Publications by authors named "Rafael P M Wittek"

Unlabelled: Learning the host society's language and finding a job are important steps for the societal integration of refugees. Especially language proficiency is a key barrier for the integration of low literates. Often language training and gaining work skills are separated during the integration procedure.

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Reputation has been shown to provide an informal solution to the problem of cooperation in human societies. After reviewing models that connect reputations and cooperation, we address how reputation results from information exchange embedded in a social network that changes endogenously itself. Theoretical studies highlight that network topologies have different effects on the extent of cooperation, since they can foster or hinder the flow of reputational information.

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Most of the current literature on gossip describes gossipmongers as incessantly sharing evaluative and valuable information about an absent third party in teams, groups, communities, and organizations. However, potential gossipers can similarly decide not to share what they know, depending on the content, the context, or their relationship with the other actors in the gossip triad. We argue that understanding the reasons why people do gossip may provide useful insights into individual motives, group dynamics, and collective behaviors.

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Objectives: Integration into social networks reduces stress during adverse life events and improves coping with disability in late life. The aim was to investigate whether social network closure (frequent contact among ties) and balance (positive contact among ties) are associated with perceived stress. We expect lowest stress for older adults with highly closed and balanced networks.

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In this exploratory study, we present findings from semi-structured interviews with 11 self-identified lesbian and gay (LG) humanitarian aid workers of Doctors without Borders (MSF). We investigate their perceptions of workplace inclusion in terms of perceived satisfaction of their needs for authenticity and belonging within two organizational settings, namely office and field. Through our combined deductive and inductive approach, based on grounded theory, we find that perceptions of their colleagues' and supervisors' attitudes and behaviors, as well as organizational inclusiveness practices play a role in LGs' perceived authenticity, but not belonging, in the workplace.

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An increasing number of people combine paid work with the provision of informal care for a loved one. This combination of work and care may cause difficulties, necessitating adaptations at work, i.e.

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Background: Previous studies are inconclusive on whether poor socioeconomic conditions in the neighborhood are associated with major depressive disorder. Furthermore, conceptual models that relate neighborhood conditions to depressive disorder have not been evaluated using empirical data. In this study, we investigated whether neighborhood income is associated with major depressive episodes.

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Background: Informal caregiving is becoming more relevant with current trends such as population ageing. However, little is known about nonconsent and nonresponse bias in caregiving research. We investigated nonconsent and nonresponse bias in a sample of informal caregivers who participated in the LifeLines Cohort Study, and were invited for participation in an additional caregiving study.

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To study life course trajectories and ageing, scientific expertise is needed beyond epidemiology. More specifically, appropriate models of life course require a theoretical micro-foundation, need to incorporate multi-level context conditions and the interplay between them. It also requires the application of additional social scientific research methods that go beyond the application of statistical methods based on the multi-stage life table.

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