Methods for Evaluating Educational Programs – Does Writing Center Participation Affect Student Achievement?

This paper evaluates the eff ectiveness of the introduction of a Writing Center at a university. The center has the purpose to provide subject-specifi c courses that aim to improve students‘ abilities of scientifi c writing. In order to deal with presumed selfperceptional biases of students in feedback surveys, we use diff erent quantitative evaluation methods and compare the results to corresponding qualitative student surveys. Based on this evaluation, we present and discuss the validity of the approaches to evaluate educational programs. Although almost all students reported the writing courses to be helpful, we fi nd no signifi cant eff ect of course participation on students‘ grades. We attribute the diff erence in the results between quantitative methods and qualitative surveys to the inappropriateness of student course evaluations for assessing the eff ectiveness of educational measures.Performance evaluation; educational programs; student evaluation; empirical methods

The Effect of Gender Equality on International Soccer Performance

In this article, we propose a new estimation strategy that draws on the variation in the performance between the male and the female national soccer team within a country to identify the effect of gender equality on women’s soccer success. For this, country year fixed effects are used to control for both time-constant and time-variant country specific factors. Our results reveal that within-country differences in our proxies for gender equality explain the international soccer performance of female teams, but have no notable explanatory power for the success of male teams. This suggests that gender equality is an important determinant of female sport success

Husband’s Unemployment and Wife’s Labor Supply: The Added Worker Effect across Europe

This article investigates the responsiveness of women’s labor supply to their husband’s job loss—the so-called added worker effect. The authors contribute to the literature by taking an explicit internationally comparative perspective in analyzing the variation of the added worker effect across welfare regimes. Using longitudinal data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey covering 28 European countries from 2004 to 2013, they find evidence of an added worker effect, which, however, varies over both the business cycle and the different welfare regimes in Europe. The latter result might be explained, in part, by differences in the design of the unemployment benefit system across countries, which create different incentives for the labor supply of wives of unemployed men

Molecular orbital imprint in laser-driven electron recollision

Electrons released by strong-field ionization from atoms and molecules or in solids can be accelerated in the oscillating laser field and driven back to their ion core. The ensuing interaction, phase-locked to the optical cycle, initiates the central processes underlying attosecond science. A common assumption assigns a single, welldefined return direction to the recolliding electron. We study laser-induced electron rescattering associated with two different ionization continua in the same, spatially aligned, polyatomic molecule. We show by experiment and theory that the electron return probability is molecular frame-dependent and carries structural information on the ionized orbital. The returning wave packet structure has to be accounted for in analyzing strong-field spectroscopy experiments that critically depend on the interaction of the laser-driven continuum electron, such as laser-induced electron diffraction

Quantum theory of concerted electronic and nuclear fluxes associated with adiabatic intramolecular processes

An elementary molecular process can be characterized by the flow of particles (i.e., electrons and nuclei) that compose the system. The flow, in turn, is quantitatively described by the flux (i.e., the time-sequence of maps of the rate of flow of particles though specified surfaces of observation) or, in more detail, by the flux density. The quantum theory of concerted electronic and nuclear fluxes (CENFs) associated with electronically adiabatic intramolecular processes is presented. In particular, it is emphasized how the electronic continuity equation can be employed to circumvent the failure of the Born–Oppenheimer approximation, which always predicts a vanishing electronic flux density (EFD). It is also shown that all CENFs accompanying coherent tunnelling between equivalent “reactant” and “product” configurations of isolated molecules are synchronous. The theory is applied to three systems of increasing complexity. The first application is to vibrating, aligned H2+(2Σg+), or vibrating and dissociating H2+(2Σg+, J = 0, M = 0). The EFD maps manifest a rich and surprising structure in this simplest of systems; for example, they show that the EFD is not necessarily synchronous with the nuclear flux density and can alternate in direction several times over the length of the molecule. The second application is to coherent tunnelling isomerization in the model inorganic system B4, in which all CENFs are synchronous. The contributions of core and valence electrons to the EFD are separately computed and it is found that core electrons flow with the nuclei, whereas the valence electrons flow obliquely to the core electrons in distinctive patterns. The third application is to the Cope rearrangement of semibullvalene, which also involves coherent tunnelling. An especially interesting discovery is that the so-called “pericyclic” electrons do not behave in the manner typically portrayed by the traditional Lewis structures with appended arrows. Indeed, it is found that only about 3 pericyclic electrons flow, in contrast to the 6 predicted by the Lewis picture. It is remarkable that the time scales of these three processes vary by 18 orders of magnitude: femtoseconds (H2+(2Σg+)); picoseconds (B4); kilosceconds (semibullvalene). It is emphasized that results presented herein are appearing in the literature for the first time

Household employment and the crisis in Europe

The 2008 crisis had a significant impact on household employment in some European countries. An analysis of the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions generated a new cross-national typology of household employment structures and showed how these changed during the crisis and austerity period, capturing the experiences of high and low qualified households. Findings indicate that dual earning households are not always a consequence of gender equality but result from economic necessity or employment opportunities. The re-emergence of traditional male breadwinner households is often the result of female unemployment, especially for lower educated women. An increase in female single earners and workless households is evident in countries hit hardest by the employment crisis. The value of this cross-national typology, rooted in the interaction of educational effects and employment opportunities, is allowing comparison both within and between European countries, going beyond established typologies based on policy frameworks or gender cultures