1,720,965 research outputs found
Bridging gaps: how investment in public childcare affects women’s employment in Italy and Spain
Full text linkThis paper aims to establish whether, and to what extent, an increase in the public provision of early childhood education and care services (ECEC) has had a positive effect on women’s participation in the labour market in Italy and Spain. It does so by compiling panel data using microdata from the European Labour Force Survey (2006–2018), together with secondary sources of information on public ECEC investment made in the two countries. After controlling for unit heterogeneity and reverse causality, the estimated results indicate a positive correlation with the employment rates of women with children and the number of hours worked, in particular for those without a degree, thus indicating the need to address unequal access to publicly-provided ECEC services
Localizing new social risks
No full textThe chapter investigates the extent to which New Social Risks (NSR) assume a local dimension, by looking at how territorial dynamics affect social vulnerability. It introduces the concepts of new social risk and social vulnerability and reviews studies at the urban level which show the local consequences of macro trends evidenced by the social vulnerability debate. In order to distinguish the local drivers of vulnerability, it identifies two main trends: first, certain social groups are more exposed than others to local social risks, e.g., lone mothers, young, precarious elderly people; second, urban dynamics affect the capacity of those individuals to cope with situations of risk. Finally, it argues that certain localities, such as peripheries, rural areas or places that are in some way left behind, might magnify the vulnerability of some social groups
Introduction to the Special Section. Mastering Youth Transitions: Italy as a Case for the Contemporary Complexities
Full text linkHistorically youth transitions have been a central feature of how youth studies have conceptualized and theorized the notion of youth. This special section aims to continue and contribute to the reimagining of transitions in a complex and ever-changing world. What is interesting to note is that social acceleration processes have an impact on people’s lives.
This impact involves many aspects of personal and social life, and, compared to the previous era, the speed of these changes has visibly increased. What emerge from current debate on youth is the pressure to be part of a mechanism that predisposes people to be constantly active, without having the possibility to stop and reflect, or simply to enjoy the moment they are living. In this sense, Italy is a particularly relevant case as it shows the multifaceted and complex reality with which young people have to cope nowadays when imagining and planning their future. Stemming from these data and considerations, this special issue of IJSE aims at investigating the multifaced nature of youth transitions, using the
Italian setting as fertile ground. Its main goal is to bring together research and analyses on educations policies, experiences and interventions dealing with life transitions and adulthood by collecting contributions that examine the situation in Italy, comparing it with other similar or contrasting settings to delineate the state of the art and research gaps on youth transition studies in a controversial high-speed society
Professions within, between and beyond. Varieties of professionalism in a globalising world
Full text linkThis article introduces the monographic section on the varieties of professionalism in a globalising world. The monographic section aims to explore new theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches in the field of the sociology of professions, by collecting both theoretical and empirical contributions focusing on different professions (either established or emerging ones) and topics, from different geographical regions. In the first part of this introductory article, we discuss professionalism as a concept that needs to be theoretically redefined in the context of post-industrial society after the crisis. For this purpose, we propose to refocus the discourse about professionalism on the process of differentiation and the increasing heterogeneity it is bringing about, within and between professional groups. Additionally, the changed societal conditions imply a changing role for professionals in society, beyond professionalism, which is an area worth being explored. Thus, we outline possible developments of the academic debate in three main analytical dimensions, labelled as within, between and beyond. The second part charts the nine contributions included in the monographic section, while trying to reconduct them to the dimensions mentioned above. Three orders of themes have thus been identified, concerning: (1) the redefinition of the concept of professionalism as a "practice", highlighting the practicality of the wisdom used by professionals in performing their everyday tasks; (2) the analysis of regulation processes, focusing on what happens when institutions shape professionalism; and (3) the investigation of the dynamics of transnational mobility, in the context of globalisation processes
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Full text linkWe 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
- …
