Organizing for Education: A Cross-National,Longitudinal Study of Civil Society Organizations and Education Outcomes

We address two views from organization theory to consider the expansion and effects of nonprofits in education: first, a functional view emphasizing the direct effect of work of civil society organizations (CSOs) and, second, a phenomenological neoinstitutional view focusing on the cultural meaning of education CSOs as indicators of a rationalized, liberal world society. We use panel regression models with country fixed effects to analyze the cross-national expansion of domestic education CSO sectors in 130 countries from 1970 to 2014. We then examine the association between the size of the domestic education CSO sector and memberships in international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) with education outcomes, including spending, education aid, secondary and tertiary enrollments, and the share of women in secondary and tertiary education. Results show that INGO memberships, an expanded state, and an expanded education system are highly associated with the expansion of a domestic education CSO sector. Both domestic CSOs and INGO memberships tend to have a significant, positive relationship with education outcomes net of other factors. We also find preliminary evidence indicating that the causal forces at play are more complex than a straightforward direct effect of education CSOs doing good work. Specifically, CSOs, at least in part, are indicators of a Western, liberal model of a proper modern society; the underpinning culture, represented by CSOs, accounts for some educational expansion above and beyond the benefit (or harm) caused by any given entity.     

Models of midwifery care for Indigenous women and babies: A meta-synthesis

Issue

Indigenous women in many countries experience a lack of access to culturally appropriate midwifery services. A number of models of care have been established to provide services to women. Research has examined some services, but there has not been a synthesis of qualitative studies of the models of care to help guide practice development and innovations.

Vaginal birth after caesarean: Views of women from countries with low VBAC rates

Problem and background

Vaginal birth after caesarean section is a safe option for the majority of women. Seeking women’s views can be of help in understanding factors of importance for achieving vaginal birth in countries where the vaginal birth rates after caesarean is low.

Sexual Harassment and the Construction of Ethnographic Knowledge

It is not uncommon for women researchers to experience sexualized interactions, sexual objectification, and harassment as they conduct fieldwork. Nevertheless, these experiences are often left out of ethnographers’ “tales from the field” and remain unaddressed within our discipline. In this article, we use women's experiences with harassment in the field to interrogate the epistemological foundations of ethnographic methodology within the discipline of sociology. Based on more than 50 qualitative interviews, we examine three “fixations” of contemporary ethnography that inform women ethnographers’ understandings of and reactions to harassment in the field. These fixations are solitude, danger, and intimacy. Our data show that these fixations not only put researchers in danger but also have implications for the construction of ethnographic knowledge. They contribute to silence surrounding sexual harassment, and are motivated by and reproduce androcentric norms that valorize certain types of fieldwork. We argue that acknowledging and analyzing experiences with harassment and other unwanted sexual attention in the field is part of a more fully developed understanding of ethnographic research itself.     

Agency-Related Barriers Experienced by Families Seeking to Adopt From Foster Care

ABSTRACT

Although about 100,000 children in foster care await adoption, families approved to adopt encounter obstacles in the adoption process. This nationwide longitudinal study identified agency-related barriers faced by prospective adoptive parents. A pur-posively recruited sample of 300 families seeking to adopt from foster care completed an in-depth, semi-structured telephone interview and quarterly follow-up surveys until they either finalized a foster care adoption (n = 98) or discontinued (n = 102) the process, followed by an exit interview by telephone. Findings revealed the top barriers encountered were adoption process logistics (n = 185, 92.5%), agency communication and responsiveness (n = 159, 79.5%), agency emotional support (n = 130, 65%), availability of services (n = 65, 32.5%), and juris-dictional and interjurisdictional issues (n = 52, 26%). Policy and practice implications are provided with recommendations for improving procedures, services, support, and communication to better retain prospective adoptive parents and improve adop-tion outcomes.     

Parenting from a distance: The effects of paternal characteristics on contact between nonresidential fathers and their children

Changes in marital and fertility behavior have influenced the role of father for many men. We use data from the first two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households to examine various sociodemographic, situational, and attitudinal characteristics that might influence the degree of contact between nonresidential fathers and their minor children. We tap two different dimensions of distance parenting and find that although several variables influence both visiting and talking on the telephone or writing letters, some factors (the presence of multiple children in a household) predict visiting only, while others (child’s age and gender) predict only verbal/written contact. Similarly, some of the life-course decisions made by fathers appear to crowd out their involvement with nonresidential children, whereas other decisions reinforce their parenting behavior.     

Did the Difference Between Black and White Americans in Anger-Out Decrease During the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century?

Studies have found blacks in the USA report lower levels of anger-out and higher levels of anger-in than whites. However, most of the research on anger expression has been based on data from limited samples. The current study investigates the black–white difference in anger-in and anger-out in a sample representative of Americans aged 40 and older. Data are from the two most recent waves of the Americans’ Changing Lives (ACL) surveys. In 2001, the ACL assessed both outcomes, with anger-out re-assessed in 2011. Thus, individual-level change in anger-out can be investigated. Drawing on literature on “anger privilege,” civility, the politicization of anger, and related topics, we develop and evaluate hypotheses about: (1) the race difference in anger-out over time, (2) race as a moderator of the gender difference in both forms of anger expression, and (3) the impact of controlling for perceived discrimination on anger expression. We find blacks to report greater expressive reticence with regard to their anger (i.e., anger-in) than whites in 2001. That race difference became nonsignificant when discrimination was controlled. The race difference in anger-out was of borderline significance in 2001 and became significant after discrimination was controlled. Longitudinal analyses show that the race difference in anger-out decreased over time. The rate that anger-out decreased by did not significantly differ by race. We discuss processes that that could contribute to our results. We also speculate about how current trends in political anger expression might be related to the patterns we observe.     

México's demographic transition: Public policy and spatial process

A logistic growth equation is used to model México's epidemiological and fertility transitions, creating variables used to model the spatial diffusion of demographic change across the states. Consistent with the goals of the Lázaro Cárdenas administration, the epidemiological transition unfolded uniformly across the states, accessible to rich and poor alike, but the urban-oriented family planning programs introduced by Luis Echeverria have favored elites, have diffused selectively, and have ensured that the burdens of the population explosion have borne down most heavily on the poor and the remote. Betsy Brewer, Cyprain Engwenyi, Mark Frank and Mark Frost also provided research assistance.     

An integrated dietary assessment increases feeding event detection in an urban carnivore

Urban Ecosystems - Urbanisation radically changes habitats and alters available resources. Populations of large, highly mobile species are often extirpated at the urban-wildland interface, while...