Understudied Relationship Research Articles

Student Heterogeneity and Financial Incentives in Graduate Education: Evidence from a Student Aid Reform

In this paper, I study heterogeneity in graduate students’ responses to financial incentives. The incentive was given by a student aid reform in Norway that was intended to increase the proportion of students who graduate on time by offering a reduction of their student loan. Using a difference-in-difference strategy and detailed Norwegian register data, I find considerable variation in the treatment effect by student characteristics. Male students, students from low-income families, students in the middle of the ability distribution, and students with dependent children responded more strongly to the reform than others. Both employment rates and earnings of treated students were significantly reduced in the reform period, but the take-up of loans was not largely affected. In summary, male students mainly responded by reducing working hours, whereas female students largely exited employment. Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds must have adapted through other channels than employment, earnings, or take-up of loans. Students with dependent children responded by increasing their take-up of loans. There is an understudied relationship between student characteristics and student behavior. By learning more about this relationship, it might be possible to design policies that affect student behavior more efficiently than the ones that are in place today.

Experiences of weight stigma and links with self-compassion among a population-based sample of young adults from diverse ethnic/racial and socio-economic backgrounds

ObjectiveThis study examines weight stigma experiences in a population-based sample of young adults from diverse ethnic/racial and socio-economic backgrounds, and explores cross-sectional associations between weight stigma and self-compassion, including gender differences in this relationship. MethodsData come from EAT 2018, a population-based study of weight and related behaviors in young adults (N = 1523, mean age = 22 years, 53.5% females). Adjusted models tested associations between different experiences of weight stigma and the Self-Kindness Subscale of the Self-Compassion Scale, controlling for age, body mass index (BMI), ethnicity/race, and SES. ResultsOver a third (32.3–52.2%) of participants reported experiences of weight teasing, and almost half (39.2–54.8%) indicated that people in their work or school settings are treated differently based on weight. There were few differences across ethnic/racial groups in reports of weight stigma. The prevalence of weight stigma experiences reported by participants in their current school or work environment was similar across gender, and those who had experienced weight stigma had lower levels of self-kindness. Among both females and males, lower self-kindness scores were associated with the experience of weight teasing (females: χ2 = 22.6, df = 1, p < .001, d = 0.32; males χ2 = 7.6, df = 1, p < .001, d = 0.22). For females only, lower self-kindness scores were associated with being treated unfairly due to weight (χ2 = 11.1, df = 1, p < .001, d = 0.23), and having others make comments about your weight (χ2 = 14.6, df = 1, p < .001, d = 0.28). Findings remained after adjusting for race/ethnicity, BMI, and SES. ConclusionAssociations between self-compassion and experiences of weight stigma found in our diverse sample of young adults offers insights on this understudied relationship.

Investigating Delay Discounting and Impulsivity in a Sample With Trauma and Substance Use

The relationship between trauma and substance use have recently emerged as two of the most frequent, co-occurring disorders, however very little research has examined trauma and substance use in relation to behavioural measures such as delay discounting and impulsivity. The goal of the current study was to investigate the understudied relationship between trauma, substance use, decisions making, and impulsivity, in a large-scale, general population sample.

Corporate brand value and cash holdings

This research devotes theoretical and empirical attention to the understudied relationship between corporate brand value and cash holdings. We draw on existing firm valuation theorizing at the marketing–finance interface to propose that branding can alter the probability distribution of the firm’s revenues, lower potential operating shortfalls (negative operating earnings), and thereby reduce the firm’s cash holdings. The negative corporate brand value–cash holdings relationship is empirically tested using Brand Finance’s brand valuation metric as the predictor. Based on a pooled cross-section time-series design of up to 115 firms across 10 years, we find: that (1) support for the predicted negative association between brand value and cash holdings and (2) that the long-term cash holdings elasticity of brand value is between − 0.16 and − 0.22. Interestingly, these results are not replicated when using a traditional consumer-based brand equity measure. This study informs the debate on whether and how brand assets can impact firm cash holdings, reaffirms that results are sensitive to the operationalization of brand assets, and recognizes a new role for brands—as a “downside risk” (not variance) management tool for the top management team. An overarching implication of this research is that brands should be viewed as a firm-wide strategic asset with a sphere of influence that transcends the marketing function.

Where Similar Cases Are Stated: Medical Case Studies and Provisional Knowledge in Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland.

Scholars of literature and medicine have begun to address the under-studied relationship between the medical case study and the novel, two central genres emerging out of Enlightenment empiricism. This essay contributes to this line of inquiry by focusing on Charles Brockden Brown's novel Wieland (1798) and the medical case study. It unpacks the connection between Wieland and the launching of the first medical journal in the U.S., the Medical Repository. While scholarship has attended to the influence of contagious disease and medicine on Brown's later novels, this essay demonstrates the importance of medical ways of knowing at the beginning of the novelist's brief career. Specifically, it argues that Brown borrows a provisional mode of reasoning from medical literature, a mode of reasoning that finds literary form in the case study of the pre-clinical era.

The Role of Empathy and Efficacy In Public Service Announcements

ABSTRACT This research explores the understudied relationship between two crucial variables—empathy elicited by narratives and the degree of efficacy possessed by bystanders—by using narratives in public service announcements. Findings showed that empathy-laden narratives were indeed superior to nonnarratives in generating more favorable attitudes toward public service announcements and motivating bystanders to report abuse. The positive effect of narrative public service announcements was amplified when participants9 issue involvement was high. More important, the results confirmed a serial multiple-mediator model of empathy and bystander efficacy for the effects of narratives on positive reporting intention.

‘#Refugees can be entrepreneurs too!’ Humanitarianism, race, and the marketing of Syrian refugees

AbstractIn the context of a greater focus on the politics of migration, the ‘refugee entrepreneur’ has become an increasingly important figure in humanitarian, media, and academic portrayals of refugees. Through a focus on Jordan's Za‘tari refugee camp, which has been deemed a showcase for refugees’ ‘entrepreneurship’, this article argues that the designation of Syrian refugees as ‘entrepreneurs’ is a positioning of Syrians within colonial hierarchies of race that pervade humanitarian work. For many humanitarian workers in Jordan, Syrians' ‘entrepreneurship’ distinguishes them from ‘African’ refugees, who are imagined as passive, impoverished, and dependent on humanitarian largesse. Without explicit racial comparisons, humanitarian agencies simultaneously market Syrian refugees online as ‘entrepreneurs’, to enable them to be perceived as closer to whiteness, and to thereby render them more acceptable to Western audiences and donors, who are imagined as white. This article extends scholarly understandings of the understudied relationship between race and humanitarianism. Furthermore, it asks critical questions about the political work and effects of vision of the ‘refugee entrepreneur’, which it locates within the context of the increasingly neoliberalised refugee regime. ‘Refugee entrepreneurs’ do not need political support and solidarity, but to be allowed to embrace the forces of free-market capitalism.

Visual Impairment and Frailty: Examining an Understudied Relationship

Older adults with visual impairments are at increased risk of negative health outcomes. Here, we investigate the association between visual impairment and frailty. Cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between visual impairment (distance visual acuity) and frailty (frailty phenotype criteria) were examined using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 1999-2002, ≥60 years) and the Women's Health and Aging Studies (WHAS III). Imbalance of potential confounders, particularly age, was addressed using propensity score-based adjustment. Multinomial logistic regression determined the odds of prefrailty and frailty at baseline in NHANES and ordinal logistic regression examined the odds of baseline and incident frailty over 3 years in WHAS III after adjustment for confounders and probability weighting (survey weights × inverse propensity scores). In NHANES (n = 2,639, 9% vision impairment), participants with visual impairment were more likely to be prefrail (odds ratio [OR] = 3.2; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.9-5.3) and frail (OR = 3.7; 95% CI: 1.5-9.2) than those without visual impairment. In WHAS III (n = 796, 26% mild, 37% moderate/severe vision impairment), participants with mild and moderate/severe vision impairment were more likely to be frail (OR = 2.0; 95% CI: 1.5-2.5; OR = 5.5; 95% CI: 4.2-7.2, respectively). A one-line worse visual acuity (0.1 logMAR increase) was associated with greater odds of frailty (OR = 1.5; 95% CI: 1.4-1.7). Of those non-frail at baseline (n = 549), moderate/severe visual impairment and one-line worse visual acuity was associated with greater odds of incident frailty (OR = 3.5; 95% CI: 1.4-8.4; OR = 1.3; 95% CI: 1.1-1.5, respectively) over 3 years. Visual impairment may be an important, yet understudied risk factor for frailty.

Corporate social responsibility: a pathway to sustainable competitive advantage?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of customers’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on affective and continuance commitment. It analyses the moderation effect of relationship age on the CSR-commitment relationships in the banking industry of an emerging economy. Design/methodology/approach Partial least squares based structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses in a sample of 360 respondents collected from the retail banking sector of Pakistan. Findings Customers’ CSR perceptions directly and positively influence affective and continuance commitment. The findings also confirm that relationship age is a positive moderator of the CSR-continuance commitment relationship, but does not influence the CSR-affective commitment relationship. Practical implications Marketers should use CSR activities to enhance customers’ commitment. Given the moderating role of relationship age, marketers should devise different strategies for new and long-term customers. The results clearly show that relationship age affects the CSR-continuance commitment relationship. Long-term banking customers will more likely be in a binding relationship when their banks do CSR activities and disseminate those activities to long-term customers. The study explicitly indicates that maintaining long-term customers’ base through CSR activities helps the marketers in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. Originality/value First, it is the pioneering study to empirically investigate the understudied relationship between CSR and continuance commitment. Second, it examines the moderation effect of relationship age on CSR-commitment relationships in the banking industry of an emerging economy.

Age matters: Ageing and household energy demand in the United States

Age is an important proxy for many life course trajectories, and has complex and understudied relationships with energy consumption. We evaluated the presence and the shape of an age-energy consumption profile in the U.S. residential sector, using household-level data from four waves of the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) in 1987, 1990, 2005, and 2009. We constructed pseudo-cohorts from Bayesian generalized linear model estimates to create micro-profiles for energy consumption across the life course. Overall, we found that residential energy consumption increases over the life course. Much of the increase in energy consumption is due to housing size. Variations in the age-energy consumption micro-profiles can be described by concave and convex functions that transform from one to another across the life course. We conclude with a demographic perspective on the future of residential energy demand in the U.S. The confluence of demographic and climatic changes will likely cause an amplification of effects, challenging the supply and demand of energy for the older population.

Research of friction safety multidisk coupling

Safety friction couplings have been applied in mining, industry, construction, agriculture, transportation, and public utilities. They are used in free shafts uncoupling in critical situations when the value of torque exceeds the permissible value under short-term overloads. Compared to other safety couplings such as destructive element couplings (with shear pins), gear clutches (cam, ball), friction couplings transmit much larger torques being relatively small in dimensions. They have a small locking force, and better smooth running characteristics. The advantage of using multidisk couplings is the possibility of increasing the value for the limit torque by increasing the number of disks (due to the increased area of adjacent surfaces). Operation of safety friction multidisk couplings is influenced by various factors, an understudied relationship between the response speed of a friction coupling and the rate of the applied load rise being among them. The paper presents experimental data on a safety friction multidisk coupling operation on the test stand, and that allows one to fill out this gap.

Are Movers More Egalitarian than Stayers? An Intergenerational Perspective on Intra-Household Financial Decision-Making

This study seeks to investigate the role of international migration in shaping the financial decision-making behaviors of married couples through a comparison of three generations of Turkish migrants to Europe (i.e., movers) with their counterparts who remained in Turkey (i.e., stayers). The data are drawn from a subset of personal data from the 2000 Families Survey, involving 4,215 interviews performed randomly with married individuals nested within 1,713 families. The results suggest that international migration increases the tendency for spouses to jointly decide on their finances by (1) weakening the intergenerational transmission of traditional financial decision-making behaviors and gender ideologies and (2) enabling more intense acculturation of younger generations within “less patriarchal” contexts. With its unique, intergenerational, and multisite perspective, the study provides particular insight into the understudied relationship between migration and intra-household decision-making and its benefits for gender equality.

Sons-in-law and their fathers-in-law: Gaining a preliminary understanding of an understudied family relationship

ABSTRACTWith more than 2 million couples marrying each year in the U.S. (CDC, 2015), the need for understanding in-law relationships that are newly formed with the marriage and continue for decades, is important. While women’s in-law relationships have been explored, little is known about how men view their in-law relationships. The focus here is on sons-in-law’s relationship with their fathers-in-law. We explore relationship dynamics from the perspective of sons-in-law with a focus on those whose relationships seem to be close and those that seem to be distant based on analyses of qualitative interviews. Six cases are highlighted: three cases where the sons-in-law feel close and three where the sons-in-law feel distant. For those who feel close, relationships tend to coalesce around sons-in-law joining families where fathers-in-law have warm relationships with their daughters, value family, are well-liked, and maintain boundaries. For those who feel distant, relationships are characterized by the emotional withdrawal and physical absence of the fathers-in-law, by some emotional distance between the fathers-in-law and their daughter, and by the sons-in-law being open to more contact but resigned to it not being forthcoming. Clinical implications and areas of future research are offered.

The Effect of Vaccine Literacy on Parental Trust and Intention to Vaccinate after a Major Vaccine Scandal

Health literacy, and more specifically vaccine literacy, might be an important factor in reducing the negative effects of exposure to misleading reports on vaccination. This study explores the association between vaccine literacy and vaccination-related outcomes after misleading reports on a scandal concerning locally produced childhood vaccines had emerged in 2016 in China. Data for this study came from a cross-sectional survey, which was conducted in April 2016 in Hangzhou, China. Data were collected in kindergartens and community health centers among parents of children up to 6 years of age. Data were analyzed for 1864 participants. Binary logistic regression models showed that, after controlling for socio-demographics and children’s age, parents who had better vaccine literacy (<0.05) were more likely to trust and choose domestically produced vaccines, which account for about 95% of the total vaccinations in China. This study provides evidence on a still largely understudied relationship between vaccine literacy and vaccination-related outcomes. Findings might suggest that higher literacy levels could reduce some of the negative effects of being exposed to misleading information on vaccination, eventually leading to less vaccination hesitancy.

Expectations and provocations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address participants’ humorous provocations as a part of informal interactions between participants and researcher that can be treated just like the research data. By means of autoethnographic analysis, the author explores the expectations of the researcher and participants that humour research entails and discusses how different expectations are revealed in participants’ provocations.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses an autoethnographic approach to discuss the informal interactions between participants and the researcher gathered during research into staffroom humour. The informal interactions in general and humour specifically were recorded, analysed, coded, interpreted and theorised just like the data on humour between participants. The theoretical framework used in the study combines Goffman’s (1959) version of symbolic interactionism and Solomon et al. (2006) idea of hybrid spaces.FindingsThe study shows the need for reconsideration of expectations entangled in humour research and proposes to be prepared for unexpected. Expecting unexpected can help stay open minded in the field and in interactions with participants and apply healthy distance towards own research and own expectations. The study shows that whenever certain behaviour was expected and different behaviour was delivered, there was a chance for certain behaviour being interpreted as provocations. Participants’ provocations can result from their own expectations about the research or what they think is expected from them by the researcher and thus they remain subject to different interpretations.Research limitations/implicationsFurther research could investigate and discuss the role of humour in participant-researcher interactions in different research contexts and across different methodologies. Combining and analysing experiences of use of humour from both participants and researchers could allow for creating the guidelines in the use of humour in different research situations. Ethical challenges posed by informal interactions between researcher and participants could be explored further and suggestions as to how to protect the researcher, research and participants in such interactions could be developed.Originality/valueThis paper aims to be a starting point for a discussion about the understudied relationship between expectations humour research is entangled with and participants’ provocations. The study shows innovative approach to informal interactions between participants’ and researcher which are treated as research data and are theorised using original combination of symbolic interactionism and hybrid spaces. The study contributes to the qualitative research methodology by discussing the ethics of both using humour with participants and recording and analysing informal humorous interactions between participants and the researcher.

Adaptive variation in vein placement underpins diversity in a major Neotropical plant radiation

Vein placement has been hypothesised to control leaf hydraulic properties, but the ecophysiological significance of variation in vein placement in the angiosperms has remained poorly understood. The highly diverse Neotropical Bromeliaceae offers an excellent system for exploring understudied relationships between leaf vein placement, physiological functions, and species ecology. To test key hypotheses regarding the links between vein placement, functional type divergences, and ecological diversity in the Bromeliaceae, I characterised the ratio of interveinal distance (IVD) to vein-epidermis distance (VED) in 376 species, representing all major functional types and 10% of the species diversity in the family, as well as bioclimatic properties and key leaf traits for subsets of species. There were significant differences in vein placement parameters in species of contrasting functional type, habitat association, and bioclimatic distribution. In many C3 tank-epiphytes, a greater ratio between interveinal distance and the depth of veins within the mesophyll reflects optimisation for resource foraging in shady, humid habitats. In succulent terrestrials, overinvestment in veins probably facilitates rapid recharge of water storage tissue, as well as restricting water loss. These results highlight how divergences in vein placement relate to distinctive ecophysiological strategies between and within bromeliad functional types, and provide timely insights into how structural–functional innovation has impacted the evolution of ecological diversity in a major radiation of tropical herbaceous angiosperms.

Can I make a difference here? The impact of perceived organizational support on volunteer commitment

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the impact of perceived organizational support (POS) on organizational commitment in the voluntary and not-for-profit sector. The study extends the work done so far on the mediating roles of self-expression and perceived influence.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reports an empirical research study which examined the impact of POS on organizational commitment in the voluntary and not-for-profit sector. Survey data were collected from a sample of health services workers (n=275) from a large not-for-profit organization.FindingsAnalyses showed that perception of organizational support positively influenced self-expression. In addition, self-expression mediated the relationship between perception of organizational support and organizational commitment, and both self-expression and perceived influence were statistically significant in their relationship with organizational commitment.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, because of the cross-sectional nature of the authors’ design, it is difficult to establish the direction of causality. For example, POS and organizational commitment may be reciprocally related. It is possible that volunteers who are committed may perceive themselves as being valued and contributing members of the organization. Second, the measures used in this study were based on self-report, suggesting therefore that method variance could possibly influence the results. Because the measures reflect individual perceptions, it was not possible to obtain data from sources other the participants. However, preliminary CFA analysis showed that each measure was distinct which should minimize concerns about method variance. Further, some scholars argue that common method variance may be overstated and not as severe as is generally claimed (Lindell and Whitney, 2001).Practical implicationsGiven the need to maintain adequate levels of volunteerism, it is of critical importance for volunteering organizations to understand how to retain their volunteers for the long-term, particularly because volunteer turnover can be very costly in terms of decreased organizational morale, recruitment and training, and decreased ability to effectively serve the public. The authors’ study serves to underscore the fact that those organizations needs to be mindful that volunteers need to perceive adequate organizational support and feel the opportunity for self-expression if those volunteers are to remain committed.Social implicationsThe authors’ study extends the work done so far on the mediating roles of self-expression and perceived influence in the relationship between POS and organizational commitment in voluntary and other not-for-profit organizations. The results suggest that POS positively influenced self-expression but not perception of influence. It also suggests that self-expression mediated the relationship between POS and organizational commitment, and both self-expression and perceived influence are statistically significantly related to organizational commitment. Even though prior research has examined POS as an antecedent, outcome, and a mediator, there is a paucity of research that has examined the proposed model within the context of voluntary and other not-for-profit sectors. Given the current rate of expansion in the voluntary sector, it is the authors’ hope that the present study will provide an impetus for additional research in this area.Originality/valueFew studies have examined the impact of POS on self-expression and perceived influence, and the resulting impact on organizational commitment in the voluntary sector. This paper makes a notable contribution to the literature by empirically exploring this understudied relationship.

Bridging the Research–Practice Divide: A Study of Scholar-Practitioners’ Multiple Role Management Strategies and Knowledge Spillovers Across Roles

This study investigates the relationship between multiple role management strategies and knowledge spillovers across roles. We focus on a particular category of boundary-spanning professionals, the scholar-practitioners—professionals who work across the boundaries of academic and practice worlds—and apply a role theory lens to study (a) the sources of interrole conflict they experience at role boundaries, (b) the strategies of multiple role management they enact, and (c) the knowledge spillovers associated to such strategies. We develop a grounded model that describes three role management strategies, which occupy different positions on a role separation–integration continuum, and generate different mechanisms of knowledge spillover. Our study sheds light on the understudied relationship between role management strategies and knowledge consequences, and the type of tensions individuals experience in this process. In addition, we discuss how the strategic management of teaching, research, and practical application roles can help bridge academic and managerial practice worlds.

The Three Waves of Anti-Austerity Protest in Greece, 2010–2015

The apparent ubiquity of protest in recent years and the rise of Occupy movements across the world have fuelled claims that a new style of mobilisation is emerging which is markedly different from previous social movements. Analysing a series of original survey data, this article engages with this debate by providing a panoramic account of how the anti-austerity movement evolved in Greece, comparing the drivers of protest in three distinct protest waves. Contrary to expectations, the rise of the Greek version of the Indignados during 2011 did not decisively transform the anti-austerity movement that emerged in 2010, which mainly displayed characteristics typically associated with ‘old’ social movements. However, elements of the ‘new social movements’ approach featured more prominently in the third wave of protest, beginning in mid-2012 and culminating in January 2015 with victory for SYRIZA, the party which channelled the anti-austerity movement into the political scene. The model developed to study protest in non-electoral arenas also performs well to explain the success of SYRIZA in the electoral arena, highlighting the reciprocal but understudied relationship between mobilisation and electoral politics.

Workplace-Bridging Religious Capital: Connecting Congregations to Work Outcomes

Research in the sociology of work has long considered the importance of individual worker values but has not considered one of the central sources of those values: the congregation. In this study, we examine this understudied relationship and propose greater theoretical specification on religious capital. We argue that religious capital, like social capital, may have bridging characteristics. We introduce the concept of workplace-bridging religious capital (WBRC) and describe its cultivation within congregations. Using data from a survey of 1,000 fulltime workers, we test the relationship of WBRC (measured with a 15-item Congregational Faith at Work Scale, CFWS) to workplace commitment, job satisfaction, and entrepreneurial behavior. While CFWS alone is not significantly related to workplace commitment or job satisfaction, the interaction of CFWS and church attendance is significant for all three workplace outcomes. Thus, the influence of congregational beliefs on work attitudes and practices is contingent upon an individual’s level of involvement in the congregation. This study builds on the growing body of literature that identifies religious influences in nonreligious domains of everyday life.