The labour markets in Finland, Germany, Latvia, Norway, and Sweden 2006-2010

Via the International Labour Market Forecasting Network, forecasters of the public employment services or comparable institutes from the Nordic countries as well as Germany and Austria exchange their analyses about the current and future development of the national economies and labour markets. This report documents some of the discussions during the past few years. Finland, Germany, Latvia, Norway, and Sweden exemplify their starting conditions and labour market reactions to the Great recession in 2008 and 2009.Im International Labour Market Forecasting Network tauschen sich Prognostiker der öffentlichen Arbeitsverwaltungen und verwandter Institute aus den nordischen Ländern sowie Deutschland und Österreich regelmäßig über die aktuelle und erwartete Entwicklung der nationalen Volkswirtschaften und Arbeitsmärkte aus. Dieser Bericht dokumentiert in Kürze die Diskussion in den zurückliegenden Jahren. Beispielhaft skizzieren Finnland, Deutschland, Lettland, Norwegen und Schweden den Ausgangspunkt und die Reaktionen ihrer Arbeitsmärkte auf die Große Rezession 2008/09

The relation between parents’ education level and students’ performance in the PISA study

Tilgangur rannsóknarinnar var að skoða tengsl milli menntunar foreldra og árangurs barna þeirra í PISA (e. Programme for International Student Assessment). Alveg frá því að PISA var lagt fyrir í fyrsta sinn hefur því verið haldið fram að Ísland hafi þá sérstöðu að hverfandi tengsl séu milli menntunar foreldra og árangurs barna þeirra í PISA, ólíkt því sem gerist í öðrum löndum. Í þessari rannsókn voru notuð gögn úr PISA frá fyrirlögn árið 2015 og einskorðaðist greiningin við Norðurlöndin fimm. Markmiðið var að svara spurningunni hvort Ísland hefði raunverulega sérstöðu í þessum efnum eða hvort lítil tengsl sem hefðu komið fram til þessa mætti rekja til þeirra aðferða sem notaðar voru til að meta tengsl menntunar foreldra og árangurs barna þeirra. Niðurstöður þessarar rannsóknar benda til þess að á öllum Norðurlöndum sé umtalsverður munur á meðalárangri þátttakenda sem eiga foreldra með grunnskólamenntun og þeirra þátttakenda sem eiga foreldra með háskólamenntun. Þá sýna niðurstöður skýrt að Ísland er ekki verulega frábrugðið hinum Norðurlöndunum að þessu leyti. Ef viðmið OECD um meðalframfarir nemenda á einu skólaári eru notuð til túlkunar er ekki hægt að álykta annað en að munur á meðalárangri barna grunn- og háskólamenntaðra foreldra sé mjög verulegur. Niðurstöður sýndu að þessi munur samsvarar meðalframförum á tveimur skólaárum í stærðfræðilæsi, meðalframförum á rúmum tveimur skólaárum í lesskilningi og tæpum tveimur árum í náttúrufræðilæsi.Factors within school are not the sole determinants of academic performance. Research has shown that social circumstances, like parents and family, peer group, leisure-time activities as well as other factors in the larger social milieu of individuals affect educational attainment (Bong, 2008; Coleman et al., 1966; Morgan & Sørensen, 1999; Sun, 1999). In this regard, research conducted in several different countries has consistently found that, of background factors, parents’ level of education is one of the strongest predictors of student achievement (Davis-Kean, 2005; Israel, Beaulieu, & Hartless, 2001; Magnuson, 2007; Sirin, 2005). Educated parents tend to have greater academic expectations and are more likely to motivate their children academically (Mullis, Rathge, & Mullis, 2003). Furthermore, children of educated parents generally have more advantages and opportunities since their parents tend to be able to provide them with more educational resources and learning opportunities, as well as being more capable of helping them with academic course work (Gutman & Eccles, 1999). In Iceland, some have argued, based on data from Iceland’s participation in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), that educational equality is one of the main strengths of the Icelandic education system. Reasons include that there is less difference between schools in Iceland than in any other OECD country and that the effect of social factors, such as parents’ level of education, is almost nonexistent in the Icelandic school system (Almar M. Halldórsson, Ragnar F. Ólafsson, Óskar H. Níelsson, & Júlíus K. Björnsson, 2010; Almar M. Halldórsson, Ragnar F. Ólafsson, & Júlíus K. Björnsson, 2013; Menntamálastofnun, 2017). The PISA study is an international survey carried out triennially. Iceland has participated in the study since it was first conducted in the year 2000. The aim of the PISA study is to evaluate education systems worldwide by assessing 15-year-old students, where many are near the end of their compulsory education. The PISA study assesses participants’ knowledge in three core domains: literacy in reading, mathematics, and science. In 2015, the main focus was on science literacy. As well as testing these three domains, participants answer a questionnaire with questions relating to their background. The current study is based on data from the 2015 PISA study, utilizing the sample from the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Sweden. The aim of the study was to explore whether the relationship between student achievement and their parents’ education level is different in Iceland than in the other Nordic countries. Furthermore, we expected that prior findings of very little association of parents’ education level with student achievement could be due to the statistical methods used. In reports on the main findings of PISA from the Icelandic Directorate of Education it is claimed that the association of parental education and student academic achievement is “practically 0” (Almar M. Halldórsson et al., 2010, 2013; Menntamálastofnun, 2017). This claim is based on the small value of the Pearson product moment coefficient of correlation (r) and the coefficient of determination (R²/η²Rv). This statistical approach is flawed for several reasons, most importantly that these coefficients describe the importance of the variance or heterogeneity of one variable for the variance of another and not the effect size in the unit of measurement. These coefficients can, therefore, be small as a result of little variability or homogeneity of the predictor. As achievement on PISA is measured on an equal-interval scale based on item-response theory that is neither test- nor population-specific, we simply compared mean achievement of students, conditional on parents’ educational level. We also examined the proportion of students at each ability level (as defined by OECD) conditional on parents’ educational level. Then, we examined the proportion of students at each ability level (as defined by OECD) conditional on parents’ educational level. Findings indicated that in all the Nordic countries there is considerable difference in the performance of participants whose parents have compulsory education compared with participants who have parents with higher education. Furthermore, our findings show that the Icelandic results are quite similar to the results from the other Nordic countries in this regard. If the OECD guideline for the average yearly progress of students is considered, the difference in achievement between Icelandic participants with parents who have compulsory education and those who have parents with higher education was two years for mathematics, over two years for literacy and close to two years for science.Peer Reviewe

Physical activity through a classroom-based intervention : A pragmatic non-randomized trial among swedish adolescents in an upper secondary school

Schools are an important arena to curb the decline in physical activity (PA) in youth. School-based interventions with accelerometer-measured PA are warranted. This study aimed to increase accelerometer-measured PA in adolescents following a 12-month school-based intervention. Two school-classes of 16–18-year-old Swedish students were allocated to intervention group and control group. Accelerometer-measured PA was gathered at baseline, 6-and 12-month follow-up. Mixed-effects linear regression was used to investigate between-group and within-group differences in mean minutes per day (min/day) of moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA), light PA (LPA) and sedentary time (ST). Fifty-seven students participated (intervention group = 31, control group = 26). At 12-month follow-up, the intervention group performed 5.9 (95% CI: −4.3, 16.2) min/day more in MVPA, 1.8 (95% CI: −17.9, 14.2) min/day less in LPA, and 4.1 (95% CI: −27.3, 19.2) min/day less in ST compared to the control group. Within the intervention group, there was no significant change in PA. Within the control group, LPA decreased (95% CI: −19.6, −0.2; p = 0.044) and ST increased (95% CI: 1.8, 30.8; p = 0.028). Although no between-group differences in PA were statistically significant, the within-group changes may suggest a preventive impact on the decline in PA during adolescence

The DOMUS study protocol:a randomized clinical trial of accelerated transition from oncological treatment to specialized palliative care at home

BACKGROUND: The focus of Specialized Palliative Care (SPC) is to improve care for patients with incurable diseases and their families, which includes the opportunity to make their own choice of place of care and ultimately place of death. The Danish Palliative Care Trial (DOMUS) aims to investigate whether an accelerated transition process from oncological treatment to continuing SPC at home for patients with incurable cancer results in more patients reaching their preferred place of care and death. The SPC in this trial is enriched with a manualized psychological intervention. METHODS/DESIGN: DOMUS is a controlled randomized clinical trial with a balanced parallel-group randomization (1:1). The planned sample size is 340 in- and outpatients treated at the Department of Oncology at Copenhagen University Hospital. Patients are randomly assigned either to: a) standard care plus SPC enriched with a standardized psychological intervention for patients and caregivers at home or b) standard care alone. Inclusion criteria are incurable cancer with no or limited antineoplastic treatment options. DISCUSSION: Programs that facilitate transition from hospital treatment to SPC at home for patients with incurable cancer can be a powerful tool to improve patients’ quality of life and support family/caregivers during the disease trajectory. The present study offers a model for achieving optimal delivery of palliative care in the patient’s preferred place of care and attempt to clarify challenges. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT0188563

Validated and longitudinally stable asthma phenotypes based on cluster analysis of the ADEPT study

BACKGROUND: Asthma is a disease of varying severity and differing disease mechanisms. To date, studies aimed at stratifying asthma into clinically useful phenotypes have produced a number of phenotypes that have yet to be assessed for stability and to be validated in independent cohorts. The aim of this study was to define and validate, for the first time ever, clinically driven asthma phenotypes using two independent, severe asthma cohorts: ADEPT and U-BIOPRED. METHODS: Fuzzy partition-around-medoid clustering was performed on pre-specified data from the ADEPT participants (n = 156) and independently on data from a subset of U-BIOPRED asthma participants (n = 82) for whom the same variables were available. Models for cluster classification probabilities were derived and applied to the 12-month longitudinal ADEPT data and to a larger subset of the U-BIOPRED asthma dataset (n = 397). High and low type-2 inflammation phenotypes were defined as high or low Th2 activity, indicated by endobronchial biopsies gene expression changes downstream of IL-4 or IL-13. RESULTS: Four phenotypes were identified in the ADEPT (training) cohort, with distinct clinical and biomarker profiles. Phenotype 1 was "mild, good lung function, early onset", with a low-inflammatory, predominantly Type-2, phenotype. Phenotype 2 had a "moderate, hyper-responsive, eosinophilic" phenotype, with moderate asthma control, mild airflow obstruction and predominant Type-2 inflammation. Phenotype 3 had a "mixed severity, predominantly fixed obstructive, non-eosinophilic and neutrophilic" phenotype, with moderate asthma control and low Type-2 inflammation. Phenotype 4 had a "severe uncontrolled, severe reversible obstruction, mixed granulocytic" phenotype, with moderate Type-2 inflammation. These phenotypes had good longitudinal stability in the ADEPT cohort. They were reproduced and demonstrated high classification probability in two subsets of the U-BIOPRED asthma cohort. CONCLUSIONS: Focusing on the biology of the four clinical independently-validated easy-to-assess ADEPT asthma phenotypes will help understanding the unmet need and will aid in developing tailored therapies. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT01274507 (ADEPT), registered October 28, 2010 and NCT01982162 (U-BIOPRED), registered October 30, 2013