The Human Right to Leisure in Old Age: Reinforcement of the Rights of an Aging Population

The right to leisure is recognized as a human right under the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The actual meaning and material content of this human right is subject to debate. The aim of this study is to examine the extent and the context to which this human right is specifically recognized with regard to older persons. Methodologically, this study textually analyzed 17 different international older persons’ human rights documents. The findings reveal that in the majority of these documents there is no reference to the right to leisure. In the remaining documents, the right to leisure is mostly referred to indirectly or in a narrow legal construction. These findings support the notion that despite the growing body of knowledge regarding the importance of meaningful leisure in old age—and its empowering and anti-ageist nature—this knowledge has not transformed into a legal human rights discourse.     

Cognitive Fit: A Theory-Based Analysis of the Graphs Versus Tables Literature*

A considerable amount of research has been conducted over a long period of time into the effects of graphical and tabular representations on decision-making performance. To date, however, the literature appears to have arrived at few conclusions with regard to the performance of the two representations. This paper addresses these issues by presenting a theory, based on information processing theory, to explain under what circumstances one representation outperforms the other. The fundamental aspects of the theory are: (1) although graphical and tabular representations may contain the same information, they present that information in fundamentally different ways; graphical representations emphasize spatial information, while tables emphasize symbolic information; (2) tasks can be divided into two types, spatial and symbolic, based on the type of information that facilitates their solution; (3) performance on a task will be enhanced when there is a cognitive fit (match) between the information emphasized in the representation type and that required by the task type; that is, when graphs support spatial tasks and when tables support symbolic tasks; (4) the processes or strategies problem solvers use are the crucial elements of cognitive fit since they provide the link between representation and task; the processes identified here are perceptual and analytical; (5) so long as there is a complete fit of representation, processes, and task type, each representation will lead to both quicker and more accurate problem solving. The theory is validated by its success in explaining the results of published studies that examine the performance of graphical and tabular representations in decision making.     

Family Relationships,Social Connections,and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese Older Adults in International Migrant Families

This study explored whether and how family relationships and social connections influence depressive symptoms of older migrants and older adults in transnational families using the data gathered from a cross-sectional survey in Los Angeles, California, United States, and Beijing, China. Regression results showed that the older migrants reported significantly higher levels of depression than the elders in transnational families. The findings highlight the importance of maintaining close family relations and having large friendship networks for older adults in international migrant families.     

Perceived Need for Home- and Community-Based Services: Experiences of Urban Chinese Older Adults With Functional Impairments

Guided by Cantor’s social care model, this study identified individual, family, and social support factors that influence urban older adults’ need for home- and community-based services, including medical and rehabilitation, instrumental care and support, and psychosocial services. The data were extracted from the Sample Survey on Aged Population in Urban/Rural China conducted by the China Research Center on Aging in 2006. Results from multiple logistic regression show that older adults’ need for medical and rehabilitation services is significantly related to instrumental activities of daily living, depression, not having filial children, friend support networks, and having a confidant. Older adults’ need for instrumental care and support is related to their educational attainment, financial strain, instrumental activities of daily living, not living with children, and friend support networks. Finally, older adults’ need for psychosocial services is significantly related to educational attainment, depression, not being married, friend support networks, and having a confidant. Implications for social service development are discussed.     

Division of Household Labor and Social Judgments in Israel: The Influence of Gender and Education

The study investigated how men and women with high and low levels of education perceive male and female targets who participate or do not participate in household chores. It was found that individuals liked both men and women who participated in the household chores more and wanted to engage in activities with them more than with the low‐participating targets. The participating man was perceived as more popular than the low‐participating man and was perceived as more feminine but not less masculine. In addition, although participants with both high and low levels of education preferred the participating man, the more educated participants preferred him more, attributed more masculinity to him, and expressed willingness to befriend him and engage in activities with him more than those with a lower level of education. It seems, then, that whereas in the 1990s both highly and less educated individuals perceive a male target who participates in household chores more favorably, this preference is more pronounced among the more educated individuals.     

Applied general equilibrium modeling for long-term energy policy in Germany

The energy model is based on an extension of applied general equilibrium models of the Leontief input-output type, first implemented by Hudson and Jorgenson (1974). One objective of our project is to choose specifications of sectoral production and cost functions that permit us to estimate the unknown parameters of the price functions and input demand functions from a single input-output table in ten energy and 35 non-energy industries. Our second objective is to determine the price for capital and labor as well as the components of final demand endogenously instead of using a separate growth model as an engine for the economic development. Our third objective is to combine the concept of price-dependent substitution within the input structure with the concept of vintage coefficients for the latest plants. By this we incorporate into the input-output analysis the effect on growth as a result of investment, the effect on capacity as a result of new plants, and the effect on prices as a result of new technologies. An application of the model shows the long-term impact on growth and prices under alternative technologies in the electricity industry (nuclear or coal-fired power plants).     

Collaboration, (Dis)trust and Control in Brazilian Manufactured Public/Non-profit Partnerships

This study seeks to evaluate whether interorganizational trust and interpersonal trust influence the nature of state control in Brazilian public/non-profit partnerships (PNPs) by considering the social organization model with a non-profit partner that did not evolve organically from civil society as an equal and interdependent partner but instead was engineered by the state. We conducted qualitative research on two PNPs and analysed their historical trajectories through participant observation, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with the state and non-profit partners as well as other actors involved indirectly in the PNPs. Our findings call into question the assumption of current studies that trust tends to be built over time and reveal that PNPs embedded in state-dominant and low-social-capital contexts are more vulnerable to the effects of interpersonal trust. This vulnerability influences the volatile patterns of the PNPs’ trajectories and leads to strong informal state-partner control as reflected by PNP disruptions and lower levels of interorganizational trust.

     

Comparison of multiple imputation and two-phase logistic regression to analyse two-phase case–control studies with rich phase 1: a simulation study

Two-phase case–control studies cope with the problem of confounding by obtaining required additional information for a subset (phase 2) of all individuals (phase 1). Nowadays, studies with rich phase 1 data are available where only few unmeasured confounders need to be obtained in phase 2. The extended conditional maximum likelihood (ECML) approach in two-phase logistic regression is a novel method to analyse such data. Alternatively, two-phase case–control studies can be analysed by multiple imputation (MI), where phase 2 information for individuals included in phase 1 is treated as missing. We conducted a simulation of two-phase studies, where we compared the performance of ECML and MI in typical scenarios with rich phase 1. Regarding exposure effect, MI was less biased and more precise than ECML. Furthermore, ECML was sensitive against misspecification of the participation model. We therefore recommend MI to analyse two-phase case–control studies in situations with rich phase 1 data.