DEALERS AND DEALING IN AN ANTIQUE MALL

This article, based on direct and participant observation, explores the world of antique malls, the occupation of antique dealer, and the role of customer. Data are based primarily on personal participation over the past six years as a buyer and consignment seller at auctions and as the co-owner of a husband/wife antique business located in three separate antique malls. These malls house approximately 170 dealers who sell a variety of antiques and collectibles. This article describes elements of the symbolic interactions that take place between sellers and shoppers in an antique mall. Strategies of sellers and shoppers are discussed. Customer-seller interactions are described and typologies of dealers and shoppers are presented.     

Introduced and native plant species composition of vacant unmanaged green roofs in New York City

Urban Ecosystems - Vacant spaces, such as unplanted, unmanaged, or infrequently accessed green roofs, may play a critical role in sustaining biodiversity in cities. Initial plant composition of...     

Romancing the Sugar Daddy in Rosemarie Owino's Sugar Daddy's Lover

Abstract

As a growing body of scholarship has demonstrated, the romance genre in Africa plays a series of important functions. Whereas in the West, romance is often seen as a formulaic genre that has run its course, in Africa, it is used to explore a range of pressing social issues. Romantic fiction offers advice and suggests solutions and hence makes legible contemporary ideas on gender and romance. However, thus far, the body of scholarship on romance has tended to focus largely on the female protagonists who dominate the genre. By examining the figure of the sugar daddy, we can widen the boundaries of investigation. This article investigates these ideas in relation to a reading of a popular Kenyan novel, Sugar Daddy's Lover.     

How do we capture 15 years of complex and meaningful data about young people's lives?

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a method of data collection, which captures the complexity of living situations, family dynamics and key life events of teenagers. This ‘Life History Calendar’ was adapted from earlier life history calendar methods for a multidisciplinary intergenerational study. The new calendar is able to record details of 15 years of teenage participants’ lives and can be administered to teenagers and their parents to show changes over individual lives and difference between individuals in a cohort. Referring to some preliminary data, we show that the calendar is a practical and effective method of data collection, which will be useful to researchers and practitioners working with young people and their families.     

Domestic Abuse Against Elder Women and Perceived Barriers to Help-Seeking

The study's (n = 447) purposes were to (1) describe relationships of abuser behavior to elder women's perception of barriers to help-seeking; (2) compare fit of model to participants' levels of abuse, race-ethnicity, age, and gender and relationship of identified close other; and (3) determine extent to which the model differentiated relationship of abuser to participant and level of abuse. Analyses identified six factors contributing to the overall barrier score, accounting for 84% of total variance (χ²/df = 1.527, CFI = .989, RMSEA = .034), including three internal and two external factors and a single abuser behavior factor that were invariant across participant characteristic; however, covariances did differ.     

New Approaches to Human Mobility: Using Mobile Phones for Demographic Research

This article explores new methods for gathering and analyzing spatially rich demographic data using mobile phones. It describes a pilot study (the Human Mobility Project) in which volunteers around the world were successfully recruited to share GPS and cellular tower information on their trajectories and respond to dynamic, location-based surveys using an open-source Android application. The pilot study illustrates the great potential of mobile phone methodology for moving spatial measures beyond residential census units and investigating a range of important social phenomena, including the heterogeneity of activity spaces, the dynamic nature of spatial segregation, and the contextual dependence of subjective well-being.     

Objective Performance Feedback: Is Numerical Accuracy Necessary?

Performance feedback is ubiquitous in Organizational Behavior Management (OBM); yet its essential components are still debated. It has been assumed that performance feedback must be accurate, but this assumption has not been well established. Two experiments were carried out to research feedback accuracy. Experiment 1 was a single-subject design where performance feedback accuracy was manipulated. Results from Experiment 1 suggested feedback may not need to be accurate to improve performance prompting a follow-up study. Experiment 2 was a repeated measures between-groups design with three types of objective feedback: accurate, high (triple) and low (1/3) inaccurate, and no feedback control. Both accurate and tripled feedback significantly improved performance over the control and low-inaccurate feedback groups. Performance feedback may have reduced time off-task across all three feedback conditions compared to the control. Data from performance feedback research need multi-faceted analysis to fully understand how and why performance feedback changes behavior.