Between 'sisters' : a study of the employment relationship between African domestic workers and African employers in the townships of Soweto.

There are just over a million domestic workers in South Africa, accounting for 7.3 percent of total employment. According to Carroll (2004) about 10 percent of the country’s estimated one million domestic workers are hired by black people. As an area that is largely occupied by African women the increased entry of African employers adds an interesting dynamic in the domestic work sector. The aim of this study was to look at the relationship that African domestic workers have with their African employers. Particular attention was given to the middle and working class Africans living in living in various townships in Soweto. By focusing on within-race interaction this study is aimed at emphasizing class as the defining characteristic of inequality in this sector. The main broad finding in this study was that the employment relationship that African employers have with their domestic workers is not different from the traditional relationship between white employers and African domestic workers, as African employers reproduce some of the exploitation that existed in the sector. Despite legislative rights being awarded to domestic workers, a number of the domestic workers in the townships are still being paid below minimum wage, have no set working hours and work without any written contracts of employment. The study also revealed the use of the term ‘helper’ by African employers, as a way of building unity and equality in the relationship that they have with their domestic workers. The study concludes by suggesting that there is a need for a more forceful approach from government in ensuring that employers comply with the law

Cross-Validation Of The El Paso Risk Assessment Of Juveniles At Intake Scale (el Paso Raji)

No published risk assessment instrument is designed for the specific purpose of identifying high risk first-time juvenile offenders at their first contact with the juvenile justice system. The El Paso Risk Assessment of Juveniles at Intake (El Paso RAJI) was developed by Valenzuela (2011) for this purpose. The current study had three aims: i) to assess the validity of the RAJI as a predictor of recidivism among first-time juvenile offenders, ii) to compare the predictive power of RAJI items with the predictive power of similar items from another risk assessment instrument, the Pre-Positive Achievement Change Tool (PrePACT), and iii) to explore new items for possible inclusion in the next version of the RAJI. Probation officers at the El Paso Juvenile Probation Department (El Paso JPD) administered the RAJI at intake to 367 first-time juvenile offenders between January 2012 and December 2012. One-year recidivism data for these offenders was collected from JPD files. Analyses showed that the RAJI correlated significantly with Any Referrals (r =.235) and with Non-Technical Referrals (r = .212) in the present sample but not with Serious Referrals. Seven of the twenty RAJI items were cross-validated and found to have a significant correlation with Any Referrals. No PrePACT item was found to be a better predictor of recidivism than its corresponding RAJI item. However, one PrePACT item Attitude - Belief in Physical Aggression correlated significantly with recidivism and added incremental validity to the RAJI

Financial Decision-Making and the Normalization of Deviance

Two perspectives have dominated the discourse on the causes of the financial crisis of 2008. The first attributes the financial crisis to intentionally malevolent behaviors, whereas the second attributes it to the natural market fluctuations. However, there is still a third, possible perspective. While the first two perspectives focus on the intention of the actors, the third perspective focuses on the response of the observers. This is what Vaughan (1996) refers to as normalization of deviance . In normalization of deviance actions or decisions that are initially regarded as aberrant or atypical are re-conceptualized and adopted as the new criterion. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between normalization of deviance, the dark triad and risk-taking behavior. The dependent variable was the amount of money invested. Participants were 171 students from the University of Texas at El Paso between the ages of 18 and 51 years. The data were analyzed using a repeated measures Multi-level Modeling framework. The first hypoThesis stated that normalization of deviance would predict risk-taking such that the participants in the normalization of deviance condition would invest significantly greater amounts of money than those in the no-normalization of deviance condition. This hypoThesis was not supported. The second hypoThesis stated that there would be significant interaction between normalization of deviance and the Dark Triad. This hypoThesis was not supported. Exploratory analysis revealed that prior loans was a significant predictor. Although the hypotheses were not supported, the current study contributed to the existing literature in three ways. Firstly, the study examined the construct of normalization of deviance in the new context of financial decisions. Second we developed a new paradigm to examine the construct. Lastly, a more robust statistical model was used to analyze the data