All My Friends Are Doing It: Potentially Offensive Sexual Behavior Perpetration Within Adolescent Social Networks

The current study used social network analysis to investigate peer network and individual predictors of potentially offensive sexual behaviors among high school students. Ninth‐grade students (n = 308; 158 girls) completed surveys assessing their perpetration of potentially offensive sexual behaviors against their peers, as well as measures of their sexualized gender stereotypes and propensity to self‐monitor. Participants selected up to eight of their closest friends from a roster. Results revealed homophily of potentially offensive sexual behaviors, such that adolescents perpetrated similar amounts of physical/verbal, electronic, and homophobic behaviors as their friends. Characteristics of the peer network (e.g., mean network perpetration, centrality of individual, and gender composition) and the individual adolescent (e.g., gender, sexualized gender stereotypes, self‐monitoring) predicted adolescents’ own behavior.     

How a Nonprofitness Orientation Influences Collective Civic Action: The Effects of Civic Engagement and Political Participation

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This research addresses the question of how the institutional frame of “nonprofitness” shapes the civic...     

The Multi-method Comprehensive Review: Synthesis and Analysis when Scholarship is International,Interdisciplinary, and Immense

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This article presents a new strategy for reviewing large, multidisciplinary academic literatures: a multi-method...     

Adolescent Religiosity and School Contexts*

Objectives. Schools serve as the primary social organizations for adolescents, structuring their lives and conveying a variety of skills, norms, and values, but relatively little is known about how schools influence the development of religious belief, attitudes, and behavior during adolescence. We explore how schools' religious norms, coupled with adolescents' pursuit of social status through conformity, affect public and private religiosity. Methods. Employing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we use multilevel modeling to examine the impact of school context on adolescents' public and private religiosity. Results. We find that school norms are influential in shaping both public religious expressions and private devotional activities, but pursuit of social status is a motivation for change across religious contexts only of public religious activity. The effect of social status as a motivator of religious change was moderated by the strength of the adolescent's identification with the school, especially for private religiosity. Conclusions. Schools play a key role in the social development of adolescents, and students' religious beliefs and behaviors are influenced systematically and observably by the type of religious climate within the school.     

Everybody needs good neighbours: an evaluation of an intensive project for families facing eviction

This paper presents details of a largely qualitative evaluation of an intensive multi‐method Project, with a residential component, which aims to help families facing eviction to overcome their housing‐related difficulties. The families served by the Project had a host of other problems related to parenting, with child care and protection issues, addictions and mental health difficulties figuring prominently. Just over half the referrals came from the local authority housing services, with nearly all the remainder coming from the social work department. The majority of families made good progress, but in some cases it proved harder to have an impact on parenting than on tenancy‐related matters. Nevertheless, the Project was deemed to have helped some families stay together or be reunited, resulting in substantial financial savings for social work services. Crucial ingredients were good management, stable staff, shared ‘ownership’ by other agencies, a repertoire of challenging methods, and a holistic approach.     

Informed consent for research on stored blood and tissue samples: a survey of institutional review board practices

Numerous position papers have outlined informed consent recommendations for the collection, storage, and future use of biological samples; however, there currently is no consensus regarding what kinds of information should be included in consent forms. This study aimed to determine whether institutional review boards (IRBs) vary in their informed consent requirements for research on stored biological samples, and whether any variation observed could be correlated to factors such as volume of work, IRB members' familiarity with ethical issues in genetic research, and IRBs' use of either of two policy guidelines as resources. A brief survey was mailed to all IRB chairpersons on a mailing list obtained from the Office for Human Research Protections. Survey questions included whether consent forms for the collection of biological samples for future use address each of six provisions recommended in current guidelines and position statements, and whether IRBs used the Office for Protection from Research Risks' 1993 Protecting Human Research Subjects: Institutional Review Board Guidebook, chapter 5 (hereinafter IRB Guidebook) or the National Bioethics Advisory Commission's 1999 Research Involving Human Biological Materials: Ethical Issues and Policy Guidance, Volume I (hereinafter Report) in their deliberations. Despite a low response rate (22%, 427 respondents), results indicate that IRB practices vary substantially. The degree to which the provisions were included in consent forms was found to correlate positively with IRBs that review a greater volume of protocols annually, those that use the National Bioethics Advisory Commission Report in their deliberations, and those that draw on both the Report and the IRB Guidebook.     

Affirmative Reaction: The Influence of Type of Justification on Nonbeneficiary Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action Plans in Higher Education

It is popularly believed that justifying an affirmative action plan (AAP) through emphasizing the advantages that diverse students can bring to a college campus will increase nonbeneficiary support for the program. However, there has been little empirical support for this proposition, perhaps because previous research has not directly articulated to participants the value of a diverse student body. As such, the current study sought to determine how the explicit framing of an AAP influences subsequent reactions. Both quantitative and qualitative data from 216 White undergraduate participants revealed that the utilitarianism justification that highlighted the benefits of the AAP to both minority and majority students, was the most effective means of increasing support for the plan.