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.     

Multiple event times in the presence of informative censoring: modeling and analysis by copulas

Motivated by a breast cancer research program, this paper is concerned with the joint survivor function of multiple event times when their observations are subject to informative censoring caused by a terminating event. We formulate the correlation of the multiple event times together with the time to the terminating event by an Archimedean copula to account for the informative censoring. Adapting the widely used two-stage procedure under a copula model, we propose an easy-to-implement pseudo-likelihood based procedure for estimating the model parameters. The approach yields a new estimator for the marginal distribution of a single event time with semicompeting-risks data. We conduct both asymptotics and simulation studies to examine the proposed approach in consistency, efficiency, and robustness. Data from the breast cancer program are employed to illustrate this research.

     

自杀和生命的意义——来自脑科学研究的解读

生命本身是一个随机事件，并不具有高尚的意义。进化的结果使人类可通过工作、家庭和人际关系等给予自己的生命以意义感。当我们的生活方式使脑内奖赏系统获得刺激，就会带来生命具有意义的感受，这种感受给人带来更好的生存机会。生存的欲望是一切生物体最具特征的属性，一些精神疾病患者缺乏这种欲望。自杀主要发生于精神疾病患者，它并非是基于自由意志的行为。抗精神病治疗和适当的社会交往可以预防自杀。由于不同个体有着不同的大脑，人们的生活方式就应该去适应各自大脑的特征。只要人们的生活方式不对他人造成过多的伤害，政府就应该允许和保护人们自由地按照各自的方式生活。     

Book Review: Restless Nation: Starting Over in America. By James M. Jasper. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 296 pages,hardcover, ISBN: 0-226-39478-6

Qualitative Sociology -     

Measures of Multigroup Segregation

In this paper we derive and evaluate measures of multigroup segregation. After describing four ways to conceptualize the measurement of multigroup segregation—as the disproportionality in group (e.g., race) proportions across organizational units (e.g., schools or census tracts), as the strength of association between nominal variables indexing group and organizational unit membership, as the ratio of between–unit diversity to total diversity, and as the weighted average of two–group segregation indices—we derive six multigroup segregation indices: a dissimilarity index (D), a Gini index (G), an information theory index (H), a squared coefficient of variation index (C), a relative diversity index (R), and a normalized exposure index (P). We evaluate these six indices against a set of seven desirable properties of segregation indices. We conclude that the information theory index H is the most conceptually and mathematically satisfactory index, since it alone obeys the principle of transfers in the multigroup case. Moreover, H is the only multigroup index that can be decomposed into a sum of between– and within–group components.     

Fire and restoration of the largest urban forest of the world in Rio de Janeiro City,Brazil

National Park of Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) is about 3,300 ha and considered the largest urban forest in the world. Its floristic composition is typical of Atlantic Rain Forest. The reserve is being altered because of fire occurrences and urban expansion. This study identified locations and causes of forest fires, and makes management recommendations to restore damaged areas. From 1991 to 2000, forest firefighters recorded an average of 75-fire occurrences/year. Identified causes included hot air balloons (24%), intentional (24%), rubbish burning (21%) and religious practices (17%). Primary fuels included invasive grasses and ferns. Although hot air balloons destroyed larger areas of forest in each occurrence, a greater number of fires started in the invasive vegetation along roads that bisect the forest. In response to recurrent forests, invasive vegetation has spread gradually into the forest increasing forest degradation. To decrease fire damage, sites with high fire frequencies and density of invasive vegetation were planted with less flammable species. Results indicate that fire frequency decreased and density of invasive vegetation declined. This approach appears to prevent fire incidence, reduce the need for fire fighting, and preserve existing biodiversity.     

Führung durch Selbstführung

This paper outlines the conceptual bases, strategies, and psychological attributes of leadership by self-leadership. In addition, relations to other theories of leadership are drawn. Dimensions and correlates of self-leadership competence are described and discussed. Various approaches for developing self-leadership competence are discussed as well.     

Bayesian modelling of catch in a north-west Atlantic fishery

Summary. We model daily catches of fishing boats in the Grand Bank fishing grounds. We use data on catches per species for a number of vessels collected by the European Union in the context of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. Many variables can be thought to influence the amount caught: a number of ship characteristics (such as the size of the ship, the fishing technique used and the mesh size of the nets) are obvious candidates, but one can also consider the season or the actual location of the catch. Our database leads to 28 possible regressors (arising from six continuous variables and four categorical variables, whose 22 levels are treated separately), resulting in a set of 177 million possible linear regression models for the log-catch. Zero observations are modelled separately through a probit model. Inference is based on Bayesian model averaging, using a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach. Particular attention is paid to the prediction of catches for single and aggregated ships.