The Labour Supply of Unpaid Caregivers in Canada, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Meredith Lenore Lilly, Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, 2008. As medical care increasingly shifts from the hospital to the home, responsibility for care has also shifted from the state and paid care, to the family and unpaid care. Unpaid caregivers are family members and friends who provide homecare services to recipients in their place of residence without financial compensation, as a result of their close personal relationships. This research tests the multiple hypotheses that unpaid caregiving has an impact on (1) the probability of labour force participation (LFP); (2) hours of labour force work; and (3) earnings by caregivers in Canada. We analyzed the 1996 and 2002 General Social Surveys, applying multivariate probit, logistic, and OLS regression analyses to four equations: 1) the probability of labour force participation; 2) the hourly wage; 3) weekly hours of labour market work; and 4) the probability of being an unpaid caregiver. Results indicate that unpaid caregiving was negatively associated with labour force participation; however, the impact on hours of labour market work and wages was uncertain. Women and men caregivers were impacted differently: only caregiving men in 1996 had significantly lower wages than non-caregivers, and only women in 1996 worked significantly fewer hours in the labour market. When caregiving was defined broadly, only men in 1996 were significantly less likely to be employed than non-caregivers. Yet when we controlled for caregiving intensity in 2002, both male and female primary caregivers were much less likely to be in the labour force than non-caregivers, while secondary caregivers were no less likely to be employed than non-caregivers. We conclude that when caregiving responsibilities are relatively small, individuals seem able to balance both caregiving with employment. Yet when caregiving commitments become heavy, it becomes increasingly difficult to balance employment with caregiving. We make a number of policy recommendations ranging from improving caregiver access to financial supports, formal care and respite services, particularly for primary caregivers. We also encourage the development of workplace legislation and caregiver friendly workplaces for the majority of caregivers who remain in the labour market.

Petra A n ý ž o v á Doctoral thesis: Cross-Country Comparability of Social Capital and Political Disaffection Attitude Scales in the European Social Survey Abstract The doctoral thesis deals with the methodological perspectives of comparative cross-national research. Currently, in the globalization period, the importance of these perspectives has been increasing. Unfortunately, social scientists analyse attractive international data more and more often without realising the levels of data comparability. Therefore they are not fully aware the best approach to statistical analysis of these data and their convenient comparative interpretation. This thesis introduces the issue of data equivalence as one of the most important quality aspects of cross-national research and focuses especially on attitude scales owing to the fact that their comparability is endangered the most in comparative research. In particular, the subject of the analysis is the international comparability of two of the most frequent robust attitude scales: namely social capital and political disaffection scales as they are measured in the European Social Survey first data set. In sociology and political science, these two social science concepts are very significant and they have been studied both theoretically and empirically as social...

This doctoral thesis focuses on creative online advertising in the context of understanding the value orientation of Czech consumers. By interactions of creative campaigns and national culture of target country aspects businesses can achieve a competitive advantage in the field of digital marketing communications. The main objective of the thesis is to create a concept of creative use of online advertising in the Czech market in relation to the cultural values of Czech consumers as a factor of increasing the competitiveness of Czech companies. The result of the thesis is a design that represents the creative elements of interactive online campaign to Czech national culture, defined as the value orientation by Schwartz according to targeting to defined age group of consumers and it also defines the effective use of online ad formats.

This thesis examined how the association between immigrants’ occupational origin and destination varies in 33 European countries, depending on the opportunities for social mobility in the origin country. For absolute occupational mobility, the result from an LPM regression showed that first-generation female immigrants had an increased probability of upward mobility when the origin country offered more opportunities for social mobility. In contrast, first-generation male immigrants showed an increased probability of immobility when the origin country offered more opportunities for social mobility. For relative occupational mobility, a multivariate OLS regression showed that first-generation male immigrants from countries with more opportunities for social mobility were more immobile compared to origin countries with fewer opportunities. Based on the World Economic Forum’s Global Social Mobility Index, a variable representing the opportunities for social mobility in the origin country was created. The study used four waves of the European Social Survey and the International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI) to measure the mobility patterns in absolute and relative rates over the scores of opportunities for social mobility in the origin country. Second-generation immigrants showed no significant results, and no gender differences could be established. The results were discussed in relation to first-generation immigrants’ Status Loss.

Chapter 1: The Impact of Culture on the Second-Generation Immigrants’ Level of Trust in Canada Trust is one of the main elements of social capital; it determines the extent to which an individual cooperates with others. In this chapter, I assess whether cultural factors influence the level of trust in the population of second-generation immigrants in Canada. This paper is related to two strands of empirical literature. The first analyses the determinants of trust and the second studies the cultural transmission of values, attitudes and beliefs. I follow closely the literature on the cultural transmission and use an epidemiological approach to assess whether trust of second-generation immigrants is affected by their cultural heritage. This approach consists of comparing information about the outcomes of second-generation immigrants with that of the country of origin of their ancestry. We apply this approach using the Ethnic Diversity Survey (EDS), the World Value Survey (WVS) and the European Value Survey (EVS). Estimation results show that the average level of trust in the countries of origin of the ancestors of the second-generation immigrants has a strong significant impact on their level of trust. Thus, individual whose country of ancestry displays a high level of trust, tend to have a high level of trust. This provides evidence that individuals’ level of trust is not only explained by their personal experiences, characteristics, and the environment in which they live; but also by the culture in their country of ancestry. This means that culture does matter! I find that the results remain robust even if certain key countries are omitted or a different data set is used. Chapter 2: Decomposing Health Achievement and Socioeconomic Health Inequalities in Presence of Multiple Categorical Information This chapter presents a decomposition of the health achievement and the socioeconomic health inequality indices by multiple categorical variables and by regions. I adopt Makdissi and Yazbeck's (2014) counting approach to deal with the ordinal nature of the data of the United States National Health Interview Survey 2010. The findings suggest that the attributes that contribute the most to the deviation from perfect health in the United States are: anxiety, depression and exhaustion. Also, I find that the attributes that contribute the most to the total socioeconomic health inequality are ambulation, depression and pain. The regional decomposition results suggest that, if the aversion to socioeconomic health inequality is high enough, socioeconomic health inequalities between regions are the main contributors to the total socioeconomic health inequality in the United States. Chapter 3: Accounting for Freedom and Economic Resources in the Assessment of Changes in Women Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa This chapter assesses the importance of freedom in women’s wellbeing in twelve Sub-Saharan Africa countries by using data from Demographic Health Surveys. This paper presents a poverty comparison by using the stochastic dominance approach and relies on the economic resources and freedom as the two aspects of wellbeing which evokes the multidimensionality of poverty. This study is related to the following three pieces of literature: the sequential stochastic dominance, the multidimensional poverty, the Sen’s capability approach which is based on freedom. This paper is built on Makdissi et al. (2014) but differs from it in a number of respects. First, it focuses on poverty instead of welfare. Secondly, it applies the Shapley decomposition to determine the contributions of the economic resource distribution and the incidence of the threat of domestic violence to poverty changes over time. Consistent with previous work on the importance of freedom, I find that more freedom, i.e. less threat of domestic violence, affects women’s wellbeing positively since it decreases women’s poverty. The results indicate that women’s wellbeing has improved in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Senegal, and Zimbabwe and deteriorated in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania.

MENVSC / Department of Geography and Geo-Information Sciences / This is a case study research that focuses on the assessment of the impacts of land use changes on the Duthuni wetland ecosystem in Limpopo Province using geospatial techniques and Social Survey. SPOT 4 satellite images which covered the time frame between 1999, 2005 to 2012, were used. The unit of analysis included different institutions such as the local municipality, farmers, the heads of the households and Chief of the Village. In this study, different methods of sampling were used in different context for selecting participants and for sample size determination. The different instruments for data collection included the questionnaires, interviews, focus group interviews and documents review. Socio-economic survey and review of documents were carried out to understand historical trends, collect ground truth and other secondary information required. Data collected from the survey were captured and analysed using the Statistical Package for Scientific Solutions (SPSS). For quantitative analysis, Chi-Square and cross tabulation were employed in SPSS. Analysis of satellite imagery was accomplished through integrated use of ERDAS Imagine (version 2015) and ArcGIS (version 10.1) software package. The themes were identified and analysed using the content analysis based on the main research topics. The results show that the land use/ cover changes have occurred at an unprecedented rate over the years 1999 to 2012. From the year 1999 to the year 2012, the total land use/ cover conversions equal to 299.984 ha of land. The trend and spatial extent of land use/ cover changes had undergone considerable changes over the years in the study period. The major contributing factors included population increase, expansion of agriculture and lack of space to settle. The residential area was found to be the major factor contributing to land use change over the years with an increase of (102.87ha.). People residing in Duthuni village especially along the wetland ecosystem consist of the majority of female-headed households. There is no proper facilitation and mentoring in the village by the government in order to resolve social problems when it comes to land use change. Water pollution and soil erosion were found to be the major concern by wetland users such as farmers and residents. Lack of knowledge has also been identified as one of the driving factors of environmental impacts of land use change in the area. Food was the most resources with 41% which the community gets from the wetland.

This master thesis illustrates the universality of Schwartz's value theory approach: culture of any group of people may be subject to the research and its value profile has a universal format. Both Czech and Finnish national value profiles and the value profiles of the helping professions in these two countries were calculated, based on data from The European Social Survey in 2012. On national levels, these profiles are representative. On the levels of helping professions, however, the profiles only serve as a model example-no representative data were available. In comparison with their national value profile, Czech model representatives of the helping professions attach more importance to all basic values in Schwartz's theory. In Finland, this is not the case for power, achievement, self-direction and security. This master thesis proposes several recommendations for potential surveys dealing with the impact of national culture on organization culture in health and social facilities. Especially, it highlights the necessity for quality value profiles of the structured helping professions. The reason for doing so is the outlined possibility (and maybe also necessity) to take different positions of individual professions into consideration. It also suggests to search for mathematical relations between...