Increasing College Access and Retention Rates of Youth in Foster Care: An Analysis of the Impact of 22 State Tuition Waiver Programs

Youth in foster care face educational disparities in terms of college access, retention, and graduation. To address this, 22 states have implemented tuition waiver programs targeting current and former foster youth. A comparative analysis was conducted of all 22 programs implemented since 2014. Similarities include student eligibility based on youth’s age upon foster care entry, university admission and time in care requirements. Differences include type of expenses covered, time limits on use, program oversight, and funding availability. No differences were found based on political party control, gubernatorial power, and state population composition. Recommendations for policy and practice reform are offered.     

Am I a leader? Examining leader identity development over time

The extent to which someone thinks of him- or herself as a leader (i.e., leader identity) is subject to change in a dynamic manner because of experience and structured intervention, but is rarely studied as such. In this study, we map the trajectories of leader identity development over a course of a seven-week leader development program. Drawing upon identity theory (Kegan, 1983) and self-perception theory (Bem, 1972), we propose that changes in self-perceived leadership skills are associated with changes in leader identity. Using latent growth curve modeling and latent change score analyses as our primary analytical approaches, we analyzed longitudinal data across seven measurement points (N = 98). We find leader identity to develop in a J-shaped pattern. As hypothesized, we find that these changes in leader identity are associated with, and potentially shaped by, changes in leadership skills across time.     

Locality and community: coming to terms with place

The paper seeks to examine how social science has attempted to combine the uniqueness of place with general social processes. Two concepts which have traditionally been used to this end are examined; these are ‘locality’ and ‘community’. It is argued that although community has fallen out of favour, problems associated with the use of ‘locality’ could lead to a revival in the use of the former concept. Case study material from rural Wales is presented to show how the two approaches might usefully be combined.     

Departing from resource-intensive lifestyles: Problems and possibilities in industrialized societies

Any attempt to ensure a sensible response to adverse environmental impacts, or to redirect human behavior along less environmentally deleterious channels, must necessarily clear a formidable array of obstacles. These range from (1) the physical (e.g., road systems and the layouts of towns and cities) through (2) the institutional (e.g., the economic system and the system of social stratification), (3) the ideational (e.g., people's assumptions and priorities about what is acceptable or unacceptable, good or bad, desirable or undesirable), and (4) the demographic to (5) reinforcing experience. Each is in one way or another conducive to the continuation of resource-intensive practices. Yet, countervailing forces do exist, if not to a degree that justifies much optimism, at least to one that justifies cautious hope. These relate to (1) the turnover of both physical stocks and human generations, (2) possibilities that exist for informing people and changing their values, and (3) certain possibilities that the political structure affords for controlling or preventing various types of resource-intensive activity.     

Rational choice and economic behavior

This paper discusses several concepts that can be used to provide a foundation for a unified, theory of rational, economic behavior. First, decision-making is defined to be a process that takes place with reference to both subjective and objective time, that distinguishes between plans and actions, between information and states and that explicitly incorporates the collection and processing of information. This conception of decision making is then related to several important aspects of behavioral economics, the dependence of values on experience, the use of behavioral rules, the occurrence of multiple goals and environmental feedback.Our conclusions are (1) the non-transitivity of observed or revealed preferences is a characteristic of learning and hence is to be expected of rational decision-makers; (2) the learning of values through experience suggests the sensibleness of short time horizons and the making of choices according to flexible utility; (3) certain rules of thumb used to allow for risk are closely related to principles of Safety-First and can also be based directly on the hypothesis that the feeling of risk (the probability of disaster) is identified with extreme departures from recently executed decisions. (4) The maximization of a hierarchy of goals, or of a lexicographical utility function, is closely related to the search for feasibility and the practice of satisficing. (5) When the dim perception of environmental feedback and the effect of learning on values are acknowledged the intertemporal optimality of planned decision trajectories is seen to be a characteristic of subjective not objective time. This explains why decision making is so often best characterized by rolling plans. In short, we find that economic man - like any other - is an existential being whose plans are based on hopes and fears and whose every act involves a leap of faith.This paper is based on a talk presented at the Conference, New Beginnings in Economics, Akron, Ohio, March 15, 1969. Work on this paper was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.     

Advances in leader and leadership development: A review of 25 years of research and theory

The development of effective leaders and leadership behavior is a prominent concern in organizations of all types. We review the theoretical and empirical literature on leader and leadership development published over the past 25 years, primarily focusing on research published in The Leadership Quarterly. Compared to the relatively long history of leadership research and theory, the systematic study of leadership development (broadly defined to also include leader development) has a moderately short history. We examine intrapersonal and interpersonal issues related to the phenomena that develop during the pursuit of effective leadership, describe how development emerges with an emphasis on multi-source or 360-degree feedback processes, review longitudinal studies of leadership development, and investigate methodological and analytical issues in leader and leadership development research. Future research directions to motivate and guide the study of leader and leadership development are also discussed.     

A theoretical analysis of antecedents of young couples’ fertility decisions and outcomes

Longitudinal survey data from 509 couples who at Time 1 interview had recently married or had their first child did not support the hypothesis that demographic factors influence fertility intentions, decisions, and outcomes only indirectly through their effects on attitudes and motivations. Husbands’ and wives’ attitudes exerted reciprocal influence on one another. However, while husbands’ sex-role traditionalism and motivation for parenthood strongly influenced wives’ traditionalism and motivation in the case of recently married couples, this pattern was reversed for riew parents. Birth control use was directly affected by wives’ fertility intentions, but not by husbands’ intentions. Difficulties in examining couple interaction variables such as relative power and the possible limitations of fitting these data to a complex theoretical model using LISREL are discussed.