Civic involvement in deprived communities: A longitudinal study of England

This study aims to understand how community material deprivation is related to associational membership amongst neighbourhood residents. We posit that aside from personal characteristics and willingness to engage, experiences of neighbourhood deprivation are strongly correlated with how much people devote themselves to associational membership. We identify three mechanisms through which community deprivation can determine individual participation in political, civic, and work voluntary associations: social cohering, norms of obligation, and activated dissatisfaction. We link individual panel data from Understanding Society from 2010 to 2019 with the English Index of Multiple Deprivation at the neighbourhood level. This study finds that neighbourhood deprivation is associated with lower norms of civic obligation which, in turn, lowers a person's propensity for engagement. Individuals with low income and education are less likely to participate in voluntary associations in the first place, therefore the contextual role of neighbourhood deprivation exerts a further external negative pressure on civic participation. We find that membership in political organizations is an exception whereby it is positively associated with neighbourhood deprivation. The results imply that given the many economic and social capital benefits of associational involvement (Putnam, 2000), collective deprivation can produce an additive pattern of economic disadvantage which is reinforced through a lack of social participation.     

Gender differences in predicting high-risk drinking among undergraduate students

The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences in college students' high-risk drinking as measured by an estimated blood alcohol concentration (eBAC) based on gender, height, weight, self-reported number of drinks, and hours spent drinking. Using a developmental/contextual framework, high-risk drinking is conceptualized as a function of relevant individual characteristics, interpersonal factors, and contextual factors regularly mentioned in the college drinking literature. Individual characteristics include race, gender, and age; interpersonal characteristics include number of sexual partners and having experienced forced sexual contact. Finally, contextual factors include Greek membership, living off-campus, and perception of peer drinking behavior. This study is a secondary data analysis of 1,422 students at a large university in the Southeast. Data were gathered from a probability sample of students through a mail survey. A three-step hierarchical logistic regression analysis showed gender differences in the pathway for high-risk drinking. For men, high-risk drinking was predicted by a combination of individual characteristics and contextual factors. For women, interpersonal factors, along with individual characteristics and contextual factors, predicted high-risk drinking, highlighting the importance of understanding female sexual relationships and raising questions about women's risk-taking behavior. Implications for prevention and assessment are discussed.     

Formal Voluntary Organizations: Participation, Correlates, and Interrelationships

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the literature on formal voluntay organizations in the urban community. The theoretical approaches that guided much of the research in this area are identifid as social structural, social psychological, and organizational. Basic findings suggest that formal participation, including church membership, is a characteristic of urban life. Population characteristics, attitudes, informal interaction, and community involvement are all related to formal membership. Moreover, formal organizations attempt to integrate individuals with the larger community, and such groups, in urbanizing areas, facilitate modernization.     

Employee and Volunteer

The purpose of this research is to analyze the different factors that determine the level of time devoted to volunteer activity involving employed people. To this end, we applied a logistic regression model to a sample of 5,067 employees, considering four categories of factors: family and personal, on the one hand, and contextual factors, on the other. This second group involves three factor categories: occupational, organizational, and community involvement factors. The findings of this work are especially relevant to two areas: first, to design a policy of corporate social responsibility that effectively integrates the figure of corporate volunteering, considering its pertinent factors; and second, to broaden the perspective of the third‐sector organizations beyond the traditional profile with which volunteers are commonly associated.     

Contextual Factors and Negotiating Spaces: Exploring the Emergence of Nonprofit and Hybrid Voluntary Organizations

The emergence of nonprofit organizations has largely been explained by the prevalent “three failures” theory. However, evidence suggests that such theories fail to capture a variety of contextual nuances that may influence nonprofit formation. In particular, these theories have remained relatively silent about the emergence of hybrid voluntary organizations. This article posits the notion that some nonprofit organizations (for example, hybrid voluntary organizations) emerge through cross‐sector negotiations, amid a number of social, policy, and political contextual complexities. We contend that any theory purporting to explain the emergence of nonprofit organizations should not neglect to account for the role contextual factors play in defining their emergence and their subsequent character and function.     

Spatial effects on individual social capital: Differentiating the constraints of local occupational structures

Recent studies have paid more attention to how position-generated social capital varies by an individual’s characteristics, and less to how geographical distributions of occupations may constrain position-specific connections. By integrating two national surveys from the United States, we differentiate the extent to which individual social capital fluctuates by occupational compositions at the county, metropolis, and state levels. Multilevel analyses show that when more people at all three levels work in education, training, and library occupations, residents have a greater chance to gain access to professional-type resources. Similar spatial effects on farming and production resources, however, are more apparent at the county level. Not only does the association between individual social capital and local occupational structures vary across different occupations, but the magnitude of such spatial effects also differs by the scope of the geographical areas. The findings underscore how contextual factors and geographical location may contribute to building occupation-specific network resources.     

Groups and individuals: conformity and diversity in the performance of gendered identities

The nature and role of social groups is a central tension in sociology. On the one hand, the idea of a group enables sociologists to locate and describe individuals in terms of characteristics that are shared with others. On the other, emphasizing the fluidity of categories such as gender or ethnicity undermines their legitimacy as ways of classifying people and, by extension, the legitimacy of categorization as a goal of sociological research. In this paper, we use a new research method known as the Imitation Game to defend the social group as a sociological concept. We show that, despite the diversity of practices that may be consistent with self‐identified membership of a group, there are also shared normative expectations – typically narrower in nature than the diversity displayed by individual group members – that shape the ways in which category membership can be discussed with, and performed to, others. Two claims follow from this. First, the Imitation Game provides a way of simultaneously revealing both the diversity and ‘groupishness’ of social groups. Second, that the social group, in the quasi‐Durkheimian sense of something that transcends the individual, remains an important concept for sociology.     

Social inequalities and exercise during adulthood: toward an ecological perspective

Grounded in ecological theory, this study examines the association among participation in regular vigorous exercise and social status, aspects of prominent life settings, interactions between life settings, and more proximal individual resources and processes using data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (N = 3,032). Among women, a higher level of earnings was associated with more vigorous exercise, yet those women with more education had a steeper decline in exercise across adulthood. Among men, those with the lowest level of education had the steepest decline in physical activity across adulthood, and earnings did not affect exercise patterns. Less participation in vigorous exercise among blacks, in contrast to nonblacks, was explained by their tendency to live in less safe neighborhoods and having more functional health problems. Finally, contextual factors from multiple domains were independently associated with participation in regular exercise. Consistent with ecological theory, these results suggest that interventions to promote exercise habits among adults need to consider the independent and interactive effects of multiple contextual factors.     

Elder Abuse in Nursing Homes: An Ecological Perspective

Population trends suggest that the next 20 years will witness a dramatic increase in the adult population aged 65 and older. Projected increases in the elderly population are expected to significantly increase the stress on family and professional caretakers. Stress, in the context of caregiving relationships, is a risk factor associated with increased prevalence of elder abuse in familial and institutional settings. As increasing numbers of older adults are moved from family caregiving to nursing home care settings, it becomes important to identify the pattern of elder abuse risk factors in nursing home facilities. An ecological model is proposed for better understanding the risk factors associated with elder abuse in nursing homes and the complex interaction of individual/person characteristics and contextual factors in institutional elder abuse. An ecological perspective to institutional elder abuse provides a framework for guiding and informing future research on the risk factors of nursing home abuse and, in turn, for the development of effective interventions and relevant social policies.     

Elder abuse in nursing homes: an ecological perspective

Population trends suggest that the next 20 years will witness a dramatic increase in the adult population aged 65 and older. Projected increases in the elderly population are expected to significantly increase the stress on family and professional caretakers. Stress, in the context of caregiving relationships, is a risk factor associated with increased prevalence of elder abuse in familial and institutional settings. As increasing numbers of older adults are moved from family caregiving to nursing home care settings, it becomes important to identify the pattern of elder abuse risk factors in nursing home facilities. An ecological model is proposed for better understanding the risk factors associated with elder abuse in nursing homes and the complex interaction of individual/person characteristics and contextual factors in institutional elder abuse. An ecological perspective to institutional elder abuse provides a framework for guiding and informing future research on the risk factors of nursing home abuse and, in turn, for the development of effective interventions and relevant social policies.     

Reliance on Faith-Based Organizations for Tangible Assistance in Times of Disaster: Exploring the Influence of Bonding Social Capital

Although there is a growing amount of research on the role that faith-based organizations play in disaster recovery, there is currently no research that has investigated the influence that social capital has on individual disaster victims’ proclivity to rely on these organizations for recovery assistance. This current exploratory research sought to observe the relationship between individuals’ bonding social capital, in addition to other individual characteristics, and their perceived reliance on faith-based organizations for tangible disaster aid in future events using a national survey administrated by the Associated Press–NORC for Public Affairs Research in 2013. As a by-product of the analysis performed, it is observed that bonding social capital is related to an individual’s perceived reliance on faith-based organizations, whereas other demographic variables such as race are not.     

The Impact of Voluntary Association Characteristics on Selective Attraction and Socialization*

The voluntary organization literature has viewed the processes of selective attraction and socialization almost exclusively as a function of individual characteristics rather than organizational characteristics. Using data from two voluntary associations. we found that organizational characteristics (goal specificity, change orientation, and restrictiveness) were associated with the degree of selective attraction and socialization of attitudes. After controlling for the compositional characteristics of the membership, these data suggest both an organizational and an individual effect on socialization and selectivity. We concluded that the organizations studied here were more of a means for the support of attitudes held prior to joining than a means for developing or changing attitudes through membership. Further research might examine what role different voluntary associations play in the structuring of attitudes, providing a greater understanding of both individual and organizations.     

A Systems Approach to Social Entrepreneurship

Currently, disabilities organizations are increasingly being challenged by the requirement for individualized service, expectations to show personal outcomes, and the need to base their services on evidence-based practices. Social entrepreneurship (SE) is being put forward as an innovative approach for dealing with these challenges. This article presents a systems approach to SE based on a program logic model. This model identifies the input factors (a strong social vision, exploiting opportunities, maximizing resources), throughput strategies (entrepreneurial orientation, critical thinking skills, networking, capacity building), and outcome components (improving people’s lives, community-building, improving society) of SE at the micro, meso, and macro level. Also, the importance of planning for contextual changes as a social entrepreneur is discussed. The article concludes with presenting three inspiring practices regarding SE in the field of disabilities organizations.     

Social capital and social exclusion in England and Wales (1972-1999)

Recent research on social capital has explored trends in membership in voluntary organizations. However, there is currently little robust evidence on such trends in the UK since the 1970s, nor is there any analysis of whether participation bridges social divisions or accentuates them. This paper explores trends in participation in England and Wales since 1972 using data from the Social Mobility Inquiry of 1972 and the British Household Panel Survey of 1992 and 1999. We are concerned with social exclusion mechanisms in social capital generation in Britain over the three decades. Using binomial and multinomial models to 'unpack' the effects of socio-cultural factors on civic participation and on different types of associational membership, we test the thesis of across-the-board decline in social capital by Putnam (2000) and that of rising levels of middle-class social capital versus consistent low levels of working-class social capital by Hall (1999). The results show significant socio-cultural-gender differences, a relative stability of middle-class participation, and a rapid decline in the working-class access to social capital. We challenge the established accounts of both theses.     

Verwerfungslinien in Organisationen – die Wirkung von Kontextfaktoren auf die Verbundenheit in Organisationen

The importance of commitment from the point of view of companies or organizations is discussed controversially in recent years. On the one hand, a key competitive advantage is seen in the field of human resources. At the same time, very different forms of employment flexibilization can be observed. These different approaches are shown in this article and the versatile embedding of work such as the perception of disposition possibilities in terms of time, individual room for maneuver or even the experienced social justice. All of these dimensions have the potential to portray themselves as faultlines in organizations and thus have an impact on the binding in organizations.     

Entrepreneurial intention of engineering students and associated influence of contextual factors / Intención emprendedora de los estudiantes de ingeniería e influencia de factores contextuales

This research explores the incidence of individual and contextual factors on the entrepreneurial intention of engineering students, as they are called to be the founders of new technology-based firms, which are required for the generation of economic growth and employment. A quantitative study comprising 1,004 engineering and architecture students has been conducted, in which both contextual factors (perception of economic-administrative barriers and unemployment rates) and antecedents of entrepreneurial intention from Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour have been examined. Results show that individuals with a high entrepreneurial intention show a favourable attitude towards the behaviour and see themselves capable of undertaking an entrepreneurial behaviour. Perception of social support, although strong, is not such a relevant factor. Regarding contextual factors, these do not discourage individuals with high entrepreneurial intention. Last, the role played by unemployment rates is unclear. Consequently, technical universities and governments, in their social responsibility to foster entrepreneurship in future young professionals, should take these factors into account to promote an encouraging climate for the development of an entrepreneurial spirit.     

Statistical Estimation of the Casual Effect of Social Economy on Subjective Well-Being

It is well known that measuring the noneconomic outcomes produced by social economy organizations is fairly difficult and complex. Usually, social economy organizations feature participatory and democratic decision-making processes that help create social capital and relational goods, and they are interested in social integration; accordingly, they tend to create an organizational culture that encourages their workers to contribute to local communities. Therefore, the hypothesis that the increased activities of social economy organizations have a causal effect on the subjective well-being of the people living near those organizations is highly plausible. In this paper, we estimate the causal effect and attempt to test the hypothesis statistically by using a dataset called the “Seoul Survey,” which provides observations on the subjective well-being of 45,496 citizens living in Seoul and the size of social economy organizations. Controlling for variables at the district level and the appropriate socioeconomic characteristics of each individual in the dataset, we find that the size of social organizations is highly significant.     

Staying inside: social withdrawal of the young,Finnish ‘Hikikomori’

This article explores socially withdrawn young Finnish people on an Internet forum who identify with the Japanese hikikomori phenomenon. We aim to overcome the dualism between sociology and psychology found in earlier research by referring to Pierre Bourdieu, who provides insights into how individual choices are constructed in accordance with wider social settings. We focus on the individual level and everyday choices, but we suggest that psychological factors (anxiety, depression) can be seen as properties of social relations rather than as individual states of mind, as young adults have unequal access to valued resources. We scrutinise young people’s specific reasoning related to the social and psychological factors and contingent life events that influence their choice to withdraw. An experience of inadequacy, a feeling of failure and a lack of self-efficacy are common experiences in the data. This indicates that young adults who identify with the hikikomori phenomenon find external society demanding and consider themselves lacking resources such as education, social networks or the personality type that they see as valued in society and as essential to ‘survival’. They also feel that they cannot control their life events, which may mean that they receive little help in their everyday lives.     

Spousal Choice among the Children of Turkish and Moroccan Immigrants in Six European Countries: Transnational Spouse or Co‐ethnic Migrant?

Transnational marriages of migrants in Western Europe tend to be seen as hampering integration. In response, policies have been tightened, despite little knowledge on transnational marriages and the effects of such measures. This paper investigates the role of individual preferences and contextual factors such as family reunification policies, group size and development levels of the regions of origin in partner choice of the children of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. We draw on a novel dataset collected in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Our findings suggest that transnational marriages are partly associated with contextual factors such as a rural origin and family reunification policies. The analysis indicates higher rates of transnational marriages under open family reunification policies, providing tentative evidence of policy effects. On the individual level, the choice of a partner from the parents' origin country is associated with religiosity.     

An exploratory study of subjective well-being in organizations–A mixed method research approach

ABSTRACT

Subjective well-being (SWB) has been widely found to have a profound impact on the individual, yet the process of its occurrence in public organizations remains unexplored. So the primary purpose of this paper is to explore the determining factors affecting the process of employee’s subjective well-being in public organizations using mixed methods research. Qualitative analysis using the grounded theory methodology reveals the effective factors that affect the process of employee’s subjective well-being in public organizations. Quantitative hypotheses are then developed based on a qualitative investigation. Survey data were collected from employees of public organizations in one of the provinces of Iran. Analysis of Moment Structure is used for data analysis. The results of the research revealed that both individual and organizational factors (as causal factors) influence the employees’ subjective well-being process (life satisfaction and positive affect). This phenomenon leads to the use of strategies which are affected by intervening and contextual factors. The consequences of this process are to change the attitude and behavior of individuals and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. This paper is among the first known to examine subjective well-being in public organizations using mixed methods research. The mixed methods approach offers a better insight to understanding effective factors affecting subjective well-being compared to the use of either a qualitative or quantitative method alone.