety of actors) of enforcing specific policy‐related conditions for the recovery process, and (3) sensitivity analyses to capture the effect of predisaster decisions on recovery. We illustrate our methodology with an example regarding the recovery of interdependent water, power, and gas networks in Shelby County, TN (USA), with exposure to natural hazards.