Just the “Typical College Diet”: How College Students Use Life Stages to Account for Unhealthy Eating

I performed a qualitative content analysis of 136 college students' food diary reflection papers to examine the accounts used when explaining dietary failures. In addition to common justifications (denials of injury, appeals to higher loyalties, and condemning the condemners) and excuses (denials of responsibility and postponement), diarists referred to their status as a college student and the “typical college student lifestyle” as the major reason for eating an unhealthy diet. Exploring how students use life stages to neutralize stigma adds a new temporal and context‐focused dimension to studies of accounts and provides direction for potential health interventions.     

Evaluating FOCUS‐2's Effectiveness in Enhancing First‐Year College Students’ Social Cognitive Career Development

This study examined the effectiveness of the computer‐assisted career guidance system, FOCUS‐2, on 1st‐year college students’ social cognitive career development. Specifically, the authors assessed career decision self‐efficacy (CDSE) and assessment of attributions for career decision making (AACDM) using repeated measures analyses of variance with a sample of 1st‐year college students (N= 420). Effectiveness was measured as a change in participants’ CDSE and AACDM scores from pretest to posttest. Results demonstrated that participants’ interaction with FOCUS‐2 was associated with increases in participants’ CDSE and alteration to a less optimistic style for AACDM. Gender, race, academic major status, and the amount of time using FOCUS‐2 were also considered. Implications for practice are explored.     

School Context and Individual Acculturation: How School Composition Affects Latino Students’ Acculturation*

Understanding how schools—a key context for children—shape students' cultural trajectories is important since these trajectories are tied to youth development and achievement. This study assessed how the size of the school's group of acculturated Latino and non‐Latino students influenced the acculturation of 1,720 Latino 5th‐grade students from urban public schools in the Southwest United States. A longitudinal secondary data analysis revealed that controlling for wave 1 acculturation, youths in schools with larger proportions of linguistically acculturated students were more acculturated at wave 2 than youths in schools with smaller proportions of such students. This effect was independent of Latino students' baseline acculturation level and was found even in schools with minority proportions of more acculturated students.     

Not Just about Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Call for Military-Centric Social Work

Most warriors do not get PTSD but can still be affected by war. The “military gestalt,” defined as the complex myriad of “all things military” including the functions, processes, and human elements related to combat, is seriously impacted by the warrior-in-combat construct that is reflective of the person-in-environment construct. Thus, it suggests that problems within the gestalt can be understood and addressed from a military-centric social work perspective and approach. The situation is so insidious that it requires a call to action from all disciplines but, most important, for the social work profession to take the lead.     

Cigarette Use Among Young Adults: Comparisons Between 2-Year College Students, 4-Year College Students,and Those Not in College

Abstract

Objective: To examine cigarette smoking among young adults based on education status. Participants: Community-based sample of 2,694 young adults in the United States Methods: The authors compared 3 groups—those not in college with no college degree, 2-year college students/graduates, 4-year college students/graduates—on various smoking measures: ever smoked, smoked in past month, smoked in past week, consider self a smoker, began smoking before age 15, smoked over 100 cigarettes in lifetime, ever tried to quit, and plan to quit in next year. Results: The authors found that for nearly all the smoking measures, the 4-year college group was at lowest risk, the noncollege group was at highest risk, and the 2-year college group represented a midpoint. Differences between groups remain after adjusting for parents’ education and other potential confounding factors. Conclusions: Smoking behaviors clearly differ between the 2-year, 4-year, and no college groups. Interventions should be tailored for each group.     

‘I'm Not Just a Housewife’: Gendered Roles and Identities in the Home‐Based Hospitality Enterprise

This article explores an under‐researched form of commercial hospitality provision by analysing the gender dynamics in the distinctive occupational setting of the home. The primary contribution is to extend understanding of traditionally female occupations by adding to accounts in the literature on gendered identities and occupational roles in small and micro enterprises. It is based on in‐depth interview findings from 33 home‐based commercial hospitality proprietors in Scotland. These enterprises perform the twin functions of private home and providing revenue‐generating, short‐term accommodation. The findings reveal three broad categories of proprietor; the female sole proprietor, proprietor couples and the male sole proprietor, all of whom reinforce traditional gender‐based roles and stereotypes. As an extension of domestic labour, commercial ‘home hosting’ is inherently gendered. It is argued that this is very pronounced in home‐based commercial hospitality where home and business spheres overlap.     

Contests for Professional Status: Community College Faculty in Sociology

Community colleges are playing an increasingly important and visible role in higher education in the United States. However, the additional attention to community colleges has not produced the same degree of recognition regarding the importance and needs of the faculty within those institutions, who make up about 27 percent of all faculty members nation-wide. This article examines factors influencing the professional status of community college faculty. We argue that understanding the position of community college faculty in higher education today depends upon understanding that professional status is a dynamic and contested terrain, rather than a series of static characteristics. Following Abbott’s (1998) analysis of the efforts of librarians to achieve professional status, we consider how the changing structure of higher education in the United States may impact community college faculty as professionals, both positively and negatively. As one example of community college faculty raising their issues within a discipline-wide professional organization, we examine the current state of community college faculty with the American Sociological Association (ASA). We consider potential status changes for community college faculty in sociology within the context of the broad threats to the professional status of faculty across the higher education landscape. Paradoxically, these threats might result in an opening for efforts by community college faculty to improve their professional status, perhaps in coalition with faculty in other sectors of higher education.     

Ask Not What Your Mentor Can Do for You…: The Role of Reciprocal Exchange in Maintaining Student–Teacher Mentorships

Mentoring relationships between adolescents and adults are an important source of social capital that facilitates young people's academic and social development. Studies show that close relationships with teachers especially benefit socioeconomically disadvantaged adolescents, yet little is known about teacher‐mentors’ perspectives on mentorship. This study draws on in‐depth interviews with teachers in low‐income high schools and ethnographic observations to examine the dynamics that sustain student–teacher mentoring relationships. I engage social exchange frameworks to show that reciprocal exchanges that generated intangible rewards for teachers, such as gratitude and purpose, helped maintain mentorships. I find that teachers’ motivations to invest in students were contingent on the strength of the relationship. Teachers withdrew assistance when they perceived that relationships became nonreciprocal. The context in which teachers interacted with mentees and the form of support they had given also influenced their evaluations of reciprocity. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature on relationships that challenge strict divisions between the function of strong and weak ties. Further, these findings contribute to social capital literature by showing that once accessed, social capital does not lie latent as network ties maintain the same willingness to help. In actuality, resourceful ties must be maintained.     

Commentary: The media in 2045—Not a forecast, but a dream

The mass media continue to be among the most crucial instruments for the practitioner of public relations, and, to be sure, among the most frustrating. How are the media changing? How will those changes affect public relations? And should there be new public policies about mass media in a twenty-first century where technical, political, social, and economic realities will be radically different from previous centuries, including the twentieth?Although most public relations professionals have shied away from public criticism of the media, and have not been vocal advocates for changing public policies about media, nevertheless they need answers to the questions raised above. In this thoughtful essay, Claude-Jean Bertrand looks at a possible mass media half a century from now and provides a dream scenario.Unfortunately, Professor Bertrand describes some “twentieth-century” public relations practices as part of the “old” problems and “dreams up” some changes in those practices, as well. It may be that a public relations professional or professor should write an essay devoted to a dream scenario for public relations in 2045. The Public Relations Review invites such commentary.     

“Yes,I Can”: Testing an Intervention to Increase Middle School Students’ College and Career Self‐Efficacy

Middle school is the appropriate time for students to begin exploring careers and improving self‐efficacy; however, empirically supported career and college readiness interventions for U.S. middle school students are limited. Examining the effect of an intervention that combined a virtual experience and a local college visit on middle school students (99 girls, 74 boys), the authors found that participating students had higher levels of college and career self‐efficacy than did nonparticipating students. The study shows that a workshop of the online Florida CHOICES program coupled with a campus visit increased middle school student career and college self‐efficacy. Future research should include longitudinal studies and use of diverse populations to improve generalizability of study results.     

Evidence‐Based Management: Implications for Nonprofit Organizations

The article reviews evidence‐based management and its implications for practice and teaching. My focus is on strategic decision making in nonprofit organizations. Evidence‐based management is a process that includes framing the question, finding evidence, assuring accuracy, applicability, and actionability of evidence until the evidence is the best available.     

Advance Medical Directives for College Students: It's Not Your Father's Living Will

Abstract

Educators and researchers strive to use terms that reflect a replicable measure of behavior. A term commonly used to describe drinking of a problematic nature is binge drinking. Binge drinking defines behavior by a number of drinks of an alcoholic beverage consumed in a space of time. The authors argue that the term does not describe drinking behavior that students believe is problematic. They claim that students define problem drinking not in terms of quantity, but rather by the outcome (and occasionally by frequency), and attribute different negative connotations to the term binge. They suggest using a term that has shared meaning with students, such as dangerous drinking, to describe the drinking behavior that results in undesirable or unintended consequences.     

‘It's Just Acting’: Sex Workers’ Strategies for Capitalizing on Sexuality

This article reports on an ethnographic study of female sex workers in Britain who work in the indoor prostitution markets. The empirical findings contribute to the sex‐as‐labour debate and add to the sociological literature regarding the gendered and sexualized nature of employment, particularly the aesthetic and emotional labour of service work. Grounding the empirical findings in the theory of identity management and emotional labour and work, the article reviews some of the existing examples of how sex workers create emotion management strategies and describes an additional strategy, that of the ‘manufactured identity’. I argue that sex workers create a manufactured identity specifically for the workplace as a self‐protection mechanism to manage the stresses of selling sex as well as crafting the work image as a business strategy to attract and maintain clientele. Drawing on comparisons between sex work and other feminized service occupations, I argue that sex workers who are involved in prostitution under certain conditions are able to capitalize on their own sexuality through the construction of a manufactured identity. The process of conforming to heterosexualized images in prostitution is conceptualized as not simply accepting dominant discourses but as a calculated response made by sex workers to manipulate the erotic expectations and the cultural ideals of the male client.     

When Nonprofit Organizations Meet Information and Communication Technologies: How Organizational Culture Influences the Use of Traditional,Digital, and Sharing Media

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In contrast to previous studies that emphasized how resources and institutional forces influence nonprofit organizations...