Supporting the caregiver-child dyad’s relationship: An evaluation of implementation quality in the Chilean Crecer Jugando program

This study presents an evaluation of the implementation quality of the Chilean program Crecer Jugando (CJ), a 16 weekly sessions group-based parenting program for children 0 to 4 years old and their primary caregivers aiming at promoting positive caregiver-child interaction. The implementation of CJ in two public health care centers (HCC) in Chile’s Metropolitan Region was assessed based on Donabedian’s theoretical model, focusing on the dimensions of the program’s structure (e.g., infrastructure and supplies), processes (e.g., coordination of CJ team with the HCCs, participants’ attendance, CJ team interaction with participating children), and preliminary outcomes (i.e., parenting stress, caregiver-child interaction). A total of 63 main caregiver-child dyads participated in the study, which took place over a six-month period. Results indicated that the CJ program was feasible to be implemented in two HCCs and would benefit from improving the coordination with the HCCs and the quality of interaction of the CJ team with participating children. After participation in the CJ program, caregivers showed a decrease in their parenting stress. Lessons learned are discussed.     

Time to look in/at anger: considerations on the position and policing of young people’s anger

Mental and emotional well-being is steadily overtaking physical difficulty as the biggest health challenge facing young people. As a result, young people’s emotional well-being and needs are a significant concern within contemporary youth studies. However, the intricacies of ‘managing emotion’ have been somewhat neglected in the context of youth studies. In particular, the role of discourses of emotional well-being to produce ‘feeling rules’ [Boler, M. 1999. Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. Florence, KY: Routledge], to discipline, and to restrict expressions of emotion has been unconsidered. This article explores this problematic further with the intention of provoking a larger concentration on relationship between the policing of emotion and youth well-being discourses. Specifically, it focuses on anger as one of the emotions that young people are encouraged to move away from. It outlines how young people’s right to be angry is policed through the construction of angry subjectivities as characterised by incompleteness. It focuses on two – the unresolved subject and the unreasoned subject. Young people, who are already constructed as incomplete, are particularly vulnerable to this policing. Drawing on a range of theoretical interjections on the disciplining of ‘adult’ anger, the article explores the political importance of anger, how it is limited for young people, and the complexities of engaging with anger in the context of youth studies. Given the limited attention anger has attracted in youth studies literature, the article is intentionally provocative. However, as the article notes, this is a complex debate with many challenges and a much more detailed investigation is necessary.     

Synmemory: civil war victimhood and the balance of tales in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Habila’s Measuring Time

This paper proposes the concept of synmemory as a response to the implication of what Edward Said describes as “theoretical closure” for mainstream memory studies that privilege victimhood exclusively from the perspective of the vanquished. Synmemory is defined here as the synthesisation of antagonistic memories to form a traumatic whole. The paper argues that because victory, especially in war and other violent conflicts, is not absolute, synmemory invites us to consider in comparative terms the fusion of victimhood from both ends of a hostile divide in order to affirm the inherence of victimhood in instances of victory. The paper reads Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and Habila’s Measuring Time (2007) as a set of twin narratives against the recollection of victimhood in the Nigerian Civil War. It contends that, rather than seeing such comparison as insurrectionary about the reception of Igbo and Biafra suffering in the war, the approach facilitates an understanding of Habila’s tragic vision about the parallel suffering and loss in Northern Nigeria. The paper also shows how constant violent irruptions in Northern Nigeria continue to underscore the region’s continual victimhood in the wake of the war and illustrate how aggressor victimhood can linger longer than is ordinarily envisaged.     

‘The sinking cenotaph’: Jack Mapanje’s and Steve Chimombo’s contestation of monumentalised nationalist public memories of Malawi’s President Banda

This article discusses Jack Mapanje’s and Steve Chimombo’s contestations of the constitution and monumentalisation of nationalist public memories of former and first president of Malawi, Dr H.K. Banda. After more than a decade since the end of his rule as life president in 1994 and his demise in 1997, the Malawi government has constituted and monumentalised memories of Banda in Malawi through a monumental mausoleum on his grave and a statue in the capital city, Lilongwe. While others have hailed these monuments as fitting tributes for the ‘founding father’ and ‘nationalist hero’ of the nation, Mapanje and Chimombo contest such public monumentalisation of Banda’s reign in Malawi in their poetry, suggesting that Banda was a dictator undeserving of such posthumous memorialisation. They also suggest that the narratives constituted in the monuments do not represent the interests of the victims of his dictatorship. This article argues that such contestations challenge the constitution of nationalist memories of postcolonial African nations through leaders who instituted totalitarian rule.     

Conceptualizing the Space of a Journal’s Pages: Dostoevsky as Editor of Time

This research focuses on the interpretative dimension of European Union (EU) integration and on its role in post-communist democratization. It offers an understanding of the significance of taking part in political life. This significance takes shape under specific circumstances, which are part of the asymmetrical power relations with the EU. My findings are based on field trips in two post-communist countries that are situated at different stages of the EU integration process: Bulgaria, which became an EU member in 2007, and Macedonia, which is a candidate country. Methodologically, I use qualitative methods that triangulate findings into converging cultural trajectories. I conclude that EU integration, as a phenomenon within the world of meaning, acts simultaneously as a boost to and an inhibitor of democratic political culture. People create different subcultures where different interpretations of the EU integration process lead to dissimilar effects. Discursive communities of people representing these different subcultures may also produce dissimilar effects on the national level.     

Side-by-side: An evaluation of Connecticut’s police and youth interaction model

This study evaluated a community-based intervention program designed to promote positive youth development and to create positive interactions between police and youth in a non-enforcement environment. A pre–post-design was used to compare the results of the program for participating youth and police officers, particularly changes in each group’s attitudes toward the other. The results showed that participation in the program improved police officers’ and youths’ attitudes toward each other. For youth, the rate of change in attitudes was greatest for minority youth and for youth who had prior negative experience with the police. That is, youth who had negative prior experiences with police and began with negative attitudes toward police developed more positive attitudes toward police as a result of participating in the program. Furthermore, having opportunities for positive interactions between police and youth played an important role in decreasing negative perceptions of police for ethnic minority youth. This study suggests that community-based programs that involve police with youth can improve participants’ attitude toward each other, which might impact future interactions.     

Monitoring and evaluation under the PRSP: solid rock or quicksand?

Over the last few years a shift has taken place in the aid instruments advocated for low-income countries, characterised by a conversion from project to more programme-oriented aid and by the inclusion of 'broad-based civil society participation' as an aid conditionality. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) constitute a new framework for policy negotiations with the recipient government as well as a new set of rules for aid implementation. So far scant attention has been paid to strengthening monitoring and evaluation. This paper contributes to this under-exploited field of research by stocktaking and assessing different aspects of M&E systems for a selected number of Sub-Saharan African countries. Findings of our desk study confirm that M&E is among the weaker parts of the new aid architecture. The PRSP approach seeks improvements in M&E, but its unrealistic ambitions put embryonic national M&E systems under undue stress.     

Process evaluation of the ‘Singapore Physical Activity and Nutrition Study’

IntroductionThe Singapore Physical Activity and Nutrition Study (SPANS) aimed to improve the physical activity (PA) and nutrition behaviours of Singaporean women aged 50 years and over. The SPANS program consisted of PA classes, nutrition workshops, telephone dietary counselling, health booklets, a health calendar and program ambassadors. This study aimed to assess and understand the implementation of the program strategies and gain insight into process evaluation components to inform future programs.MethodsThe evaluation was guided by a process evaluation framework and collected data via questionnaires (n = 209), program ambassador documentation and exit interviews with program completers (n = 13) and non-completers (n = 12).ResultsIn total, 295 participants completed the program (response rate = 84 %). Participants reported high levels of satisfaction with the overall program (99.5 %) and program activities (96.7 %), and also rated program ambassadors highly. Participation rates were highest for telephone dietary counselling sessions. The main reason for not attending program activities was having a ‘busy schedule’ (n = 158). Participants cited a need for improved recreational centre facilities and increased flexibility around program delivery.ConclusionsThe process evaluation showed that the program strategies were implemented as planned and were deemed suitable for supporting behaviour change among Singaporean women aged 50 years and over. The program reached and involved the majority of participants throughout the six months. The combination of practical educational resources and supportive program ambassadors were key strategies that facilitated positive PA and dietary behaviours. However, there needs to be some flexibility in the delivery of programs. The findings of this research may inform other programs in the region.     

How China’s flagship news program frames “the West”: Foreign news coverage of CCTV’s Xinwen Lianbo before and during Xi Jinping’s presidency

This study investigates how Xinwen Lianbo, a prestigious TV news program and a key propaganda tool of the Chinese Communist Party, framed a bloc of Western countries in its foreign news coverage in the period 2010-2015. The results of the content analysis performed in this study revealed that mixed and diverse images of the West were portrayed by the program. Interestingly, significantly more negative frames of these countries were identified after Xi Jinping took office in late 2012, which signaled a pivotal event in terms of China’s foreign policy. However, Xi’s speech to Chinese media workers on 19 August 2013 did not have additional effects on the program’s framing of the West.     

An evaluation of analysis options for the one-group-per-condition design. Can any of the alternatives overcome the problems inherent in this design?

This article addresses the analytic problems associated with a design in which one identifiable group is allocated to each treatment condition and members of those groups are measured to assess the intervention. Such designs are often called quasi-experiments if the groups are not randomized to conditions and group-randomized trials if the groups are randomized. They present special problems, and previous reports have argued against their use in efficacy or effectiveness trials. Even so, this design still appears with surprising frequency. This article presents the results from a new simulation study that underscores the analytic problems associated with this design.     

Psychometric evaluation of the Italian translation of the Gamblers’ Beliefs Questionnaire

Italy has experienced a rapid growth in gambling accessibility, expenditures and problems. Gambling-related cognitive distortions are established risk factors for disordered gambling, although little is known about the role of gambling-related cognitive distortions among Italians. To establish a valid tool for assessing these distortions, an Italian version of the Gamblers’ Beliefs Questionnaire (GBQ-I) was translated and psychometrically evaluated in a sample of 749. Eighty-five percent had gambled recently and 110 were identified as probable disordered gamblers. Good reliability, internal consistency and test-retest reliability were demonstrated. Concurrent, convergent and predictive validities also suggested that the GBQ-I is a valid and reliable measure for assessing gambling-related cognitive distortions among clinical and non-clinical Italian samples. Factor analysis explored the two-factor structure from the measures’ initial validation but was unable to replicate it. The validation of this translation of the GBQ allows for future cross-cultural research on the role of cognitive distortions in the study and treatment of gambling problems.     

Ignorance at Risk: Interaction at the Epistemic Boundary of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme

Most long-lived organizational deceptions require the cooperation of outsiders who are close enough to the deception to suspect it, yet deliberately limit their knowledge so as to maintain plausible deniability. The interaction of such “proximate outsiders” with insiders—those who are fully “in the know”—can be a delicate affair, yet its careful management is essential to the survival of the deception. I analyze a phone conversation between Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff and executives at Fairfield Greenwich, the investment firm that funneled him the most money, in which they discussed an impending SEC examination. First I examine Madoff’s attempts to cajole the executives into affirming (to Madoff and eventually to the SEC) that their hands-off approach to his operation was unremarkable. Next I consider two instances in which Madoff floundered in his explanations, repeatedly aborting and restarting sentences as he attempted to explain the inexplicable and reconcile the irreconcilable. Finally, I analyze Madoff’s handling of two of the executives’ more intrusive questions, and the part that each side played in the resulting non-answer. The three parts of the analysis illustrate what I argue are recurring and generalizable challenges of interaction at the epistemic boundary, associated with coaching, reconciling, and answering.     

Skuka and the Absurd in Gogol'’s Tale of the ‘Two Ivans’

The present article is devoted to an analysis of Gogol'’s last story from his Ukrainian cycle, “The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich”; it makes use of canonical as well as innovative approaches to Gogol'’s tale in order to explore the significance of the epilogue to an interpretation of the story as a whole. The examination will encompass ideas on the temporal aspects of the narration, the philosophical concept of ennui/skuka, and the possible significance of the camera obscura as the setting for one of the key moments in the story. Whereas the camera obscura is the setting of the quarrel between the two main characters, the story ends with a manifestation of skuka from the narrator: how do these two elements relate to each other, and what do they suggest in terms of the possibility of reaching an all-encompassing interpretation of the ‘Two Ivans’?     

McDonald’s at the Gym? A Tale of Two Curves®

In this paper I present findings from an ethnographic study of interaction patterns among members and workers in two Curves® franchises in different locations. Curves® International markets rationalized fitness programs for women. Using a mixed methodology of participant observation, staff interviews, and comparison of facilities’ official data, I analyze these patterns in relation to the rules of the Curves® system and the possible factors that contribute to the observable differences across the two facilities. I argue that despite the corporate mandate for rapid and rationalized (McDonaldized) fitness, local Curves® organizational cultures and client preferences may constitute internal resistance to the McDonaldization process.     

Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba’s Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage

Qualitative Sociology - This article examines a recent controversy over the Catholic Church’s registration of Cordoba’s iconic Mosque-Cathedral as official Church property in 2006. In...     

Parents’ Health and Adult Children’s Subsequent Working Status: A Perspective of Intergenerational Transfer and Time Allocation

This paper frames how parents’ health problems may affect a child’s subsequent working status. Parental health problems occurring in their prime working years undermine an adult child’s resources and tend to affect the child’s preferences over time-allocations among leisure, market- and non-market-labor. Empirical applications in this paper focus on a situation with pervasive health problems, lack of social safety network, and a substantial gender gap in labor market return. Exploiting Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) for the period 1994–2004, empirical results indicate that a father’s poor health status is a significant predictor of lowering a daughter’s educational attainment and working probability during her subsequent, adulthood years.