The Role of <Emphasis Type="Italic">New Zealand Sociology</Emphasis> in Developing New Zealand Sociology

Journals may set themselves one or several of a range of missions, but often a national Sociology Association’s journal is concerned to be a vehicle assisting in the shaping of that country’s ‘national sociology’, while maintaining some openness to international sociology. This personalised case study of New Zealand’s sociology journal discusses the extent to which this mission has been achieved over the last decade and more generally over the journal’s history, and the nitty-gritty of challenges and operational issues involved in carrying this out.     

美丽乡村建设中图书馆总分馆发展策略探析

在河北省委十八届十二次全会上提出了建设经济强省、美丽河北的号召。美丽乡村建设是其中的重要环节。在乡村文化建设中,图书馆能够起到助力当地公共文化服务的完善、消除城乡数字鸿沟、保存地域文化遗产的作用。而目前河北省总分馆的发展及各类乡村阅服务机构的兴起为乡村图书馆纳入总分馆体系奠定了基础。因此可以从坚持政府主导、吸引民间公益力量、建立紧密型总分馆、选择合适的总馆、提高管理人员素质五个方面努力。     

Experiences,Burdens, and Support Needs in Siblings of Girls and Women with Anorexia Nervosa: Results from a Qualitative Interview Study

For many years, siblings of women and girls suffering from anorexia have been regarded as “the forgotten kin,” as they have been overlooked by both researchers and clinicians. Therefore, the goal of this explorative study was to investigate siblings’ experiences, burdens, and support needs in a differentiated manner. Siblings (n = 16) of patients with an ICD-10 diagnosis “anorexia nervosa” (F 50.0) took part in a qualitative, in-depth interview study; the data were assessed using content analysis. The results of this study should be especially interesting for clinical social work. Using the findings, a variety of concrete recommendations for psycho-social practice can be made, for example regarding the inclusion of siblings in treatment settings, as well as specific support concepts for siblings of anorexic women and girls in different age groups.     

The Effects of Merit-Based Scholarships on Educational Outcomes

This paper analyzes the effect of a statewide merit-based scholarship program on educational outcomes in Arizona. It tests whether Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) scholarship has an effect on a comprehensive set of educational outcomes such as the number of applicants, student admissions, first-year first-time enrollment, ACT scores of entering freshman, retention rates, as well as on the level of tuition and fees at the three schools targeted by the program; Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. Both difference-in-differences estimation as well as synthetic control methods shows that AIMS has an economically and statistically significant effect enrollment. Enrollment effects are greatest among African American and Hispanic students and are significant for both men and women. While point estimates suggest that AIMS also lead to increases in tuition and fees, these results are not robust to placebo tests.     

Remittances as an Insurance Mechanism in the Labor Market

The probability that Mexican households receive remittances increases in response to temporary loss of employment by household heads. Evidence indicates that the probability doubles in the short-term, with a stronger effect in the first quarter of unemployment. Taking into account inter-household transfers within Mexico, the increase in the probability of private transfers is similar in households with low and high access to migratory networks in the U. S. The effectiveness of private transfers as an insurance mechanism has been reduced in an environment of economic crisis.     

Judging Facial Emotion Expressions in Context: The Influence of Culture and Self-Construal Orientation

We assessed the impact of social context on the judgment of emotional facial expressions as a function of self-construal and decoding rules. German and Greek participants rated spontaneous emotional faces shown either alone or surrounded by other faces with congruent or incongruent facial expressions. Greek participants were higher in interdependence than German participants. In line with cultural decoding rules, Greek participants rated anger expressions less intensely and sad and disgust expressions more intensely. Social context affected the ratings by both groups in different ways. In the more interdependent culture (Greece) participants perceived anger least intensely when the group showed neutral expressions, whereas sadness expressions were rated as most intense in the absence of social context. In the independent culture (Germany) a group context (others expressing anger or happiness) additionally amplified the perception of angry and happy expressions. In line with the notion that these effects are mediated by more holistic processing linked to higher interdependence, this difference disappeared when we controlled for interdependence on the individual level. The findings confirm the usefulness of considering both country level and individual level factors when studying cultural differences.     

Parent–Child Positive Touch: Gender,Age, and Task Differences

This study examined gender, age, and task differences in positive touch and physical proximity during mother–child and father–child conversations. Sixty-five Spanish mothers and fathers and their 4- (M = 53.50 months, SD = 3.54) and 6-year-old (M = 77.07 months, SD = 3.94) children participated in this study. Positive touch was examined during a play-related storytelling task and a reminiscence task (conversation about past emotions). Fathers touched their children positively more frequently during the play-related storytelling task than did mothers. Both mothers and fathers were in closer proximity to their 6-year-olds than their 4-year-olds. Mothers and fathers touched their children positively more frequently when reminiscing than when playing. Finally, 6-year-olds remained closer to their parents than did 4-year-olds. Implications of these findings for future research on children’s socioemotional development are discussed.     

Identifying Mental Disorder from the Faces of Women with Borderline Personality Disorder

Although appearance-based cues can help to diagnose physical illness, visual manifestations of mental disorder may be more elusive. Here, we investigated whether individuals could distinguish women with a serious mental disorder (borderline personality disorder) from demographically- and IQ-matched non-psychiatric controls. Participants rated mentally ill targets as more likely to have a mental disorder from photos more accurately than chance, despite not believing that such judgments were possible. The configuration of facial cues played an important role in these judgments, as interfering with the spatial relationships between facial features reduced participants’ accuracy to chance guessing. Further investigation showed similar results when participants rated the targets for specific mental disorders (borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder) and rated the mentally ill targets as more depressed, angry, anxious, disgusted, emotionally unstable, distressed, and less happy. Moreover, the depression ratings significantly correlated with the targets’ actual depressive symptoms. Thus, individuals may be able to infer aspects of mental disorder from minimal facial cues.     

Female Juvenile Violent Behavior: Bonding Systems and Other Mediating Constructs

The purpose of this research was to examine a conceptual/theoretical model with negative (substance use) and positive (extracurricular activities) mediating factors between several bonding systems and violent behavior among female youth. Since much of the prior researches have focused on both males and females therefore this study is focusing on females only. Data from the 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health was used for this study. For the purpose of this study female research participants between the age of 12–17 were selected (N = 9383). At the stage of bivariate analysis, parental bonding system was omitted from a model before moving onto a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis as most of the correlations between indicators of parental bonding systems and dependent variables were not significant. Revised model with two bonding systems on violent behavior through two mediating constructs, extracurricular activities and substance use were tested through the SEM and Sobel test analyses. This structural model specifies a satisfactory fit with the sample. Several mediating effects within this model, which help lower the occurrence of violent behavior, were also validated.