Children's awareness of which peers like them and which peers dislike them

The present research examined children's awareness of the specific same-sex peers who like or dislike them. Awareness was evaluated in relation to children's peer sociometric status. All children in grades one through six provided same-sex peer sociometric nominations and same-sex peer sociometric ratings to determine their sociometric status. In addition, each child indicated the nominations and ratings they believed they received from same-sex peers. Children's sociometric status was associated with their awareness of liking and disliking from peers. Rejected status children were the least accurate in their judgments of who like them and popular status children were the least accurate in their judgments of who disliked them. These findings support and extend prior research documenting that rejected status children a) demonstrate a lack of awareness of their social competence, yet b) report more loneliness than children in other status groups.     

The Relationship Between Sustained Success and Donations for an Athletic Department with a Premier Football Program

Anecdotal discussions regarding donor contributions to athletic departments have long placed considerable emphasis on the success of the departments’ athletic programs. Among the most visible sports is football. The purpose of this study was to explore one high profile athletic department’s level of financial gifts and donations related to the performance of the university’s prestigious football program. The following data were collected for each year over an 11 year period (1998 thru 2008): the football team’s winning percentage; total money raised from donors; number of donors making contributions; number of contributions; and average size of each contribution. The researchers found that the only linier relationship that existed with the team’s winning percentage was a negative relationship between winning and the average size of each contribution (p < .05; R ² = .682).     

Pension reforms and gender: The case of Sweden

This article analyzes the effects of pension reform for men and women by comparing the outcomes in the system after reform to the outcomes under the prior system. The authors also study the incentive effects on labor supply. The size of the labor force, however, is also influenced by the rules for retirement, social insurance programs (e.g., sickness insurance and unemployment insurance), collective bargaining agreements, and seniority rules. Using a simulation model, the authors compare women's pension benefits and contributions to those of men in the new Swedish system and in the old. The analysis includes simulating the wage and employment histories of representative men and women and the pension benefits these are likely to generate under the old and new rules. After showing the results of this model, the authors describe and discuss the supplementary pension systems, that is, the negotiated collective agreement schemes and different pathways to retirement. Based on empirical evidence from Swedish and Latin America simulated data, the final section of the article discusses gender impact of pension rules and how to design pension, systems to ensure adequate pension benefits for both women and men.     

Dutch public relations practitioners and journalists: Antagonists no more

The increasing interdependence of public relations and journalism and the demands they make on each other raise the question how they perceive and evaluate each other. How do they view their roles, methods, relationship, and quality of media reporting on organizations? How do government and business public relations differ in this respect? Our survey of a representative sample of Dutch journalists and public relations practitioners in both government and business (n = 791) showed that while there were differences of opinion between the two professions, these were neither predominantly negative nor fundamental. Our results, therefore, do not confirm the difficult relationship between the press and public relations that was identified in research carried out in the United States between 1970 and 1990. Given the Dutch tradition that the government practitioner be a neutral servant of the public interest rather than a spokesperson for the organization, the general absence of differences between government and business public relations was striking. Our findings indicate that government public relations professionals have adopted the same norms and standards as their colleagues in business organizations.     

Race and Sex as Factors in Children's Sociometric Ratings and Friendship Choices

This research provides a comprehensive analysis of the association of race and sex to children's peer relationships by assessing: a) the association of both race and sex; b) multiple measures of peer relationships (sociometric ratings and friendships); and c) an entire elementary school (Grades 1 to 6) with nearly an even number of African-American to European-American children in each class. Regardless of age, race, or sex, and for both relationship measures, children showed a greater bias favoring same-sex peers than same-race peers. Although older African-American children had more same-race than cross-race mutual friends, African-American children were more accepting of European-American children than the reverse. Despite some same-race preferences, cross-race evaluations were generally quite positive on both measures. The differential impact of sex and race as considerations for peer evaluations is discussed.     

Multimedia Analysis of PAHs and Nitro-PAH Daughter Products in the Los Angeles Basin

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that are released into the atmosphere may have health consequences that can be compounded by their nitro-PAH atmospheric transformation products. The available literature suggests that some of the atmospheric nitro-PAH daughter products may increase the overall environmental health risk associated with PAHs. Therefore, an important issue is whether there is merit in considering atmospheric transformation products of air toxins when conducting environmental health-risk analyses. To illustrate the above issue, a comparative analysis of the potential risk that may be imposed by PAHs and their daughter products was carried out for the Los Angeles Basin. The analysis consisted of first assessing the multimedia environmental concentration of selected PAHs and nitro-PAHs using a spatial-compartmental modeling approach coupled with available monitoring data. Multimedia concentrations were then used to estimate chemical media-specific mutagenic densities as well as average daily intake from multiple pathways, followed by cancer risk for the known carcinogens among the study chemicals. The analysis revealed that mutagenic densities of the nitro-PAH daughter products can significantly exceed those of the parent PAHs. The results of this study suggest that there is merit in further investigation of the potential contribution of nitro-PAHs to the overall environmental health risk associated with airborne PAHs.     

Do Migrant Remittances Cause Dutch Disease in Nigeria?

Statistics show that remittances inflow to Nigeria grew from US$3,000,000 in 1978 to over US$22 billion in 2017. Theoretically, such a large inflow of foreign currency into an economy may lead to Dutch diseases. This study, therefore, investigated whether the massive inflow of remittances into the economy causes Dutch disease. Given that the model had both I(0) and I(1) variables, ARDL/Bound testing methodology was used with annual data from 1981 to 2016. The ARDL result showed that migrant remittances have a significant positive effect on the real effective exchange rate in Nigeria in the long run. Specifically, a one per cent increase in the inflows of remittances increases the real effective exchange rate of Naira by 0.44 per cent in the long run. This appreciation of the Nigerian Naira relative to other competing nations encourages import and discourages export, leading to the Dutch disease effect.