The status of nutrition education in ACHA college and university health centers.

An assessment of the prevalence and scope of nutrition services offered through 208 randomly selected American College Health Association member student health centers revealed that 79% of the 160 respondents provided some type of nutrition education for students. One-to-one counseling, available at 96% of the institutions, was the most common approach. The larger the school's enrollment, the more likely it was to provide programs in nutrition. All of the institutions with student populations of more than 35,000 offered some type of nutrition service, as did 52% of the 19 schools with enrollments between 2,000 and 5,000. Health educators, nurses, doctors, dietitians, and trained peer educators provided the services, with registered dietitians the most common providers and often coordinators of the programs. Costs to students for nutrition interventions were nominal; weight-management programs were the most expensive and showed the greatest variation in content.     

Changing Local Modes of Economic and Environmental Governance in England: A Tale of Two Areas*

Objectives. Using an urban regime theory approach, the article aims to investigate the degree to which environmental policy in England is devolved to the local level of the state and integrates with local economic governance. Methods. Intensive case study research was undertaken in two local areas of the eastern region of England having divergent economic growth trajectories. Methods included analysis of local media and documentation from local and regional organizations, and 30 primary interviews with strategic local actors. Results. The Cambridge Subregion area is experiencing pressures of economic development, creating conflict around the Green Belt and contested meanings of sustainable development. In Waveney—a declining area in search of growth—local groups have struggled to manage local economic regeneration in an environmentally sustainable manner. Both areas have witnessed new territorial‐institutional developments in relation to environmental policy making, with limited evidence of policy integration at the subregional scale. Conclusion. Despite the emphasis on local policy integration through sustainable development, the relationship between the economy and the environment in England is a focus of conflict and new territorial‐institutional developments. Urban regime theory needs to broaden its focus to include the full variety of interests in local environmental policy and the mechanisms producing new territorial scales of economic and environmental governance.     

CRIME AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN TURBULENT TIMES

We use the exceptional variation in municipality‐level unemployment in Sweden during the 1990s to identify the effect of unemployment on crime. Our findings are as follows: (i) There is a statistically and economically significant effect of general unemployment on the incidence of burglary, auto theft, and drug possession; (ii) we find no evidence for the popular view that youth unemployment matters for crime; (iii) prime‐aged unemployment is robustly correlated with main categories of youthful crimes, a finding consistent with the idea that unstable life conditions of parents have adverse spillover effects on the life‐choices of their children. (JEL: J00, K4)     

Moral Reflexivity and Dramaturgical Action in Social Movement Activism: The Case of the Plowshares and Animal Rights Sweden

Drawing on Durkheim's sociology of morality, which identifies ideals and norms as the key components of morality, this article outlines a theoretical model for understanding how social movements can bring about legitimate social change. Social movement activists, we propose, can be conceptualized as followers and pursuers of sacred ideals. As such, they frequently come into conflict with existing norms in society. To manage this dilemma, activists must downplay their role as norm breakers while emphasizing their identity as followers of ideals. This in turn requires moral reflexivity in the staging of collective action. The article shows how dramaturgical control (Goffman) is exercised towards this end among activists engaged in two social movements in Sweden: the Plowshares peace movement and Animal Rights Sweden. The article further examines the internal stratification, or ‘moral hierarchies’, within the two activist groups in the light of the proposed model. The closer the activists were able to adhere to the sacred ideal, the higher the social status they enjoyed within the group.     

Resolved Parental Infertility and Children’s Educational Achievement

Although difficulty conceiving a child has long been a major medical and social preoccupation, it has not been considered as a predictor of long-term outcomes in children ultimately conceived. This is consistent with a broader gap in knowledge regarding the consequences of parental health for educational performance in offspring. Here we address that omission, asking how resolved parental infertility relates to children’s academic achievement. In a sample of all Swedish births between 1988 and 1995, we find that involuntary childlessness prior to either a first or a second birth is associated with lower academic achievement (both test scores and GPA) in children at age 16, even if the period of infertility was prior to a sibling’s birth rather than the child’s own. Our results support a conceptualization of infertility as a cumulative physical and social experience with effects extending well beyond the point at which a child is born, and emphasize the need to better understand how specific parental health conditions constrain children’s educational outcomes.     

Searching for Innovative Design: Architectural Competitions in the Silvering Swedish Welfare State

The new millennium has seen an increased interest in appropriate housing for the senior part of the Swedish population, defined as those aged 65 years and older. In 2010, the Swedish government launched a 2-year program called “Growing Old, Living Well” that targeted the living conditions of not only older people with few or some needs for homecare services, but also the smaller group of dependent and frail older persons whose everyday living depends upon regular caregiving. The program promoted architectural competitions as a tool for innovation. This article assesses the outcome of 3 architectural competitions that were carried out by 3 municipalities in accordance with the program. It concludes that existing notions about appropriate space for aging populations prevailed, since the competition briefs evolved from existing data and consequently allowed for only a low degree of innovative thinking. Hence, the relationship between architectural design and older people's age-related needs was only addressed indirectly. Further work needs to be done in the area of housing for the Swedish silvering welfare state in order for this factor to become an essential criterion for creating innovative architecture and urban design.     

Pluralism in Project Management: Navigating the Crossroads of Specialization and Fragmentation

Project management is a rapidly expanding subfield of management and organization studies. This paper seeks to make sense of this development and the current state of project management research. It reviews the literature published over the last five decades in 30 leading management and organization journals. In total, 305 articles were included in the data set. The paper proposes a categorization of the published articles into seven ‘schools of thought’: Optimization School, Factor School, Contingency School, Behaviour School, Governance School, Relationship School and Decision School. The schools vary in terms of their main focus and use of the project concept, major research questions, methodological approaches and type of theorizing. It is suggested that a better awareness on how to make use of the schools and the identified perspectives would stimulate cross‐fertilization, unification and thus enhance a pluralistic understanding of projects and project management at the same time as it would prepare research to frame more accurately the problems of contemporary projects. In that respect, the paper offers ideas on how to navigate at the crossroads between specialization and fragmentation, between the search for novel topics and improvements of existing knowledge.     

Does Living in a Fatherless Household Compromise Educational Success? A Comparative Study of Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills

This study addresses the relationship between various family forms and the level of cognitive and non-cognitive skills among 15- to 16-year-old students. We measure cognitive skills using standardized scores in mathematics; non-cognitive abilities are captured by a composite measure of internal locus of control related to mathematics. A particular focus lies on father absence although we also examine the role played by co-residence with siblings and grandparents. We use cross-nationally comparable data on students participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment’s release for 2012. By mapping inequalities by family forms across 33 developed countries, this study provides robust cross-country comparable evidence on the relationship of household structure with both cognitive and non-cognitive skills. The study produces three key results: first, the absence of fathers from the household as well as co-residence with grandparents is associated with adverse outcomes for children in virtually all developed countries. Second, this is generally true in terms of both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, although the disadvantage connected to both family forms is notably stronger in the former than in the latter domain. Finally, there is marked cross-national diversity in the effects associated with the presence in the household of siblings and especially grandparents which furthermore differs across the two outcomes considered.     

From democratic participation to civic resistance: the loss of institutional trust as an outcome of activism in the refugee solidarity movement

Adding to the literature on non‐institutional political action and trust, this article argues that the loss of institutional trust is not only a cause but also an outcome of political activism. Studying the Danish refugee solidarity movement in a mixed‐methods research design including survey and qualitative interview data, the article shows that three kinds of activism – political activism, humanitarian activity, and civil disobedience – relate differently to the loss of trust in the institutions of the Parliament, the legal system, and the police. Political activism primarily affects a loss of trust in the Parliament due to low external efficacy and a closed political opportunity structure. Civil disobedience affects a loss of trust in the legal system and the police due to a perceived lack of procedural justice. Humanitarian activity does not affect a loss of institutional trust because it does not imply interaction with the institutions to the same extent as the other kinds of activism. The consequence of losing trust in the political institutions is not an abandonment of democratic values, nor political apathy, but rather a change in civic engagement from a mode of democratically legitimizing participation in the institutions to a mode of contending and questioning the legitimacy of the political institutions. This finding indicates that in turn loss of institutional trust may cause an increase in extra‐institutional political action which is consistent with the commonly assumed causality in the literature. This leads to a final integrating argument for conceptualizing activism and loss of institutional trust as reinforcing factors in a process where, in line with the main finding of this study, activism may cause a loss of institutional trust which, in turn, may cause additional activism, as argued in the existing literature.