Using a Person-Centered Approach to Examine the Impact of Homelessness on School Absences

Brought on by increasing levels of economic vulnerability, homelessness is a pressing issue for our schools. Homeless students often miss an inordinate amount of school days and are thought to fall at the farthest end of a “continuum of poverty.” Theoretically they have worse outcomes than their peers, though the past 20 years of literature have found inconsistencies in these comparisons. Thus the literature suggests analysis to compare types of students based on outcomes rather than demographic categorizations, a person-centered approach. Using this approach, a comparison of the number of absences for homeless students and their housed peers is made through quantile analysis. Using school administrative data collected over one school year for an entire school district we found that homeless students as an aggregate do not miss significantly more days of school than their poorest peers. However, we found homelessness and poverty dramatically increase the number of absences for children who are in the higher percentiles of absences meaning homelessness has a greater impact on those who miss more days of school in general compared to regular attendees. Findings from this study indicate that homelessness may exacerbate problems rather than cause them. Implications for practice are discussed and directions for future study are proposed.     

The Prevalence of Uncorrected Refractive Errors in Adolescents Incarcerated in a Youth Detention Center

The purpose of this study was to determine the number of residents requiring corrective lenses in a youth detention center for juveniles from 12 to 18 years old over a 2-year period. A greater number of adolescents incarcerated for criminal activity in a detention center had uncorrected refractive errors (34.87 %) as compared to a comparable population in the public school system (22 %). The prevalence of significant refractive errors among incarcerated adolescents in this study is significantly higher than has been reported previously. The current study found a refractive error rate of almost 35 %. This difference can be explained by a number of factors in their social environments and identifies an area for potential intervention to reduce antisocial behavior in this population.     

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.     

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.     

NPO Financial Statement Quality: An Empirical Analysis Based on Benford’s Law

In order to assess the accuracy of the figures reported in NPOs’ financial statements, I perform a digital analysis on Belgian non-profit organizations’ financial statements for accounting years 2007 up to 2012. Specifically, I compare observed frequencies for digits in the second-from-the-left position with expected frequencies based on Benford’s Law. Results based on the full sample indicate that observed frequencies strongly conform to Benford’s Law (and thus suggest a high degree of accuracy of the figures reported in NPOs’ financial statements). Nevertheless, I note statistically significant deviations from Benford’s Law (both for the entire distribution and at the individual digit level). The largest deviation is noted for zeroes in the second position (i.e., a significantly positive deviation), which can be explained based on humans’ reliance upon so-called cognitive reference points. Considering different sub-samples, I note that observed deviations from Benford’s Law are largest for the smallest non-profits and those non-profits that rely most heavily on grants and/or donations.     

Red Cross Society in Imperial China, 1904–1912: A Historical Analysis

The Red Cross Society was introduced to China in the 1900s, when the nation was under the authoritarian reign of Qing dynasty. Famines and rebellions, along with the invasion of foreign military forces, created tremendous humanitarian crises that the corrupted imperial government was incapable to address. The Red Cross model was found to be a pragmatic solution by Chinese philanthropists. Using archived press releases, correspondences, and government statements, the study reconstructs the founding process of the first Chinese Red Cross organization from 1904 to 1912. The analysis reveals that the organization reflected the congruent interest of the imperial court and social elites in preserving the sovereignty and was therefore promoted by key players from both political and civil spheres. The trajectory of Red Cross movement in imperial China supports the synergism perspective of institutional theories. It demonstrates how micro-level factors such as leadership ties and alliances contribute to the interdependence of public and private sectors and facilitate the transformation of traditional charity to modern philanthropy.     

Trust,Social Capital,and the Coordination of Relationships Between the Members of Cooperatives: A Comparison Between Member-Focused Cooperatives and Third-Party-Focused Cooperatives

In recent years, nonprofit scholars have increasingly studied the phenomenon of social enterprises which has become a generic term describing a wider reorientation among third sector organizations. The emergence of social enterprises has also led to a dynamic of hybridization and broadening in the cooperative sector, similar to an earlier dynamic of “economization”, but this time on the other end of the organizational spectrum. This paper aims at developing a fine-grained conceptual understanding of how this organizational dynamic is shaped in terms of member coordination, thus contributing to a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of different organizational forms of cooperatives. Specifically, to highlight the difference to traditional member-focused cooperatives, the paper introduces the term third-party-focused cooperatives for those social enterprises which emphasize economic goals as well as control and ownership by a particular community (typically place-based). The key result of the paper is that with the shift from member- to community-focus in cooperatives, the main coordination mechanism becomes one of norm-based trust on the basis of generalized reciprocity. In contrast to traditional maxim-based trust member coordination on the basis of relation-specific reciprocity, this enables third-party-focused cooperatives to mobilize bridging and linking social capital, facilitating collective action aimed towards the community interest. The findings suggest that this identity shift requires a mutual re-positioning between the cooperative and the nonprofit sector, in terms of umbrellas as well as regulatory and legislative bodies.     

Participation and Local Governance Outcomes: Evidence from Ukraine

As participatory governance approaches to local development get adopted also in transition countries, one of the key questions is how participation actually impacts local governance outcomes. This study examines the link between non-electoral participation and different public goods outcomes in rural Ukraine along with identifying the role of community-based organizations (CBOs). Using a unique survey data from Ukraine, I approach these questions empirically explicitly distinguishing between different public goods outcomes. I find that participation appears to be positively associated with local school and water supply outcomes. In addition, CBOs are found to be associated with better quality of water supply systems motivating a discussion about establishment of service cooperatives for water supply as a functional local governance arrangement.     

Neighborhood Association Participation and Formal Volunteering in Japan

We examine the effect of participation in neighborhood association (NHA) activities on volunteering using the 2010 Japanese General Social Survey data. We find that controlling for established predictors of formal volunteering such as demographic and socioeconomic variables, NHA association participation, either operationalized as a dichotomous or interval variable, positively predicts volunteering. Moreover, some of the established predictors of volunteering (e.g., marital status and associational membership) are useful in predicting NHA participation. Our results indicate a complementary relationship between volunteering and NHA participation. We discuss implications of our study for future research on community volunteering in Japan and elsewhere.