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Discusses the 2‐D minimum free energy (MFE) parameter and spectral estimation method and presents an algorithm for its implementation. Notes a profound lack of results in the literature on 2‐D spectral estimation methods and on their comparison. To address this issue and to impart an overall impression of the performance of 2‐D MFE, compares results from the Levinson method, a maximum entropy method (MEM), and a hybrid method with 2‐D MFE. Points out that 2‐D MFE can provide superior spectral estimates to that produced with MEM and that, in general, MFE requires a larger area of correlation support than the hybrid method. Also notes that 2‐D MFE can provide superior spectral estimation over the 2‐D Levinson algorithm.

Comparative studies have confirmed that the current types of cohabitation (defined as living together as a couple without being married) and the meanings attached to them differ across Europe. This variation could reflect differences in the levels of progress or the stages countries have reached in a common developmental process, as suggested by the theory of the Second Demographic Transition and Kiernan’s stage model of cohabitation. However, it may also indicate that countries are on different developmental paths, as suggested by path dependency theories. To examine whether changes in the prevalence of cohabitation follow a common script, this study analyses types of cohabitation within emerging family formation patterns over cohorts and across countries.

For this purpose, sequence methodology is applied to analyze cohort-specific family trajectories in France, western Germany, Norway, and Italy. In particular, using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and the Generation and Gender Survey (GGS), patterns of union status and co-residence with (own) children between ages 15 and 35 among the 1935–1969 birth cohorts (for Germany, among the 1940–1974 birth cohorts) are compared.

Our findings provide some support for the claim that there were common patterns of change. However, also country-specific variations in family trajectory patterns were detected, which suggests that general processes of change were mediated through country-specific institutions (path dependencies). The empirical evidence for convergence as well as for divergence indicates that both theoretical strands add to our understanding of the spread of cohabitation in European countries.

The food retailing loyalty scheme is one of the marketing phenomena of the 1990s with most of the major supermarket multiples now having a customer loyalty card scheme. Consumers reciprocate by possessing loyalty cards – there are 40 million such cards in circulation. By knowing what individual consumers buy, the food retailer should be able to target them with relevant offers whilst the consumer saves money in the process. The dilemma for the consumer is one of cheaper shopping on the one hand and privacy invasion on the other because they reveal details about themselves every time they let their purchases at the checkout be matched with their data file via the loyalty card. The dilemma for supermarkets is whether loyalty schemes create truly loyal relationships or whether they are merely sales promotions.

This chapter critically examines the dialectical relationship between colonial capitalism, racism, state terrorism, and racial/ethnonational domination from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. It demonstrates the deficiencies of theories of global studies. In reformulating and improving critical international studies, this study advances the idea that excluding indigenous wisdom and knowledge from this area has allowed the hegemonic Euro-American-centric scholarship and ideology to limit our understanding of the racist sickness and its continuous evolution in the modern world system. Since this sickness has been hidden under the rhetoric of democracy, human rights, and social justice, even progressive intellectuals have failed to thoroughly comprehend the devastating consequences of racism and terrorism in global studies.

First, the chapter critically establishes the dialectical relationship between colonial capitalism, racial terrorism, and the continuous destruction of indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia. It explains how the dominant racial/ethnonational groups have continued to maintain their privileges at the cost of marginalized societies. Second, using indigenous wisdom and knowledge, the piece exposes the intellectual deficiencies of Euro-American scholarship and ideology from the right and left in global studies. Third, the chapter demonstrates that the claims of democracy, human rights, and social justice do not adequately apply to the conditions of the indigenous peoples in the world. Fourth, it proposes ways of developing a comprehensive critical global studies by critically including the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of classification structures to efforts at holding perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable using one archival repository in Cambodia as a case study.

The primary methodology of this paper is a textual analysis of the Documentation Center of Cambodia's classification scheme, as well as a conceptual analysis using the theoretical framework originally posited by Bowker and Star and further developed by Harris and Duff. These analyses were supplemented by interviews with key participants.

The Documentation Center of Cambodia's classification of Khmer Rouge records by ethnic identity has had a major impact on charging former officials of the regime with genocide in the ongoing human rights tribunal.

As this exploration of the DC‐Cam database shows, archival description can be used as a tool to promote accountability in societies coming to terms with difficult histories.

This paper expands and revises Harris and Duff's definition of liberatory description to include Spivak's concept of strategic essentialism, arguing that archivists’ classification choices have important ethical and legal consequences.

Only three decades ago, many demographers believed that the nuclear family – married adults and their biological children – was the modal family structure toward which all societies would rapidly converge (e.g. Goode, 1970). Indeed, during the two decades following World War II, marriage and childbearing in most Western nations tended to: (1) occur early in adulthood; (2) follow a predictable sequence; and (3) be tightly coupled. That is, young couples first married, and then quickly began having children. Over the past few decades in many Western countries, however, marriage and fertility have been increasingly delayed to later adulthood and decoupled from one another, such that the sequence and timing of partnership formation and childbearing have changed dramatically. As a result, most Western nations have experienced increasing rates of out-of-wedlock and out-of-partnership fertility and nonmarital cohabitation¹ (as well as divorce) (Goldscheider et al., 2001; Haskey, 2001; Hoem & Hoem, 1988; Kiernan, 2001; Martin & Bumpass, 1989; Murphy, 2000; Noack, 2001; Ostner, 2001; Prinz, 1995; Toulemon, 1997). The pace of change has been so swift that in the preface to the second edition of Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, Cherlin (1992, p. vii) remarks that only ten years after the publication of the first edition a more appropriate title to the book might have been Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, More Cohabitation, and Probably Remarriage.

The study draws upon three accounts to examine post-truth politics and its link to accounting. In studying Petrobras, a Brazilian petrochemical company embroiled in a corruption scandal, the authors draw upon a politics of falsity to understand how different depictions of similar events can emerge. The authors depict Petrobras' corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures during the period of corruption juxtaposed against the Brazilian Federal Police investigation (the Lava Jato/Car Wash Operation) and Petrobras' response to the allegations of institutional corruption.

The data set consisted of 56 Petrobras reports including Annual Reports, Financial Statements, Sustainability Reports and Form 20-Fs from 2004 to 2017, information disclosed by the Brazilian Federal Police concerning the Lava Jato Operation and media reports concerning Petrobras and the corruption scandal. The paper employs a discourse analysis approach to depict and interpret the accounts.

Through examining the connection between ontic accounts and ontological presuppositions, the authors illustrate a post-truth logic underpinning accounting, due to the interpretive, contestable and contingent nature of accounting information. Consequently, the authors turn to the “ethics of the real” as a response, as citizen subjects must be cautious in how they approach accounting and CSR disclosures.

Rather than relying on simplistic true/false dualities, the authors argue that the “ethics of the real” provides a courageous position for citizen subjects to interrogate the organisation by recognising the role of discourse and disclosure expectations on organisations in a post-truth environment. The study also illustrates how competing, contingent accounts of the same timeframe and events can emerge.

Purpose – Good investigative sociology and high-quality investigative journalism are not just the same but they are close relatives. For both professions, getting under the surface soil of social life, digging deeply into and making coherent sense of the social experience of others, and translating those findings and interpretations into a universal language for widespread consumption are hugely challenging tasks. Understanding the difference and similarities regarding how sociologists and investigative journalists go about this task raises fundamental philosophical, epistemological, ethical, methodological, theoretical and practical concerns, the outline considerations of which are all featured in this chapter.

Design/methodology/approach – Drawing upon more than three decades of investigative research experience in the field and the original and the innovative personal scholarship that this has yielded, the chapter offers students a map reader's guide of how to navigate a way through the complex, challenging and sometimes hazardous labyrinth of investigative qualitative research.

Originality/value – In addition to offering a ‘how to’ primer for thinking about and doing investigative-qualitative sociology, the chapter also offers advice on how to survive the experience and authoritatively tell the tale well to the widest possible audiences.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the efficiency of SMS based cell‐phone vocabulary learning as compared to email vocabulary delivery and snail mail vocabulary delivery at the university level.

A total of 241 first year university students studied English vocabulary in their mandatory English foundation course. Students were divided into three groups: study via cell‐phone based SMS messages, via email messages and via snail mail delivery. Vocabulary lists were delivered weekly to students via the three delivery strategies during course. Students in the three groups were tested on English vocabulary and responded to a questionnaire that examined their attitudes toward flexibility of the learning strategy; user friendliness of the learning strategy; learner control of the learning process, learner motivation; and learner autonomy.

Results of the study indicate that there were no significant differences for achievement attained by the three groups on the vocabulary test. However, there were significant differences on students' attitudes toward flexibility of learning; user friendliness of the learning strategy; learner control of the learning process, learner motivation; and learner autonomy. The students who received SMS messages had most positive attitudes on all five factors, followed by attitudes of students who received email messages, who were followed by attitudes of students who received vocabulary via snail mail.

It appears that SMS based vocabulary delivery is perceived as more effective than email delivery which is felt to be more efficient than snail mail learning. Results of the study indicate the potential for university vocabulary learning via cell‐phone based SMS messaging.

This paper indicates the value of SMS messaging for vocabulary learning at the university level.

Given the ongoing attention surrounding public sector defined benefit pensions, the participating plan sponsors such as local units of government may be tempted to reduce their future pension liabilities, possibly at the expense of their former employees. Alternatively, public sector employees may act to withdraw their pension contributions if they have concerns related to the sustainability of their employer's pension plan. Nonvested, terminated employees have the option of leaving their contributions on account or taking them as a distribution in the form of a rollover to a qualifying retirement account, or a cash-out. Because a cash distribution carries with it the potential for retirement savings ‘leakage,’ it continues to be of public concern.

This study contributes to the literature by examining determinants of the distribution decisions of terminated employees and is first to specifically explore the association of pension funding levels as a determinant of such decision. Decisions of 46,608 employees who separated employment between 2010 and 2013 were examined. The results suggest that a decrease in the employer's pension funding is associated with increased probability that the terminated employee will take a refund of their contributions. Additionally, the data reveal that 88% of the terminating employees who took a refund requested to receive it in the form of a cash-out, totaling about $38 million of cash distributions. Lastly, about 1,000 of those employees each cashed out more than $8,000, thus suggesting the pension leakage problem warrants further research and perhaps policy changes.