Daily Fantasy Sports Players: Gambling,Addiction, and Mental Health Problems

Studies point to a relationship between fantasy sports/daily fantasy sports (DFS) play and gambling behavior. However, little is known about the nature of those relationships, particularly regarding the development of gambling problems. This study investigates the nature, frequency, and preferences of gambling behavior as well as problem gambling severity and comorbid conditions among DFS players. Data were collected from an epidemiologic survey of 3634 New Jersey residents on gambling and leisure activities. Participants were contacted by phone (land-line and cell) and online to obtain a representative, cross-sectional sample of non-institutionalized adults, aged 18 years or older. Excluding non-gamblers, the remaining 2146 participants, included in these analyses, indicated they had either played DFS (n = 299) or had gambled but not played DFS (1847) in the past year. Univariate comparisons and multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to identify the most significant characteristics and predictors of DFS players. Overall, a higher number of gambling activities, high frequency gambling, male gender, and reports of suicidal thoughts in the past year were most predictive of DFS players. Being Hispanic (vs. Caucasian) and/or single (vs. married or living with a partner) also doubled the odds of DFS play. Findings suggest that DFS players are characterized by high gambling frequency and problem severity and comorbid problems, notably suicidal ideation. Future research should examine the motivations and possible etiological sub-types of DFS players and the nature and course of DFS play, particularly in relation to gambling behavior and the development of gambling and other problems.     

Evidence of Skill and Strategy in Daily Fantasy Basketball

Using hand-collected data from DraftKings.com, a major daily fantasy sports website, we analyze draft selections of thousands of participants in daily fantasy basketball (DFB). In our study, the first thorough examination of DFB, we show that DFB is a game in which skill is necessary for success. Using econometric analysis, we find that winning participants utilize different strategies than losing participants; for example, winning participants more frequently select NBA rookies and international players. We also find that participants paying to enter more lineups in a given contest earn profits far more often than those entering few lineups, indicating that the number of lineups entered can serve as a proxy for skill. Additionally, we provide a thorough discussion of industry characteristics, prior literature, and gameplay, which should help readers familiarize themselves with this burgeoning fantasy sports variant. This study should further the literature on the contentious activity, which has been outlawed in many U.S. states and continues to elicit controversy.     

Participation and Emotions: Troubling Encounters Between Children and Social Welfare Professionals

This paper explores the emotional aspects of participation within social welfare contexts. The focus is on individual professionals, such as social workers and children’s rights workers and their articulation, management and negotiation of the emotional when working with children and young people. The institutions of welfare are also shown to be ambiguous in their approaches to participation. Lastly, the dimensions of power that are enacted in relations between professionals and children reveal some of the complex dynamics in this fraught area of social welfare policy and practice.     

Emotion Expression in Context: Full Body Postures of Christian Prayer Orientations Compared to Specific Emotions

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - For many people, emotions are frequently expressed in the context of communication with their God. The practice of prayer is clearly embodied and affords the study...     

Achievement Orientations,School Adjustment,and Well-being: A Longitudinal Study

This study set out to identify the kinds of achievement orientations that adolescents show, and to examine the kinds of antecedents and consequences the use of a particular orientation has. The participants were 734 Swedish adolescents (335 boys and 399 girls) who filled in questionnaires measuring their achievement beliefs and behaviors, depressive symptoms, engagement with school, and norm-breaking behavior. By using clustering-by-cases analysis, five achievement orientation groups were identified: optimism, defensive-pessimism, self-handicapping, and learned helplessness, and a group showing average levels of criteria variables. The results showed further that a decrease in depressive symptoms and an increase in engagement with school predicted a move to the use of optimistic and defensive-pessimistic groups, whereas a reverse pattern predicted a move to the helplessness and self-handicapping groups. Moreover, the optimistic and defensive-pessimistic achievement orientations at Time 1 predicted an increase in engagement with school and a decrease in depressive symptoms later on, whereas self-handicapping and learned helplessness predicted a decrease in engagement with school and increases in depressive symptoms and norm-breaking behavior.     

Effects of Personality and Gender on Fantasy Sports Game Participation: The Moderating Role of Perceived Knowledge

Although 30 million individuals are engaged in fantasy sports games in the United States, little is known about the personality, attitudes, and intentions of fantasy sports game participants. This study (N = 244) explored the role of gender, sensation seeking (SS), locus of control (LOC), and need for cognition (NFC) in predicting attitudes and intentions relative to participating in fantasy football league. A domain-specific construct (e.g., perceived football knowledge: PK) was employed as a moderator to control the potential attenuating effects of personality and related human behavior. A moderated multiple regression technique (MMR) examined the first-order and lower-order interaction effects on attitudes and behavioral intentions toward fantasy games. For males (n = 123), SS, LOC, and PK were related to both attitudes and intentions toward participating and PK acted as a moderator between LOC and intentions. For females (n = 121), none of the personality traits was associated with attitudes or intentions. The applied and theoretical implications of the findings are discussed along with future directions for research.     

Correction to: Emotion Expression in Context: Full Body Postures of Christian Prayer Orientations Compared to Specific Emotions

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior -     

Politics,Feminism and Women's Professional Orientations:

The purpose of this study was to construct a typology of professional orientation of women lawyers based on their political identity, professional interests and patterns of institutional participation. Using factor and cluster analysis, four orientations were identified. Variations on instrumental-market and feminist themes are at the core of the orientations, and each is related to the broader political identities of the women and to the types of action they recommend as effective means of correcting sex-based inequities in the profession. Whereas the majority of lawyers adopt one of these perspectives in relatively undiluted form, the orientations of two small leadership groups are more complex. Although scholars believe that the entry of women will have important effects on legal practice and discourse, the results of this study, indicating diversity of orientation among women, suggest that the realization of this expectation is contingent on a variety of factors.     

Why Immigrant Background Matters for University Participation: A Comparison of Switzerland and Canada

This article extends our understanding of the difference in university participation between students with and without immigrant backgrounds by contrasting outcomes in Switzerland and Canada and by the use of new longitudinal data that are comparable between the countries. The research includes family socio‐demographic characteristics, family aspirations regarding university education, and the student's secondary school performance as explanatory variables of university attendance patterns. In Switzerland, compared with students with Swiss‐born parents, those with immigrant backgrounds are disadvantaged regarding university participation, primarily due to poor academic performance in secondary school. In comparison, students with immigrant backgrounds in Canada display a significant advantage regarding university attendance, even among some who performed poorly in secondary school. The included explanatory variables can only partly account for this advantage, but family aspirations regarding university attendance play a significant role, while traditional variables such as parental educational attainment are less important. In both countries, source region background is important. Possible reasons for the cross‐country differences are discussed.     

Political Participation of Local Publics in the Unemployment Field: A Comparison of Lyon and Turin

This article focuses on political participation of local publics in the unemployment field, examining networks of collective actors in Lyon and Turin. Our main question is: Is the participation of local publics fostered under conditions of more developed governance that increases bottom-up access (formal or informal) to elites and institutions in the policy domain? Drawing upon the most recent developments in literatures on social movement theory, governance and network analysis, this article discusses the main variations in terms of political participation of local publics in Lyon and Turin. It then enquires into the main explanatory factors accounting for these variations, thus showing that the openness of governance does influence the level of political participation of local publics. The main argument is that in an open context participation is low, while in a closed (or underdeveloped) context local publics participate more, with differential access to decision-making according to their resources.     

Substance Use Among College Athletes: A Comparison Based on Sport/Team Affiliation

Objective: Prior research shows that college athletes have higher rates of substance use, especially alcohol, than do college students who are not involved in athletics. To augment the literature, the author sought to determine which sports/teams are at the greatest risk for substance use. Participants: The author used data from the 1999 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, a national survey of college and university students in the United States. Methods: A series of chi-square and logistic regression models examined variation in substance use among college athletes on the basis of sport/team affiliation. Results: Findings indicated that male hockey and female soccer athletes were the most likely to report substance use and that male basketball and cross-country/track athletes reported lower levels of substance use. Conclusion: There is variation in substance use on the basis of sport/team affiliation, and future researchers should examine why certain groups of athletes have higher rates of substance use.     

Emotions and Emotional Labor at Worker‐Owned Businesses: Deep Acting,Surface Acting,and Genuine Emotions

Members of worker cooperatives—organizations collectively owned and democratically run by their workers—report substantial differences in how they can or must perform various emotions, compared with previous work at conventional, hierarchical organizations. First, some emotions not allowed in conventional workplaces are fully permitted at worker cooperatives, including negative emotions, like anger, but also positive emotions, like enthusiasm. In contrast, other emotions must be displayed, even if insincere. Sometimes, these displays are accomplished through surface acting, like pretending to happily accept the slow pace of committee‐led change. Other times, through deep acting, members internalized new emotional reactions, such as pride, instead of resentment, when helping coworkers even after their own shifts had ended.     

Children's Participation,Childhood Publics and Social Change: A Review

Progress in the implementation of children's participation rights in England is reviewed and situated within a broader agenda of social change. The article argues that much of the energy for ‘change for children’ has resided within a governance pathway across policy, practice and research. An alternative perspective is offered by re‐connecting children's rights debates to those of social movements and asking whether childhood publics are possible, what they might look like and where they might be found. It is concluded that a cross‐national and longitudinal perspective grounded in everyday life is likely to provide a more nuanced understanding of the change for children.     

Review Essay: Analyzing Emotions: Prisms,Transferences, Rituals,and Histories

Sociological Forum -     

Stress,Coping, and Mood Among Latino Adolescents: A Daily Diary Study

The current study examines whether daily coping moderates the effects of daily stress on same‐day mood and next‐day mood among 58 Latino adolescents (M_age = 13.31; 53% male). The daily diary design capitalized on repeated measurements, boosting power to detect effects and allowing for a robust understanding of the day‐to‐day experiences of Latino adolescents. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that on days when youth reported higher levels of peer and academic stress, they also reported more negative moods. However, only poverty‐related stress predicted mood the following day. Engagement coping buffered the effect of poverty‐related stress on next‐day negative and positive mood, while disengagement exacerbated the effects of academic and peer stress. The need for interventions promoting balanced coping repertoires is discussed.     

Preludes to Attainment: Race,Sex, and Student Achievement Orientations*

This paper investigates race-sex differences in achievement orientation using a national sample of high school seniors. Achievement orientation is approximated by attitudinal measures (educational expectations, occupational aspirations, academic self concept, self esteem, and locus-of-control) known to be correlated with expected and actual attainments. Three major sets of student background factors are related to ent orientation: (1) family SES, (2) school context, and (3) parental expectations. Race-sex comparisons of achievement orientation revealed several interesting, but few definitive differences. Occupational aspirations were a dimension of consistent differentiation: whites and males aspired to higher status, less stereotypic occupations than did blacks and females. Pronounced interpersonal effects are implied throughout, with family educational attainments, peer plans, teacher evaluations (grades) and parent aspirations strongly influencing achievement orientations in all race-sex subgroups. The paper calls for intensive, longitudinal studies of student interactions with parents, friends, teachers, and other individuals who influence their perceptions of what constitute desirable and possible future roles.