Meningococcal serogroup B outbreak response University of Wisconsin-Madison

A meningococcal serogroup B (MenB) outbreak at a large public university prompted an emergency response to immunize undergraduates. Objective: To report on a successful meningococcal serogroup B (MenB) vaccine clinic response at a large public university. Methods: We assembled the team leaders to write this case report. Results: Activation of the emergency plan and points of dispensing required cooperation of many units on campus under the leadership of university health officials with support from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state division of public health and the city-county health department. Significant efforts to provide consistent messages to students and parents regarding the outbreak and the availability of the MenB vaccines were made. Volunteers were recruited to staff the clinics alongside university healthcare providers. Over 22,000 doses of vaccine were administered. Conclusion: We report our experience and lessons learned which may be helpful to universities in preventing and responding to disease outbreaks.     

Mothers' interoceptive knowledge predicts children's emotion regulation and social skills in middle childhood

Interoception, often defined as the perception of internal physiological changes, is implicated in many adult social affective processes, but its effects remain understudied in the context of parental socialization of children's emotions. We hypothesized that what parents know about the interoceptive concomitants of emotions, or interoceptive knowledge (e.g., “my heart races when excited”), may be especially relevant in emotion socialization and in supporting children's working models of emotions and the social world. We developed a measure of mothers' interoceptive knowledge about their own emotions and examined its relation to children's social affective outcomes relative to other socialization factors, including self‐reported parental behaviors, emotion beliefs, and knowledge of emotion‐relevant situations and non‐verbal expressions. To assess these, mothers (N = 201) completed structured interviews and questionnaires. A few months later, third‐grade teachers rated children's social skills and emotion regulation observed in the classroom. Results indicated that mothers' interoceptive knowledge about their own emotions was associated with children's social affective skills (emotion regulation, social initiative, cooperation, self‐control), even after controlling for child gender and ethnicity, family income, maternal stress, and the above maternal socialization factors. Overall, findings suggest that mothers' interoceptive knowledge may provide an additional, unique pathway by which children acquire social affective competence.     

Measuring stakeholder identification with nonprofit causes: the development and validation of the identification with social causes scale

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) achieve desired outcomes by fostering organizational identification. However, little research has explored how identification with the cause or the recipients of support relates to identification with the NPO. This study developed the Identification with Social Causes Scale as a mechanism for distinguishing organizational identification from identification with a social group or cause. Data were collected using two groups: the homeless (n = 318) and HIV positive (n = 314) individuals. Exploratory factor analysis and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis yielded a 9-item scale measuring two dimensions: attachment and consubstantiality. Initial construct validity of the scale was established.     

Leadership and emotion management for complex tasks: Different emotions,different strategies

Emotions in the workplace influence a number of critical cognitive tasks including information processing and decision-making. Moreover, the effect of emotion on these operations is often emotion-specific. Given these unique effects, leaders may need to learn how to manage subordinates' discrete emotions, and not just general affect. This laboratory experiment examined the effects of leaders suggesting different regulation strategies after subordinates experienced anger or pessimism. Effects of these emotions under different leader-facilitated regulation strategies were evaluated with respect to planning, a critical organizational task, and perceptions of leader effectiveness. Results demonstrated that the type of leader-facilitated regulation strategy moderates the relationships of anger and pessimism to planning. The findings imply that leaders should understand the differential effects of discrete emotions, and be prepared to help subordinates manage emotions accordingly.     

Marriage Promotion Policy and Family Inequality

In 1996, Congress overhauled welfare policy to promote marriage and work as ways to lift American families out of poverty. Almost all of the funding for governmental marriage promotion has been devoted to relationship skills programs intended to help couples strengthen their relationships, encourage them to marry, and thereby prevent poverty. Marriage promotion policy has sparked intense debate, especially over the connection between marriage and family inequality. While advocates of the policy argue the government should promote marriage because it fosters social and economic well‐being, critics challenge the assumption that marriage itself causes these benefits or will help lift poor families out of poverty. Recent sociological research on why poor and low‐income couples marry less finds that they tend not to marry if they cannot meet a specific economic threshold. This suggests that rather than promoting the view that relationship skills en route to marriage can help prevent poverty, marriage promotion policy could likely better serve disadvantaged families by acknowledging and addressing the socioeconomic roots of family inequality.     

School Counselors Supporting African Immigrant Students' Career Development: A Case Study

School counselors play a critical role in preparing adolescent immigrant students to be college and career ready by attending to the complex variables that promote and inhibit career development. This article provides an illustrative case study of a Somali immigrant student's educational journey to highlight the academic and familial challenges that she encountered while attending U.S. schools. Through this case study, the authors discuss the issues immigrant high school students experience and present culturally responsive practices that school counselors can use to address career development. These culturally responsive practices include developing a strong knowledge of students’ backgrounds and cultures, designing small group interventions that are timely and sensitive to immigrant students’ needs, and strengthening school–family partnerships.     

Religion in the Lives of Older Women Serving Life in Prison

This exploratory qualitative study examined the roles of religiousness in the lives of 21 older women (mean age = 63) serving life sentences in one southern state. Based on survey and focus group methodology, several themes emerged as important focal points, including early religious experiences prior to incarceration, imprisonment and religious doubt, participation in formal and informal religious activities, and use of religion in coping with stressors such as interpersonal relationships, trauma, and health statuses. Irrespective of their religious upbringing, all participants agreed that religiosity/spirituality played a key role in their ability to cope with their prison experience as well as for maintaining hope and the opportunity for release.     

Maternal Experiences of Parenting Girls who are Perceived as Overweight or at Risk for Becoming So: Narratives of Uncertainty,Ambivalence and Struggle

This work explored U.S. mothers’ experiences of parenting young adolescent girls who are perceived by their mothers as overweight or at risk for becoming so. Data were collected via in‐depth interviews with 13 mothers and were analysed using a constructivist grounded theory approach. Many mothers experienced socializing their daughters about issues of the body, weight, diet, and health as marked by uncertainty, ambivalence and struggle, particularly relative to four subthemes: mothers’ embodiment as challenge to ‘good mothering’, negotiating a dilemma of the ‘healthy mind’ versus the ‘healthy body’, managing discipline: how much to intervene?, and the challenge of interpersonal dynamics.     

Assessing Value Differences Between Leaders of Two Social Venture Types: Benefit Corporations and Nonprofit Organizations

This study considers key value differences between leaders of two types of social ventures: for-profit social benefit corporations and nonprofit organizations. The research question asks to what degree the value sets of leaders of benefit corporations are congruent with those of similarly situated individuals in nonprofit organizations. The results show the values of leaders working in benefit corporations and nonprofit organizations are in many ways aligned, but there are notable statistical differences. A sectoral association of values is also present with employees in both types of organization, especially when the previous work experience of employees is considered.     

Managing the National Status Group: Immigration Policy in Germany

This article challenges the established convention in immigration policy scholarship of treating economic utility and identity maintenance as logically distinct concerns. Drawing on work by Weber, Wallerstein and Bourdieu, we argue that concerns about economic utility and identity maintenance interact in the immigration policies of Western liberal democratic states, leading to policies designed to build and maintain middle‐class national status groups. Using the example of contemporary immigration policy in Germany, we illustrate how this impulse to build the middle‐class status group affects immigrant inclusion/exclusion in nuanced ways at both the group and individual levels, along class/status, ethnic and gender lines. We conclude by considering the policy implications of growing and shaping populations according to middle‐class ideals, particularly for the statistical monitoring of immigrant populations for integration benchmarking purposes.