Early socialization of hostile attribution bias: The roles of parental attributions,parental discipline,and child attributes

The goal of this study was to examine child and parent predictors of children's hostile attribution bias (HAB) with a particular focus on exploring the associations between parents’ early attribution of child misbehavior and children's HAB in the transition to school age. Participants were 241 children (118 girls) of middle‐income families who were at risk for school‐age conduct problems. Multi‐method, multi‐informant data were collected on maternal attributions of child misbehavior, parental use of corporal punishment, and child attributes (i.e., verbal IQ, effortful control, theory of mind, and emotional understanding) at 3 years, and child HAB in ambiguous situations at 6 years. Results indicated that mothers’ internal explanations for children's misconduct may either reduce or increase children's later HAB depending on the specific content of attributions, such that mothers’ belief that children misbehave because of their internal state (i.e., emotional state or temperament) was associated with lower levels of child HAB, whereas attributing power‐based motives (i.e., manipulative, controlling intentions) in children was associated with higher levels of HAB. The findings are discussed with respect to appreciating the complexity of parents’ explanations for children's behavior, and considering parental cognition as a potential target for early identification and prevention of child HAB and related problems.     

The Paradox of Integration: Work-Integration Social Enterprises (WISE) and Productivist Welfare Regime in Hong Kong

After the Asian Financial Crisis, the government of Hong Kong embraced the model of work-integration social enterprise (WISE) to sustain its facilitative and productivist welfare regime. Using the WISE of Pro-Love for marginalized women as a case study, the article examines the meaning of employment and social disadvantage in the organization. The ethnographic data reveal that while the WISE encourages women to participate in the paid labor market, it constructs employment in the social enterprise as part-time jobs for supplementary family income, restricts the extension of social networks for the female workers, and reinforces the cultural stereotypes of marginalized women. The study reflects on the mechanisms of the project of WISE in the welfare contexts of Hong Kong, and argues that programs targeted at labor participation cannot be automatically translated into reduction of exclusion in other domains. Long-term planning, policy coordination, and social advocacy are necessary to achieve social integration.     

Improved two-parameter estimators for the negative binomial and Poisson regression models

Negative binomial regression (NBR) and Poisson regression (PR) applications have become very popular in the analysis of count data in recent years. However, if there is a high degree of relationship between the independent variables, the problem of multicollinearity arises in these models. We introduce new two-parameter estimators (TPEs) for the NBR and the PR models by unifying the two-parameter estimator (TPE) of Özkale and Kaç?ranlar [The restricted and unrestricted two-parameter estimators. Commun Stat Theory Methods. 2007;36:2707–2725]. These new estimators are general estimators which include maximum likelihood (ML) estimator, ridge estimator (RE), Liu estimator (LE) and contraction estimator (CE) as special cases. Furthermore, biasing parameters of these estimators are given and a Monte Carlo simulation is done to evaluate the performance of these estimators using mean square error (MSE) criterion. The benefits of the new TPEs are also illustrated in an empirical application. The results show that the new proposed TPEs for the NBR and the PR models are better than the ML estimator, the RE and the LE.     

“冲之鸟”岛礁属性辨析

1982年《联合国海洋法公约》第121条第3款确立了岩礁这一新规则。岩礁属于岛屿范畴,然而与岛屿不同的是,它不能拥有专属经济区和大陆架。从“冲之鸟”的情况看,它是岩礁,因而不能拥有专属经济区和大陆架。     

试论中国传统文化对高校实行学分制的影响

本文从治国理念、价值取向、心理倾向、文化发展等方面概括了中国传统文化的主要特征.分析了中国传统文化对高校实行学分制的积极影响和消极影响,指出:应吸收中国传统文化中的积极因素,摒除其消极因素,树立新的育人理念,实行学分制,坚持以学生为本位的人才培养观,培育平等的师生观,充分利用有限的资源调动教师的教学积极性,给学生更多自由发展的空间,以促进高等教育的发展.     

四种老龄化理念及其政策蕴意

在老龄化问题研究中,健康老龄化、积极老龄化、成功老龄化和生产性老龄化,这四种理念具有不同的内涵。在结合地方养老服务创新案例分析四种老龄化理念的相互关系及其政策蕴意的基础上,运用“生活质量-社会质量”视角,评估健康老龄化和成功老龄化在提升老年群体生活质量方面的效用,探讨生产性老龄化和积极老龄化对提升社会质量的意义,从而深化人们对各种养老理念的理解,将老龄化的问题延展至老年照顾之外的参与和增能方面,丰富养老政策的内容和内涵,为发展老年友好型社会提供政策路径。     

Uncle Long Legs' Letter Box; A Letter Counseling Service for Children in Hong Kong

During the growing up process, children face many challenges. They need support and guidance from adults whom they can trust. Uncle Long Legs' Letter Box provides a letter counseling service for children aged from around 10 to 14 years, who are mainly studying in primary four to junior secondary school. Using letters as the medium, children are encouraged to seek help from Uncle Long Legs when they are facing problems related to family, friendship, and study. In letters, children are often more willing to disclose their personal feelings and problems than they are in face-to-face contacts. The project was started in 1994 in a children and youth center. Up to July 2001, more than fifteen thousand letters have been received from about eight thousand children. Now the service has expanded to five centers and about 120 volunteer counselors are involved. This article summarizes the working experience of Uncle Long Legs' Letter Box and discusses the strengths and limitations of letter counseling to children.     

Inference for general parametric functions in box‐Cox‐type transformation models

The authors propose a simple but general method of inference for a parametric function of the Box‐Cox‐type transformation model. Their approach is built upon the classical normal theory but takes parameter estimation into account. It quickly leads to test statistics and confidence intervals for a linear combination of scaled or unsealed regression coefficients, as well as for the survivor function and marginal effects on the median or other quantité functions of an original response. The authors show through simulations that the finite‐sample performance of their method is often superior to the delta method, and that their approach is robust to mild departures from normality of error distributions. They illustrate their approach with a numerical example.     

Chinese Perceptions of the Scandinavian Social Policy Model

This paper highlights the stereotypical images characteristic of Chinese social research on the Scandinavian model. How do Chinese commentators explain the development of the Scandinavian social policy model and how do they assess it? Is it deemed morally sound and sustainable? Reasons for the contrasts of interpretation between Chinese and Scandinavian authors are categorized along two dimensions. There are “missing elements”, typically the notions of social solidarity and social citizenship, which tend to be ignored by Chinese writers though underscored by Scandinavian writers. There are also “added elements”, generated from Chinese contexts, which affect Chinese interpretations of the Scandinavian model. The study argues that since each welfare regime type is possessed of its own normative codes, supported by its own particular social order, it is necessary to decode such elements—especially cultural notions of welfare—to appreciate the points of view being expressed.     

Detecting influential observations in Liu and modified Liu estimators

In regression, detecting anomalous observations is a significant step for model-building process. Various influence measures based on different motivational arguments are designed to measure the influence of observations through different aspects of various regression models. The presence of influential observations in the data is complicated by the existence of multicollinearity. The purpose of this paper is to assess the influence of observations in the Liu [9] and modified Liu [15] estimators by using the method of approximate case deletion formulas suggested by Walker and Birch [14]. A numerical example using a real data set used by Longley [10] and a Monte Carlo simulation are given to illustrate the theoretical results.