Leadership research has always recognised the importance of childhood factors for the occupation of formal or informal leader positions later in life. Still, empirical research in the field has mainly been based on retrospective accounts from selective and small samples. Such research has also concentrated on individual traits and experiences, less on characteristics of the family. Our aim is to fill this void by prospectively examining the role of the family of origin on educational attainment and holding a managerial position in adulthood. Analyses were based on the Stockholm Multigenerational Study, including register and survey data, regarding 3,088 males born between 1950 and 1976 and their mothers’ attitudes to education and child-rearing in the late 1960s. Our results showed a significant effect of family socio-economic status (SES) on managerial role occupancy in late adulthood. This effect was mainly mediated through educational level. However, a noteworthy share of the total effect of family SES was channelled through maternal attitudes towards education. Positive attitudes towards education in the home environment accounted for an equally large share of the total indirect effect of family SES as the offspring’s cognitive capacity did. Authoritarian attitudes to child-rearing among mothers were also found to have a negative impact on cognitive capacity and educational level – two well-known antecedents to leader emergence. Parental attitudes may boost or modify structural characteristics and individual traits associated with holding formal leader roles such as a managerial position – but also showed an independent effect several decades later.
This study evaluated the extent to which body mass index (BMI) mediates associations between risk factors and incident high blood pressure in American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs), Non-Hispanic Whites (NHWs), Non-Hispanic Blacks (NHBs) and Hispanics. There were 7,793 participants from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health: 312 AI/ANs, 1,091 Hispanics, 1,567 NHBs and 4,823 NHWs. Risk factors for high blood pressure included adolescent BMI, TV watching, fast-food consumption, smoking, parental obesity, parental educational attainment and financial instability. Relative risk regression models stratified by race/ethnicity were used to examine associations between risk factors and incident high blood pressure. Path analysis was used to assess mediation by BMI. Female sex was a protective factor against high blood pressure, and higher BMI was a risk factor in all populations. Smoking increased high blood pressure risk in AI/ANs (Incident Rate Ratio [IRR]: 1.14, 95% CI: 1.02–1.27), but not in other groups. BMI partially mediated the effect of parental obesity on high blood pressure in NHWs and completely mediated the effect of parental obesity in NHBs. In AI/ANs and Hispanics, BMI did not mediate the relationship between incident high blood pressure and any risk factor. This study assessed the extent to which BMI mediates risk factors for high blood pressure in four populations, and showed important differences across populations. Further research is needed to improve knowledge about relationships between BMI, risk factors and incident high blood pressure, and their potential variability by race/ethnicity.
To address significant variation of sequence lengths of doctoral trajectories, we propose sequence normalisation using the relative duration of episodes. We employ episode data from a panel study of doctorate holders in Germany where doctoral trajectories are measured in single months and differ in length up to several years. Utilising normalised sequences instead of absolute sequences, we are better able to identify typical trajectories. The graphical presentation of the cluster solutions more accurately depicts the underlying processes. Furthermore, it offers the possibility to define reference sequences without a fixed length. Normalising sequences instead of distances thus proves an easily implementable method to compare sequences of different lengths when the identification of patterns is a priority.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) was in a unique position to respond to the need for high quality survey data on people’s changing living situations. Implemented as two telephone interviews in the summer of 2020 and 2021 in 27 European countries and Israel, the SHARE Corona Surveys present a great advantage by their integration into the longitudinal, multidisciplinary and ex-ante harmonised design of the SHARE study. This allows researchers to trace changes from the pre-pandemic period, through the different stages of the pandemic, and the post-pandemic situation. This article lays out the research aims and how the two Corona Surveys fit in the general design of SHARE. It presents the main design features of the SHARE Corona Surveys following the survey life cycle. It starts with information on procurement, contracting, funding, ethics, and data protection and sampling, followed by information on instrument design, translations, questionnaire content and interviewer training. Last, fieldwork, panel care and data processing are described. Focused on topics of health behaviour, health care, economics and social relationships, the balanced panel sample of the two SHARE Corona Surveys comprises more than 48,000 interviews and provides valuable information on how the 50+ population coped with the COVID-19 pandemic. The experience of implementing the SHARE Corona Surveys also offers insights into use of agile project management methods for large survey infrastructures and moving towards a multi-mode design in an ongoing panel data collection project.
Socio-emotional skills, vital for navigating life’s challenges, significantly influence educational success and well-being. Thus, socio-economic disparities in these skills may contribute to broader inequalities in achievement. Despite their importance, research in certain contexts, like France, remains limited. Self-efficacy, a cornerstone of socio-emotional well-being, develops early and it is influenced by familial and contextual factors. The primary school years are central for self-efficacy development. During this period, socio-economic gaps in self-efficacy may emerge, influenced by family environments and experiences at school. Using data from the 2011 Panel of Pupils we find that French pupils have similar academic self-efficacy whatever their socio-economic background at the start of primary school. However, at the end of primary school, children coming from more disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds exhibit lower academic self-efficacy as compared to more advantaged peers, and this socio-economic gap is particularly strong among girls. The findings of this work underscore the need for educational policies to focus on socio-emotional skills development alongside cognitive skills from an early age to reduce socio-economic inequalities.
In this chapter we – Emma Lazenby, a filmmaker, and Karen Gray, a researcher – introduce the analogue journey method. The term ‘analogue’ has dual meanings, and both are relevant. An ‘analogue’ is a thing that is similar to, or that is used to represent, something else through the process of comparison or analogy. The analogue journey method is a novel creative analysis tool that can be used with almost any kind of qualitative or mixed-methods research data, making sense of such data by visualising them in the shape of a journey, with the end goal of communicating this sense to others. The word ‘analogue’ is also now commonly used to denote things whose means of representation is through the quantities and qualities of the physical world. This contrasts to the ‘digital’ world, in which physical quantities are processed through and represented by electrical signals. For example, analogue time is told through the movement of the minute and second hands of a clock, rather than through changing numbers on a computer screen. The analogue journey method requires analogue tools, such as paper, pens, scissors. However, its results are intended to be translated into either words or images using any media to support wider and creative dissemination of research findings. The word ‘journey’ in the name indicates that it involves information being organised and presented in a form that, while linear, is mobile and mutable – open to change. The analogue journey method demands thoughtful connection and reconnection with the data. Its activities encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration, opening up different perspectives or helping to form different constellations of information.
This chapter will discuss analysis of multimodal creative and qualitative research that has been undertaken by the International Women in Supramolecular Chemistry Network (WISC, 2020). WISC’s overarching aim is to create a community to support the retention and progression of women and other marginalised genders within the field of supramolecular chemistry. WISC use an ethos that ‘calls in’ the community and embeds equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) expertise (Caltagirone et al, 2021a, 2021b). We intentionally use reflective methods as part of an Embodied Inquiry (Leigh and Brown, 2021) to capture and share their ‘invisible, embodied, emotional experiences’ (Leigh et al, 2023, p 1) as a way to raise awareness and effect change (Leigh et al, 2022a). Science is not known for its diversity and inclusion, whether that is regarding gender (Rosser, 2012), race (Prasad, 2021; Royal Society of Chemistry, 2022), sexuality, (Smith, 2019) or disability (CRAC, 2020). Women are subject to resistance in academia generally (Shelton, Flynn and Grosland, 2018; Murray and Mifsud, 2019), and this is intensified within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines (Rosser, 2012). Despite investment in programmes designed to address the gender imbalance, women remain a minority, particularly in more senior roles (Rosser, 2017). This imbalance is more pronounced in some STEM disciplines than others.
The Unspoken Voices Project is concerned with understanding the experiences of people who rely on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), also known as communication aids, because they cannot speak clearly. People who use AAC are frequently excluded from being involved, or they are misrepresented, in research because they cannot provide the ‘rich narrative’ often demanded by qualitative analytic methods. The project was inspired by clinical practice as I am a speech and language therapist with experience of working with people who use AAC. I have frequently had cause to wonder at interactions between people who use AAC and their familiar communication partners and have marvelled at the nature of the mutuality that exists beyond words. These observations led me to search for, but not find, analytic methods that would enable me to explore and authentically represent people who use AAC and their experience of communication. A dialogic theoretical lens provided the conceptual tools to extend my understanding of communication and voice, and to develop a creative data analysis method incorporating my embodied experience as a speech and language therapist and researcher. I will draw on data from the Unspoken Voices Project, a research project concerned with understanding more about the experiences of communicating using AAC, to elucidate and illuminate my application of this method and the impact that it had on my research. This method synthesises multimodal data sources through attending to the complexity and nuance of dialogue with this population.
