Self-Esteem,Life Satisfaction,and Positive Future Perception among at-Risk and Comparison Group Participants in National Civic Service

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on a program designed to engage at-risk youth in the National Civic Service (NCS) in Israel with the goal of enabling them to better integrate into normative adult lives. This exploratory study employed a cross-sectional design and compared groups of at-risk female volunteers (N = 426) with comparison groups of not at-risk participants in the NCS (N = 456). For both of them, three sub-groups were examined at different stages of their service: the beginning, near the end, and about one year after finishing the service. In both the at-risk and comparison groups, self-esteem was higher among the alumni compared to those at earlier stages of the program. Life satisfaction was generally much lower among the at-risk group, but after service completion, both groups reported higher life satisfaction. There were no significant differences between the groups in their future perceptions. The implications of these findings for policy and practice are discussed.     

A regression-based approach for estimating primary and secondary particulate matter intake fractions.

One of the common challenges for life cycle impact assessment and risk assessment is the need to estimate the population exposures associated with emissions. The concept of intake fraction (a unitless term representing the fraction of material or its precursor released from a source that is eventually inhaled or ingested) can be used when limited site data are available or the number of sources to model is large. Although studies have estimated intake fractions for some pollutant-source combinations, there is a need to quickly and accurately estimate intake fractions for sources and settings not previously evaluated. It would be expected that limited source or site information could be used to yield intake fraction estimates with reasonable accuracy. To test this theory, we developed regression models to predict intake fractions previously estimated for primary fine particles (PM2.5) and secondary sulfate and nitrate particles from power plants and mobile sources in the United States. Our regression models were able to predict pollutant-specific intake fractions with R2 between 0.53 and 0.86 and equations that reflected expected relationships (e.g., intake fraction increased with population density, stack height influenced the intake fraction of primary but not secondary particles). Further analysis would be needed to generalize beyond this case study and construct models applicable across source categories and settings, but our analysis demonstrates that inclusion of a limited number of parameters can significantly reduce the uncertainty in population-average exposure estimates.     

Serving the army as secretaries: intersectionality,multi‐level contract and subjective experience of citizenship

With the growing elusiveness of the state apparatus in late modernity, military service is one of the last institutions to be clearly identified with the state, its ideologies and its policies. Therefore, negotiations between the military and its recruits produce acting subjects of citizenship with long‐lasting consequences. Arguing that these negotiations are regulated by multi‐level (civic, group, and individual) contracts, we explore the various meanings that these contracts obtain at the intersectionality of gender, class, and ethnicity; and examine how they shape the subjective experience of soldierhood and citizenship. More particularly, we analyse the meaning of military service in the retrospective life stories of Israeli Jewish women from various ethno‐class backgrounds who served as army secretaries – a low‐status, feminine gender‐typed occupation within a hyper‐masculine organization. Findings reveal that for women of the lower class, the organizing cultural schema of the multi‐level contract is that of achieving respectability through military service, which means being included in the national collective. Conversely, for middle‐class women, it is the sense of entitlement that shapes their contract with the military, which they expect to signify and maintain their privileged status. Thus, while for the lower class, the multi‐level contract is about inclusion within the boundaries of the national collective, for the dominant groups, this contract is about reproducing social class hierarchies within national boundaries.     

IT TAKES TWO: AN EXPLANATION FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE

This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the democratic peace hypothesis (i.e., the observation that democracies rarely fight one another). We show that, when information asymmetries and strategic complements are present in the conflict resolution game, the strategic interaction between two democracies differs from that of any other dyad. In our model, the interaction of two democracies produces the highest probability that a conflict will be peacefully resolved. But, it takes two democracies for peace; a conflict involving only one democracy will not be resolved in a peaceful way more often than a conflict involving two nondemocratic regimes. (JEL: D82, D74)     

On the Limits of Communication in Multidimensional Cheap Talk: A Comment

We analyze a cheap talk game, à la Crawford and Sobel, in a multidimensional state and policy space. A feature of the multidimensional state space is that communication on one dimension often reveals information on others. We show how this feature imposes bounds on communication.