Effects of child support and welfare policies on nonmarital teenage childbearing and motherhood

This paper is an assessment of the impact of child support enforcement and welfare policies on nonmarital teenage childbearing and motherhood. We derive four hypotheses about the effects of policies on nonmarital teenage childbearing and motherhood. We propose that teenage motherhood and school enrollment are joint decisions for teenage girls. Based on individual trajectories during ages 12–19, our analysis uses an event history model for nonmarital teenage childbearing and a dynamic model of motherhood that is jointly determined with school enrollment. We find some evidence that child support policies indirectly reduce teen motherhood by increasing the probability of school enrollment, which, in turn, reduces the probability of teen motherhood. This finding suggests that welfare offices may wish to place greater weight on outreach programs that inform more teenagers of the existence of strong child support enforcement measures. Such programs might reduce nonmarital teen motherhood further and thus reduce the need for welfare support and child support enforcement in the long run.

Piloting different approaches to personalised offender management in the English criminal justice system

Various approaches to personalisation are well-established in the UK social care sector and are now starting to ‘travel’ to other sectors. In this paper we report findings from an evaluation of a pilot to test elements of personalisation in the management of offenders in probation services within the English criminal justice system. Following a review of evidence from social care, three different approaches to personalised-practice were developed and tested on a small-scale in three separate sites. The evaluation finds that all three approaches were implemented reasonably successfully, but challenges were identified including that personalised approaches are more time-consuming, that staff need support to exercise professional discretion and that balancing greater choice with managing criminogenic risk requires new ways of conceptualising the relationship between case manager and service user. Overall, ‘deeper’ approaches to personalisation, such as co-production, will take time to emerge. This paper makes two important contributions to the debate on personalisation in public services. First, it addresses the question of how transferable the concept of personalisation is from the social care sector to other sectors in the UK, in this case the criminal justice system. Secondly, it outlines a methodology for developing and evaluating personalisation pilots, prior to a wider roll-out.     

The Influence of Career Planning on Career Thoughts in STEM‐Interested Undergraduates

Undergraduate career planning courses have shown efficacy in decreasing students’ negative career thoughts; however, universities have minimally applied these courses to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) populations. This study compared the influence of a STEM‐focused career planning course for undecided STEM students with a seminar course for decided STEM majors. An analysis of covariance with covariate adjustment revealed that undecided career planning students had lower adjusted mean scores on a measure of negative career thinking than the decided STEM majors after the first semester of college. The results provide support for the efficacy of STEM‐focused career planning courses and measuring negative career thoughts with STEM undergraduates.     

How Women Engineers Do and Undo Gender: Consequences for Gender Equality

The image of engineering as a masculine profession has reproduced the perception that engineering is unsuitable for women. While various strategies have been used to try to increase the number of women entering engineering education and employment, their success has been limited. At the same time it has been argued that the way gender is ‘done’ in work can help diminish or increase inequality between the sexes. Using empirical research exploring women engineering students’ workplace experiences, this article considers how gender performance explains their behaviour and attitudes. Butler implied that doing gender can result in our being ‘undone’. This was specifically found to be the case for the women students in this study, who performed their gender in a particular way in order to gain male acceptance. In doing this they utilized certain coping strategies: acting like one of the boys, accepting gender discrimination, achieving a reputation, seeing the advantages over the disadvantages and adopting an ‘anti‐woman’ approach. These strategies are part of women's enculturation and professionalization in engineering, yet they also fail to value femaleness. In ‘doing’ engineering, women often ‘undo’ their gender. Such gender performance does nothing to challenge the gendered culture of engineering, and in many ways contributes to maintaining an environment that is hostile to women.     

Impulse Control Disorder Behaviors Associated with Pramipexole Used to Treat Fibromyalgia

Objective: Compulsivity has been associated with use of dopamine agonists used to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD). Increasing use of these agents to treat fibromyalgia (FM) raises concern for this unexpected toxicity in a new group of patients. This is the first report of compulsive gambling and shopping among patients taking dopamine agonists for treatment of FM. Design: A retrospective chart review of all patients in a large, active FM research practice was used to identify compulsivity associated with dopamine agonists and describe its remission following dug withdrawal. Results: Of 3006 patients with FM treated between 2002 and 2006, 1356 had taken ≥1 dose of a dopamine agonist ( >95% pramipexole). Twenty-one (3 male, 18 female) were identified with compulsive gambling (33%), shopping (40%) or both (27%) after taking a 4.5 mg mean dose of pramipexole at bedtime for 14.4 ± 14.9 months. Compulsivity resolved in 3–10 days for 19 of 21 patients and by 3 months for all following a monitored, compulsory tapered discontinuation over 7 days. Conclusions: While biologic aspects of PD and FM differ considerably, compulsive gambling and shopping have become important, yet unexpected concerns related to use of dopamine agonists for patients with FM and their treating clinicians.     

Implications of Ethnic Identity Exploration and Ethnic Identity Affirmation and Belonging for Intergroup Attitudes Among Adolescents

The present paper develops and tests two temporal models of the relationships among adolescents' ethnic identity exploration, ethnic identity affirmation and belonging, and attitudes toward their racial/ethnic ingroup and outgroups. Structural equation models for Euro‐Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos revealed that all hypothesized relationships were positive and significant. The model in which ethnic identity exploration (at Time 1) predicts ethnic identity affirmation and belonging (at Time 2) was superior to the alternative model in which the relationship between them was reversed (i.e., affirmation and belonging at Time 1 predicts exploration at Time 2). Results (1) support the importance of exploration as a basis for establishing a secure attachment to one's ethnic identity, which, in turn, has positive implications for attitudes toward one's own group and other groups and (2) suggest that maintenance of ethnic identity is compatible with positive attitudes toward ethnic outgroups.     

Tinder and humanitarian hook-ups: the erotics of social media racism

In March 2014, at the height of the popularity of the hook-up application Tinder, The Guardian published the “Seven Shades of Cliché” of user profiles claiming that Humanitarians of Tinder are the “creepiest ticket yet to laidsville.” Humanitarians of Tinder are Tinder users (a hook-up application) who have selected to present images of themselves in humanitarian or volunteer settings outside of the West (or Global North, developed world). With a Tumblr devoted to this subgroup of Tinder users, and mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, and the feminist blog Jezebel following this story, Humanitarians of Tinder evoke dialogue about the intersections of sexiness and racialized benevolence. This article takes seriously Humanitarians of Tinder to think through the connections between social media hook-ups, racial affect, feminist studies humanitarianism, and racisms in development. It asks: why do people use humanitarian photos to generate hook-ups on social media? How does holding an African baby make someone “hot”?     

The Impact of Speed of Play in Gambling on Psychological and Behavioural Factors: A Critical Review

Conceptually, there is a common association between gambling games with fast speeds of play and problem gambling. This relationship however, is largely correlational in nature, which comes at the expense of carefully controlled empirical investigation. Research that does exist aimed towards investigating the impact of gambling speeds on psychological and behavioural factors, is in its relative infancy, and the research possesses disparate methodologies and variables of interest. The aims of the current review is therefore to evaluate and summarise the existing body of evidence relating to speed of play in gambling, as well as discuss how this evidence can be used to inform harm minimisation approaches aimed at facilitating self-control during gambling. Eleven studies were selected for review based on the inclusion criteria, comprising nine experimental and two qualitative studies (one self-report focus group study and one observational study). There was a consistent finding across studies that games with faster speeds of play were preferred and rated as more exciting for all gamblers, ranging from non-problem to problem gamblers. Of concern, was the repeated finding that fast games are particularly appealing to those suffering with a gambling problem. Behavioural results were more inconsistent across studies, though the general trend supports the notion that games with faster speeds of play encourage more wagers, longer game play, and caused players, particularly problem gamblers, to experience difficulty in ceasing gambling. The implications of these findings for gambling policy, harm minimisation approaches, and future research are discussed.