1,720,989 research outputs found
Caregivers and Loneliness in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing
No full textInformal caregivers represent around 26% (13.6 million) of the UK population. Alongside the known health and wellbeing consequences of caregiving, caregivers have been identified as being at higher risk of loneliness. However, current research among caregivers is inadequate. Mostly, specific subgroups of caregivers are analysed in isolation (e.g. dementia caregivers or spousal caregivers), and therefore the diverse caregiving population is under-represented in the literature. Specifically, there is a lack of evidence on the determinants of loneliness among caregivers. What limited research that has been conducted, suggests that the typical determinants applicable to the general population are not consistent amongst caregivers. Therefore, because caregiving-specific risk factors are not clearly understood, support services and policy-makers cannot work to effectively prevent loneliness. Furthermore, individually, both caregiving and loneliness are associated with adverse health and wellbeing outcomes, but there is an absence of research investigating the impact on health and wellbeing for caregivers who are lonely. It is hypothesised that the combined impact of loneliness and caregiving could have worse health and wellbeing outcomes than either characteristic alone.Using quantitative secondary data analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, this thesis explored, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, the effects of caregiving on loneliness. This thesis addressed the aforementioned research gaps by comparing a wide range of caregivers, including those providing care at different intensities, and to a variety of care recipients. Additionally, caregiving-specific determinants of loneliness were investigated, as well as examining how the health and wellbeing impacts of loneliness differed between caregivers and non-caregivers. The results indicated that caregiving was associated with loneliness, but depended on the loneliness measure used. As such caregivers were more likely to be lonely using the UCLA loneliness scale, but not a direct question. Additionally, the determinants differed for caregivers and non-caregivers: health appeared to play a larger role in non-caregivers’ loneliness, whereas within caregivers, care provision to adult-children was a determinant of loneliness. Finally, as predicted, the combined impact of caregiving and loneliness was associated with worse health and wellbeing outcomes across a number of measures.Overall, there was limited evidence of a long-term effect of caregiving on loneliness, which implies that the impact of caregiving is acute rather than chronic, highlighting a need for early intervention. Finally, the evidence suggests that caregiving may have more substantial effects on mental health and wellbeing than for physical health, which provides direction for policy development
Travel, transport and energy implications of university-related student travel: A case study approach
No full textThis study highlighted significant cultural differences and complexity in travel behaviour associated with travel to university across the UK and Ireland. This paper examines university travel behaviours and the implications for emissions, across the 2012–2013 academic year, based on responses from 1049 students across 17 universities in Ireland and the UK. Surveys were analysed to examine the trips of students both during term time and when accessing the universities each year. The data analysis in this paper examines three aspects of the transport implications of travel to and from university. Firstly the journey between university and term time address (or permanent address if the respondent does not have a separate term time address), secondly the journey between the university area and a separate permanent address where relevant; and thirdly implications for emissions resulting from university-related travel. The study found that student car users were more likely to be female, older students, or studying part time; male students were more likely to use active modes. The study indicated interesting differences between students living in different parts of the UK and Ireland. For example, it was found that there was a higher level of car dependence amongst Northern Irish students compared to other areas; and a greater variability in travel distances in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England, car use was more pronounced when students travelled from their permanent address to term time address, and, as in Ireland, there was evidence of more car sharing on such trips. Public transport usage was more pronounced amongst Scottish students. The effect of these transport choices on emissions is significant and demonstrates the importance of education related trips to the development of a transport policy response. The analysis shows that annual emissions are highest for regular travel to and from university when a student has a permanent address rather than a separate term time and permanent address
Retrenchment without effect? Exploring the link between pension reforms and public pension adequacy of new retirees in seven European countries (1993-2020)
No full textSince the 1980s population ageing and economic change has led to cost- containing pension reforms in many industrialised countries. Research has focused on the institutional side of such reforms, but the impact of cost containment policies for real retirees' pensions remains under- researched. This study addresses this gap. We use the change in For Peer Reviewprojected pensions replacement rates for average earners established by the OECD (2002-2019) as indicator of institutional retrenchment and compare this with the change in the 'relative pension level' of real pensioners covering the period 1993-2020 across seven European countries. With data from five waves of the Luxembourg Income Survey and linear regression models we examine whether the average pension income from public and mandatory systems, expressed in relation to average wages ('relative pension level'), of individuals in the earliest wave, least affected by institutional retrenchment, were significantly different from those of the later waves. The analysis was repeated for subgroups of men and women. We find that institutional change is no reliable predictor of relative pension level change. In the five countries where institutional retrenchment happened, real pension levels fell only in two, in the two countries where they increased no significant change in pension levels occurred. Women's relative pensions are less affected by institutional change than men's. Our results suggest other variables have mediated the relationship between institutions and pension outcomes, most probably employment change. We conclude that outcome-based analysis is an essential complement to institutional approaches. For policymakers the long-term impact of pension reform is hard to predict, but our results suggest that relative real pension income has been more robust than feared by many
It's not late entry: human capital, welfare states and the pension penalty experienced by post-war migrants who retired in the European Economic Area
Get PDFSince the 2000s, migration within and into the European Economic Area (EEA) has increased significantly. Some migrants will retire in their destination countries. This makes questions about their retirement protection increasingly relevant for social policy. To address this, we examine past experience. Using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we compared the pensions of post-1945 migrants, who settled in their host country, with non-migrants. We considered migrants who moved into and within the EEA, from poorer and richer countries. Where pensions were lower we sought to explain this in relation to the migration literature. As expected, we found some evidence that migrants’ pensions were lower, although significant variations were observed between EEA migrants and non-EEA migrants. However, surprisingly there were few indications that migrant pensions were lower because migrants as a whole were disadvantaged through late labour market entry or employment discrimination. Instead educational disadvantage mattered most, particularly for the highly educated: all highly educated migrants received lower rewards for their human capital than comparable non-migrants. Migrants who settled in countries with less-protective pension systems were also disadvantaged. Making retirement outcomes for migrants more equal would, thus, mean improving career opportunities for highly educated migrants and steps towards more-inclusive pension systems everywhere.Output Status: Forthcoming/Available Onlin
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
