The purpose of this study is to find out how the non-governmental shelters for battered women identify themselves in context of their dependence and cooperation with the municipality. Their legitimacy is also investigated which is based on, along with identity, key concepts of the neoinstitutional organization theory. The mutual dependency between these two actors is problematized along with the question of who is responsible for assisting the battered women, and who takes on the responsibilities for them. The empirical result that is analyzed was gathered through three qualitative semi structured interviews with employed personnel at three different battered women’s shelters in three different municipalities in Sweden. Further, three qualitative semi structured interviews was held with a representative from the social services offices in those same municipalities. The results show that although the interaction between the battered women’s shelters and the municipalities vary a bit, all the battered women’s shelters are dependent on the municipalities in which they function for economic resources. It appears in the interviews that there is a mutual dependency whereas the social services rely on the knowledge and experiences the battered women’s shelters have gathered through the years, along with the low cost volunteer workers bring the organization.

We assess empirically the role played by prospective ageing measures as a predictor of income growth in Europe. We show that prospective ageing measures which move beyond chronological age and incorporate changes in life expectancy are able to explain better the recent long-run growth experience of European economies. The improvement in explanatory power of prospective ageing indicators as compared to standard measures based on chronological age is particularly relevant for long-run economic growth horizons. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The three components model of empathy proposed by Decety and Jackson (2004) is currently the dominant model of empathy. The three components include: 1) the affective component (Simulation Theory), 2) emotional perspective taking, and 3) emotion regulation (self/other distinction). The purpose of the current study was to examine whether empathic perspective taking is dependent on context and to provide a behavioral basis for a follow-up fMRI study. More specifically, we wanted to know how body contexts (e.g. mood) and situational contexts (e.g. perceived fairness of a partner) affect emotional perspective taking. To examine the interaction between mood and perceived fairness of a partner, a 2 (mood group: neutral vs. negative) × 2 (fairness condition: unfair partner vs. fair partner) between-groups experimental design was employed. Mood induction videos were employed for the mood manipulation and participants played either a fair or unfair preprogrammed partner in a modified ultimatum game. After both manipulations, three measures were used to assess perspective taking and several post-game behavioral measures were also employed. Results were obtained from 73 participants (age: 18-22; female = 46, ~18 in each condition). The results demonstrated that participants in the negative mood had more difficulty empathizing with unfair partners and had a greater desire for revenge against them than participants in a neutral mood in the same unfair situations. Therefore, human empathy is not constant, but varies depending on a variety of contexts. We can now use this paradigm for a future fMRI study to investigate the neural substrates underlying this context dependency with a particular emphasis on the frontopolar cortex and the nucleus accumbens.

This thesis presents open source resources in the form of annotated corpora and modules for automatic morphosyntactic processing and analysis of Persian texts. More specifically, the resources consist of an improved part-of-speech tagged corpus and a dependency treebank, as well as tools for text normalization, sentence segmentation, tokenization, part-of-speech tagging, and dependency parsing for Persian. In developing these resources and tools, two key requirements are observed: compatibility and reuse. The compatibility requirement encompasses two parts. First, the tools in the pipeline should be compatible with each other in such a way that the output of one tool is compatible with the input requirements of the next. Second, the tools should be compatible with the annotated corpora and deliver the same analysis that is found in these. The reuse requirement means that all the components in the pipeline are developed by reusing resources, standard methods, and open source state-of-the-art tools. This is necessary to make the project feasible. Given these requirements, the thesis investigates two main research questions. The first is how can we develop morphologically and syntactically annotated corpora and tools while satisfying the requirements of compatibility and reuse? The approach taken is to accept the tokenization variations in the corpora to achieve robustness. The tokenization variations in Persian texts are related to the orthographic variations of writing fixed expressions, as well as various types of affixes and clitics. Since these variations are inherent properties of Persian texts, it is important that the tools in the pipeline can handle them. Therefore, they should not be trained on idealized data. The second question concerns how accurately we can perform morphological and syntactic analysis for Persian by adapting and applying existing tools to the annotated corpora. The experimental evaluation of the tools shows that the sentence segmenter and tokenizer achieve an F-score close to 100%, the tagger has an accuracy of nearly 97.5%, and the parser achieves a best labeled accuracy of over 82% (with unlabeled accuracy close to 87%).

Kvinners opplevelse av hva deres rusproblem er, påvirker hva de søker hjelp for og hvordan de opplever den hjelpen de får. Rusbruken påvirker deres egenskaper (vilje, evner, deres normalitet og deres fasade), deres tilhørighet (normal, vanlig kvinne, likevel unormal og anderledes, en del av en familie og et sosialt nettverk, men likevel ensomme og isolerte) og deres tilstand (som syke og nærmest døende, men likevel friske og levende). De beveger seg langs disse aksene. Hvor de befinner seg er avhengig av situasjoner de er i og følelser de har, eller får som et resultat av situasjonene. Kvinnenes opplevelse av hva rusbruken er for dem, påvirker hvordan de opplever at ansatte møter dem. De opplever å bli inkludert eller ekskludert, å bli forstått eller misforstått, å eie sitt problem eller bli fremmedgjort for det. De opplever å bli møtt som likeverdige personer eller å bli degradert som menneske og de opplever å få tro på at det nytter, at de får håp om en framtid eller opplever mistro og håpløshet. Ansatte konfronterte, var i dialog over tid og avgrenset problemet i sine møter med kvinnene. Ble kvinnene ble møtt på sammensattheten i deres problemforståelse og verdsatt som hele personer, var konfrontasjon og dialog over tid gode strategier. Erkjennelse av rusproblemene kommer fram over tid og er ikke en bevisst og avgrenset tanke hos kvinnene når de oppsøker hjelp. Fokus på rusbruk må derfor holdes oppe over tid / How women experience their drug dependency influence why they seek help and how they experience the help they are receiving. Use of drugs affects their human qualities (will or abilities, normality and appearance), it influence their experience of belonging (being normal, ordinary, abnormal and different, as part of a normal family with an ordinary social network but yet isolated and lonesome) and their condition (sickness and nearly dying, well-being and healthy). They move along these axis. Where they are depend on the situations they are in and the feelings they have or get in the situation. This influence on how they experience communication with helpers. They experience inclusion and exclusion, understanding and misunderstanding. They experience ownership of their problems and becoming aliensto them. They are either treated as equals or degrated as human beings. They experience hope and trust or mistrust and hopelessness. The professionals used confrontation, dialogue over time or delimitation of the problem.Dialogue and confrontation was useful strategies if the the professionels showed understanding for the compexity of the womens problems. Their experiences in the meetings influenced whether they were working along with their drug/alcohol problems or whether they continued to use drugs and alcohol. Their recognition of their problems with drugs/alcohol reveals over time. It is not conscious and concrete in their minds. Focus on drugs/alcohol must therefore be persistant over time / <p>ISBN 91-7997-117-2</p>

The aim of the research was to understand the experiences and challenges of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Thabazimbi and the implications and consequences for communities in terms of dependency and empowerment, as seen from the perspective of the mining representatives. As corporate citizens, mining companies generate profits through the exploitation of mineral resources. There is an expectation that some of the benefits of this mining endeavours should be passed on to communities surrounding the company. This is generally considered the best sustainability practice and companies are expected to act as responsible corporate citizens. Most of the previous research on CSR has focused on the perceptions of community members. This research is unique in that it focuses on the effects of CSR on the experiences and perceptions of key personnel from the mining companies who are responsible for the designing and implementing CSR strategies. Mining company representatives did acknowledge that the past approach to CSR has created some dependency issues. However, more recently the company has moved to a strategy that focuses more on empowerment. They also acknowledge that, going forward, a new challenge emerges for mining companies, communities and local government. This challenge is to work towards ensuring sustainable development and empowerment with the focus on actual community needs. The conclusion was that for empowerment to be realised all relevant stakeholders need to play a role in the development process. / Thesis (Master of Development and Management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The aim of the research was to understand the experiences and challenges of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Thabazimbi and the implications and consequences for communities in terms of dependency and empowerment, as seen from the perspective of the mining representatives. As corporate citizens, mining companies generate profits through the exploitation of mineral resources. There is an expectation that some of the benefits of this mining endeavours should be passed on to communities surrounding the company. This is generally considered the best sustainability practice and companies are expected to act as responsible corporate citizens. Most of the previous research on CSR has focused on the perceptions of community members. This research is unique in that it focuses on the effects of CSR on the experiences and perceptions of key personnel from the mining companies who are responsible for the designing and implementing CSR strategies. Mining company representatives did acknowledge that the past approach to CSR has created some dependency issues. However, more recently the company has moved to a strategy that focuses more on empowerment. They also acknowledge that, going forward, a new challenge emerges for mining companies, communities and local government. This challenge is to work towards ensuring sustainable development and empowerment with the focus on actual community needs. The conclusion was that for empowerment to be realised all relevant stakeholders need to play a role in the development process. / Thesis (Master of Development and Management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Background: As result of the restructuring of the South African Police Services during 1994 as well as other factors, Police Social Work Services decided to shift the focus from reactive services to more proactive, personnel capacity building programmes. At the end of 1999 , 15 of these programmes were already developed. Although basic evaluation instruments were included in some of the programme packages, the need arose to determine either the effect of the programmes on the participants or the cost-efficiency of the interventions scientifically. This led to the launch of the PCBP project and the Evaluation of the Substance Dependency study in November 2001. This form part of the evaluation of the comprehensive personnel capacity building research project. Objectives: The primary aim of the study was to determine the effect of the Substance Dependency Programme on SAPS personnel's knowledge, attitude and behaviour. Method: In the research, the comparison group pre-test and post-test design and triangulation were used. Six measurement scales and a presenter's evaluation questionnaire were developed and completed by 217 experimental group respondents, 47 comparison group respondents and 10 presenters. Results: Through the triangulation of measurement it was determined that the Substance Dependence Programme had a practical significant effect on the respondent's knowledge, attitude and behaviour. It is thus an effective tool in the hand of Police Social Work Services, that empower police members and lead to productivity and enhanced their personal well-being. / Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

Economists have studied the relationship between population growth and economic growth for a very long time and not found any clear relationships. Recently they have begun to focus on the factors of population growth such as fertility and mortality rates. From this line of study came the age-structure hypothesis. The age-structure hypothesis was founded on the evidence from Asia’s very successful demographic transition and many economists are now wondering whether Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will be able to repeat this feat. Hence, this study aims to investigate the relationship between the dependency ratio (a ratio between the dependents (ages 0-14 and 65+) and the number of workers (aged 15-64) in a population (Eastwood and Lipton, 2012)) and economic growth in SSA and search for evidence of a demographic dividend. Not many previous studies have been done focusing completely on SSA and this study therefore aims to shed some light on the subject. The investigation was done by a cross-sectional regression analysis using a sample of 26 sub-Saharan countries and secondary data from mostly the World Bank. The results show a significant relationship between both versions of the dependency ratio and economic growth but do not show evidence of a demographic dividend. Out of the two versions of the age-structure hypothesis, most support was found for the strong version. Furthermore, support was found for the conditional convergence theory and both savings per capita and the initial level of education were found significant. However, the results had problems with severe multicollinearity and it was concluded that the results were not entirely reliable and should not be depended upon.

In this paper I will give a brief and general overview of the characteristics of spatial data, why it is useful to use such data and how to use the information included in spatial data. The first question to be answered is: how to detect spatial dependency and spatial autocorrelation in data? Such effects can for instance be found by calculating Moran's I, which is a measure for spatial autocorrelation. The Moran's I is also the basis for a test for spatial autocorrelation (Moran's test). Once we found some spatial structure we can use special models and estimation techniques. There are two famous spatial processes, the SAR- (spatial autoregressive) and the SMA- (spatial moving average process) process, which are used to model spatial effects. For estimation of spatial regression models there are mainly two different possibilities, the first one is called spatial filtering, where the spatial effect is filtered out and standard techniques are used, the second one is spatial two stage least square estimation. Finally there are some results of a spatial analysis of R&D spillovers data (for a panel dataset with 22 countries and 20 years) shown. (author's abstract) / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics