Reframing the benefits and beneficiaries of public benefits programs

This article uses current research to demonstrate that in addition to the direct benefits received by recipients of four main types of public benefit programs—cash assistance, public health insurance, food assistance, and public housing—non-recipients receive a variety of indirect economic and noneconomic benefits. Non-recipients include individuals, families, organizations, businesses, neighborhoods, and the general public. The review indicates that public benefits programs can indirectly benefit non-recipients economically by increasing economic security; stimulating local, state, and national economies; increasing employment and other measures of economic well-being; generating tax revenues; and providing cost savings. In addition, we determined two main types of indirect noneconomic benefits: enhancing neighborhood quality and the intrinsic rewards gained from fulfilling humanitarian and related values. We then summarize the results of these studies and make suggestions for future research. Finally, based on the reviewed research, we identify methods to reframe negative perceptions of government spending on public benefits programs. By reframing the benefits and beneficiaries of these programs, social workers, professional organizations, lobbyists, politicians, and elected officials can increase societal and political support for public benefits programs.     

In search of a level playing field – the constraints and benefits of sport participation for people with intellectual disability

This paper presents the results of a study seeking to examine the experiences of people with intellectual disability in a sporting context. The research design employed an online, interviewer-completed questionnaire in both a standard and an easy English version designed for administration by a third party for those requiring assistance to respond. Questions sought both quantitative responses about levels of participation and qualitative responses about constraints experienced and benefits received from participation. The results of the study show high levels of participation reported by people who are independent or have lower to moderate support needs, whereas people with high to very high support needs had substantially lower levels of participation. Constraints are examined for both those who participate in sport and those who do not. For those who do participate, the benefits were identified as overwhelmingly social in nature, including belonging, companionship and achievement.     

Community Attachment,Religious Participation,and Quality of Life Satisfaction among Adults Involved in Civic Participation

Civic participation constitutes a range of activities that strengthen participatory democracy, such as voting, volunteerism, association membership, or political and community activism. Factors associated with civic participation are community attachment, religious participation, and quality of life satisfaction. Using a sample of 55 adults, ages 18 to 92 years, the results indicate that this is an engaged sample group in the volunteer arena with high religious attendance, attachment to their communities, and average satisfaction with their quality of life as outcomes of their civic participation.     

Doubly disadvantaged: Unemployment,young age,and electoral participation in the United Kingdom

Previous studies examine how unemployment affects socio-political behaviour, but this literature has scarcely focused on the role of the life-course. Integrating the frameworks of unemployment scarring and political socialisation, we posit that unemployment experiences, or scars, undermine electoral participation, and that this is exacerbated at younger ages. We test these hypotheses relying on the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society datasets (1991–2020), employing panel data analysis approaches as Propensity Score Matching, Individual Fixed Effects, and Individual Fixed Effects with Individual Slopes. Results suggest that unemployment experiences depress electoral participation in the UK, with effect sizes around −5% of a Standard Deviation in turnout. However, this effect varies powerfully by age: the impact of unemployment on electoral participation is stronger at younger ages (−21% SD at age 20), and weaker to not significant after age 35. This is robust across the three main approaches and several robustness checks. Further analyses show that the first unemployment spell matters the most for electoral participation, and that for individuals under 35, there is a scar effect lasting up to 5 years after the first unemployment spell. The life-course emerges as central to better understand the relationship between labour market hardships and socio-political behaviour.     

Public participation and the politics of humiliation

ABSTRACT

The article contends that the most popular form of Public Participation (PP) in SA is public protest, which, as a result of historical continuity, represents a direct response to the humiliations experienced by the poor, unemployed and socially excluded. Despite an enlightened human rights Constitution, if citizens are treated as consumers and left to the vagaries of the market PP mechanisms are likely to fail as they do not address the real social issues at the root of the discontent.     

‘Friends that last a lifetime’: the importance of emotions amongst volunteers working with refugees in Calais

The European ‘refugee crisis’ has generated a broad movement of volunteers offering their time and skills to support refugees across the continent, in the absence of nation states. This article focuses on volunteers who helped in the informal refugee camp in Calais called the ‘Jungle’. It looks at the importance of emotions as a motivating factor for taking on responsibilities that are usually carried out by humanitarian aid organizations. We argue that empathy is not only the initial motivator for action, but it also sustains the voluntary activity as volunteers make sense of their emotions through working in the camp. This type of volunteering has also created new spaces for sociability and community, as volunteers have formed strong emotional and relational bonds with each other and with the refugees. Finally, this article contributes to the growing body of literature that aims at repositioning emotions within the social sciences research to argue that they are an important analytical tool to understand social life and fieldwork.     

Building a legacy of volunteers through servant leadership: A cause‐related sporting event

This study explores the leadership style of the founder of a cause‐related sporting event and investigates the effects of this style on motivating volunteers. The National Kidney Foundation Surf Festival, established more than twenty‐five years ago to benefit people with kidney disease, was selected as an extreme case because of the event's longevity and success. Data were collected through semi‐structured personal interviews, document analysis, and personal observation. Results indicated that the founder is a servant leader. Three key themes of servant leadership, and its influence on volunteer motivation, emerged from the data: generating a shared vision dedicated to helping others, building a caring and loving community, and creating the freedom and resources for followers to become servants themselves. Our findings also indicated that the spiritual and moral tenets of servant leadership are applicable to secular nonprofit organizations.     

Planning from below: using feminist participatory methods to increase women's participation in urban planning

Women have been often invisible in urban planning. Col·lectiu Punt 6, a feminist organisation of women architects and urban planners based in Barcelona, Spain, has developed planning techniques and tools to include women both as objects and subjects of urban planning, and as experts of everyday life. The article focuses on the participatory tools that Col·lectiu Punt 6 has developed that can be used in the different stages of planning, from assessing to evaluating planning policies and interventions, as well as tools of women's empowerment with the goal of promoting bottom-up models of planning. Evidence is shown of how, using these tools, planning becomes more inclusive not only of women in their diversity, but also of children, youth, the elderly, as well as people of different race, ethnicity, income, sexual and gender identities, and capacities. Examples from different contexts are provided, from Spain and Latin America.     

Reflections on the enactment of children's participation rights through research: Between transactional and relational spaces

Young people's participation in the evaluation of services designed for them has become widespread in England following the United Kingdom's ratification of the UNCRC. This makes participation a matter of citizenship as well as of research. The paper reflects on these developments from a critical social psychological perspective. In particular it looks at the experience of working with a transformational model of participation. The author reflects on the possibilities and limitations of such a model and argues that within the English socio-cultural context a number of challenges, conceptualised by the author as transactional practices, make the establishment of enduring relational practices difficult. Epistemological reflexivity and a pragmatic approach towards children's participation rights are advocated by the author as a way of managing the conflicts between different participatory approaches that present themselves in practice.     

The social costs and benefits of gambling: an introduction to the economic issues

This paper surveys the range of economic issues that need to be addressed in attempting to evaluate the social costs and benefits of gambling. It considers, inter alia, the nature of private and social costs and benefits and their policy significance, the important distinction between real and pecuniary costs, the incidence of gambling costs and benefits and the sources of gambling costs and benefits. Similarities and differences between the analysis of gambling and alcohol are considered. The paper concludes with a consideration of why various estimates of the social costs of gambling have produced such divergent results.     

Measuring Marital Satisfaction: A Comparison of the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale and the Satisfaction with Married Life Scale

Marital satisfaction has been psychometrically measured using many different instruments not soundly based on theory. The Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS), consisting of 14 items, is commonly accepted by researchers and practitioners to measure marital satisfaction but was not specifically designed to measure marital satisfaction. The Satisfaction with Married Life Scale (SWML), consisting of five items, is a short scale specifically targeted toward measuring marital satisfaction. An online sample collected from 1,187 couples throughout the United States was used to compare these instruments' correlation (r = .782), factor structures, reliability (SWML, α = .958; RDAS, α = .943), theoretical foundation, and validity. These instruments are on parity with each other when measuring marital satisfaction; however, each instrument yields implications for practitioners and researchers desiring to measure marital satisfaction.     

Benefits and barriers to sports participation for athletes with disabilities: the case of Malaysia

The purpose of this paper was to explore the benefits and barriers influencing participation for athletes with disabilities from a developing country (Malaysia). Two independent studies were undertaken: Study 1 included a sample of 123 athletes (95 males, 28 females) who participated in the 2006 Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled (FESPIC Games); Study 2 involved focus group discussions with 14 elite athletes. The athletes ranged in age from 15 to 59?years. Data were collected through a questionnaire (Study 1) and focus group discussions (Study 2). The primary reasons for participation in sport were achievement/challenge (58%) and competency/skill development (41%). The main barriers faced by the athletes were structural (facilities, equipment, funding) and the negative attitude from the government, public and media. However, despite these difficulties the majority of athletes were keen to continue to compete. Further work is required to ensure athletes with disabilities are provided with similar opportunities to athletes without disabilities.     

Becoming independent: political participation and youth transitions in the Scottish referendum

Sociological debates on youth engagement with electoral politics play out against a backdrop of supposed ‘decline’ in civic participation (e.g. Putnam 2000 , Norris, 2011 ), in turn contextualized by theories of individualization in ‘late’ or ‘reflexive’ modernity (Beck, Giddens). However, the enfranchisement of 16 and 17 year olds in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum catalysed remarkably high levels of voter turnout among this youngest group, and was accompanied by apparently ongoing political engagement. We explored this engagement among a strategic sample of young ‘Yes’ voters, in the immediate aftermath of this exceptional political event. Analysis of qualitative interview data generated an unanticipated finding; that interviewees narrated their political engagement biographically, articulated their referendum participation reflexively, and located their new political ideas, allegiances and actions in the context of their own transitions to ‘independent’ adulthood. This inspired us to rethink young people's political engagement in relation to youth transitions. Doing so enables a synthesis of divergent strands in the sociology of youth, and offers new insights into the combinations of ‘personal’ agentic and ‘political’ structural factors involved in young people's politicization.     

Determinants of female labor force participation: a focus on Muslim countries1

This article analyses the cross-national determinants of female labor force participation and different industry sectors with a focus on Muslim countries. The study explores neo-patriarchal perspectives and its measures show a significant impact on the different sectors as well as on the share of the total labor force. The Muslim percentage of the population (% Islamic) has its largest impact on the most modern sectors (industry and service). In contrast, % Islamic has no effect on female share of agriculture. Fertility shows no impact on female share of the labor force (FSHLF), but the separate sector models suggest that higher fertility significantly reduces female employment in the modern sectors. The study also examines the effect of economic development across different sectors. Unlike the FSHLF, which shows a curvilinear effect on energy consumption per capita, the sector models show linear effects on the development measure. Therefore the curvilinearity effect is the result of one linear negative impact on female share of agriculture and one linear positive impact on female share of service.     

Weibo use and political participation: the mechanism explaining the positive effect of Weibo use on online political participation among college students in contemporary China

This study examines the various aspects of Weibo use, including the number of people users follow; the number of fans they have; the frequency with which they read friends’, celebrities’, and opinion leaders’ Weibo; and the number of Weibo group memberships on youth online political participation in contemporary China. The study also investigates the underlying mechanisms explaining the positive effects of Weibo use on youth online political participation using survey methods. Chinese users mainly use Weibo to satisfy their needs for information and connectedness. As an alternative source of information, Weibo indeed functions as an ‘online school of political participation’ to foster political interest, a sense of belonging to an online community, and civic virtue among Weibo users. As a new platform for Chinese to form online civic groups, memberships in Weibo groups significantly increases users’ likelihood of being politically mobilized, which is essential for online collective participation. Our study shows that Verba, Schlozman, and Brady’s [(1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press] civic voluntarism model can be extended to the online environment in an authoritarian system.     

Political participation and web 2.0 in Europe: A case study of Facebook

The goal of this paper is to obtain the model for political participation on social network sites in Europe with a focus on European politics. We want to find out if and how European citizens are interested in using Facebook in political communication on the European level and if that can lead to more participation and more inclusion of citizens in the political processes on the EU level. We are interested in discovering more about the interconnection of political participation in the ‘offline’ world and the use of web 2.0 for political communication purposes.     

Strengthening family cohesion through shared participation of family members in religious activities in Croatia

This article presents research results pertaining to an examination of the relation between family members’ participation in shared religious activities, perception of family cohesion, satisfaction with family life, and the level of conflict in the family. The survey of 503 parents of preschool children was conducted in Zagreb, Croatia. The findings demonstrate a significant correlation between shared participation of family members in religious activities, perception of family cohesion and satisfaction with family life, but not with perception of the level of conflict in the family. The results suggest that spiritual and religious matters are an important element necessary for understanding family functioning, and that cultivating shared religious practices in the family can contribute to the strengthening of family cohesion and greater satisfaction with family life.     

Image restoration: An examination of the response strategies used by Brown and Williamson after allegations of wrongdoing

Organizations often respond to allegations of wrongdoing made by whistle-blowers. Response mechanisms may take several forms, from simply denying the wrongdoing, to offering an apology. This study sought to examine the various response strategies an organization employed after a whistle-blowing incident. Using the whistle-blowing case of Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, this study sought to examine the different image restoration strategies the organization (Brown and Williamson) used in responding to the allegations of wrongdoing made by the whistle-blower, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand.     

Integral citizen observatory of Los Cabos: popular participation conscious and competent

ABSTRACT

According to the United Nations data more than half of humanity lives today in the cities, but it is expected that in 2050 it could be almost 80% of the global population. That means a transformative role of cities at all levels in the coming decades. Participation and democracy in the twenty-first century must be promoted and practiced from the cities. A popular participation based on the observation, and also in an active participation within the management of the government can promote good governance where citizens can be empowered to achieve a higher level of democracy in our cities but also in our society. Currently therés an international standard on quality management in local government; ISO 18091:2014, it contains 39 indicators on public policies that local governments cannot stop attending. I would like to present in this article the success case of the Integral Citizen Observatory of Los Cabos (OCI Los Cabos) based on this international standard, as a model of smart citizens aware and competent. It has been such a good job that the incoming Mayor has included it in the actual Municipal Development Plan for Los Cabos 2015–2018, the diagnostic report data and the proposals of the Integral Citizen Observatory.     

Beyond recruitment: Predictors of differential participation in a national antihunger organization

Surprisingly little research has sought to explain differential participation after recruitment into social movement organizations (SMOs). This study examines the influence of several sets of predictors on participation by members of a national organization in the antihunger movement. The findings highlight the importance of incentive, ideological, and microstructural factors for differential participation and suggest that favorable perceptions of SMOs also promote participation. Final remarks address the implications of the findings for the social movement and voluntary organization literatures.