Parenting and Positive Adjustment for Adolescents in Nine Countries

This chapter describes the theoretical background, methodology, and select empirical findings from the Parenting Across Cultures project, a longitudinal study of mothers, fathers, and youth in nine countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and United States). The design of the study is well suited to addressing questions regarding within-family, between-family within-country, and between-country predictors of youth outcomes. Positive development may be characterized in unique ways in different countries, but adjustment outcomes such as social competence, prosocial behavior, and academic achievement also share features and parenting predictors in different countries. Combining emic (originating within a culture) and etic (originating outside a culture) approaches, operationalizing culture, and handling measurement invariance are challenges of international research. Understanding culturally specific and generalizable features of positive youth development as well as how youth are socialized in ways to promote positive adjustment are advantages of comparative international research

The Relationship between Parental Variables, Empathy and Prosocial-Flow with Prosocial Behavior toward Strangers, Friends, and Family

The goal of this study was to explore the relationship between two different aspects of the parent-child relationship (parental challenge and authoritative parental style) and empathy as well as prosocial flow with prosocial behavior toward strangers, friends,and family. The participants were 422 young adults who were enrolled in undergraduate social responsibility courses at a University. The results show that thecombination of parental support and parental challenge has an important influence on prosocial flow and on positive behavior such as prosocial behavior toward friends and family, but no influence on that toward strangers. Moreover, in the same way, empathy and prosocial flow promote prosocial behavior toward these three targets. The interpretations of these findings are delineated in the discussion.Fil: Mesurado, Maria Belen. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Psicología Matemática y Experimental Dr. Horacio J. A. Rimoldi; Argentina. Universidad Austral ; ArgentinaFil: Richaud, Maria Cristina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Psicología Matemática y Experimental Dr. Horacio J. A. Rimoldi; Argentin

DEA performance assessment of mutual funds

The objectives of this paper are manyfold. First we present a comprehensive review of the literature of DEA models for the performance assessment of mutual funds. Then we discuss the problem of the presence of negative returns in DEA modeling for mutual funds and we identify a DEA model that is financially justified and tackles the issue of negative returns in a natural way. Moreover, we present an empirical application on real market data, considering different risk measures.\ud We consider also different holding periods, which include both a period of financial crisis and one of financial recovery. Moreover, we compare the results of the DEA performance measure with those obtained with traditional financial indicators