Strategic planning for endgame

This article is based on the author's study of 61 firms managing businesses in environments of declining demand. It suggests ways in which firms might better prepare for this problem by managing their own exit barriers and by making strategic investments to affect the level of their competitors' exit barriers.     

Collaboration and competition in a children's health initiative coalition: a network analysis

Activating communities to achieve public health change and initiate policy reform usually requires collective action from many entities. This case study analyzes inter-organizational networks among members of a coalition created to expand health insurance coverage to uninsured children in a large metropolitan area. Six networks were measured: collaboration, competition, formal agreements, receive funding from, send funding to, and greater communication. The response rate was 65.8% (50 of the 76 active members). Positive network questions such as “who do you collaborate with” elicited many network choices whereas negative ones such as “who do you compete with” elicited few. The collaboration network had a core–periphery structure and analysis showed that a large network can be reduced to a small set of core organizations one-sixth the size of the whole. Centrality (out- and in-degree) was associated with perceived organizational function and perceived barriers to success. For example, organizations that received many choices as collaboration partners were more likely to perceive the coalition functioned well than those who received few choices. The study suggests that perceptions of organizational performance are associated with position in the network, central members are more likely to perceive the organization performs well than those on the periphery.     

Indoor tanning and problem behavior

OBJECTIVE: The authors examined factors predicting college students' use of tanning beds. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Undergraduate students (N = 745) at a large Northeastern university participated in the study by answering a survey measuring tanning behavior and other psychosocial variables, including sensation seeking, self-esteem, tanning image beliefs, and friends' tanning bed use. RESULTS: All 3 systems from problem behavior theory predicted past tanning bed use and intention to use tanning beds. The authors observed a positive association between sensation seeking and intention to use tanning beds. Tanning image beliefs were positively associated with both past tanning behavior and intention to use tanning beds. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions focusing on friend and acquaintance social network influences may be more effective than health-risk campaigns in reducing tanning bed use.     

Effects of social desirability on students' self-reporting of partner abuse perpetration and victimization

Little is still known about the degree to which social desirability affects reports of partner abuse. The current study builds on existing research exploring the relationship between social desirability and partner abuse reports by analyzing 49 male and 155 female students' responses to the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2) and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSDS). Sex differences were not associated with partner abuse rates, regardless of type, severity, and violence role. Women had significantly higher social desirability scores than men, and women's MCSDS scores were negatively correlated with partner abuse perpetration and victimization rates. Social desirability was a significant predictor of psychological abuse perpetration, whereas gender was a significant predictor of sexual coercion perpetration. In all partner abuse cases, however, social desirability and gender accounted for less than 10% of the variance in partner abuse reports.     

Tropophilia: A Study of People,Place and Lifestyle Travel

This paper explores the changing relations between people and place that are set in motion through mobility. Examining the mobilities of lifestyle travellers, it argues that new relations are sought by this group that undermines traditional assumptions of stability and preservation in the person–place relation. In their stead, lifestyle travellers seek dynamism, change and instability in their engagements with place. This situation suggests that the traditional recognition of the need for a rooted, static and stable set of relations with place – i.e. topophilia – can be supplemented by the love of mobility, change and transformation in the person–place relation – coined tropophilia. The paper raises the important point that a desired connection between ‘people’on one hand and ‘place’ on the other may only occur when their respective paces and trajectories positively coincide.     

Fertility Decline,Girls’ Well-being,and Gender Gaps in Children’s Well-being in Poor Countries

The influences of recent dramatic declines in fertility on girls’ and boys’ well-being in poorer countries are understudied. In panels of 67–75 poorer countries, using 152–185 Demographic and Health Surveys spanning 1985–2008, we examined how declining total fertility and women’s increasing median age at first birth were associated with changes in girls’ well-being and gender gaps in children’s well-being, as reflected in their survival, nutrition, and access to preventive healthcare. In adjusted random-effects models, these changes in fertility were associated with gains in girls’ survival at ages 1–4 years, vaccination coverage at ages 12–23 months, and nutrition at 0–36 months (for women’s later first childbearing). Declining total fertility was associated with similar gains for boys and girls with respect to vaccination coverage but intensified gender gaps in mortality at ages 1–4 years and malnutrition at ages 0–36 months, especially in higher-son-preference populations. Later increases in women’s median age at first birth—reflecting more equitable gender norms—were associated with declines in these gaps. Promoting equitable investments in children through family planning programs in higher-fertility societies is warranted.     

Measuring Attitudes About Intimate Partner Violence Against Women: The ATT-IPV Scale

In lower-income settings, women more often than men justify intimate partner violence (IPV). Yet, the role of measurement invariance across gender is unstudied. We developed the ATT-IPV scale to measure attitudes about physical violence against wives in 1,055 married men and women ages 18–50 in My Hao district, Vietnam. Across 10 items about transgressions of the wife, women more often than men agreed that a man had good reason to hit his wife (3 % to 92 %; 0 % to 67 %). In random split-half samples, one-factor exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (N ₁ = 527) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (N ₂ = 528) models for nine items with sufficient variability had significant loadings (0.575–0.883; 0.502–0.897) and good fit (RMSEA = 0.068, 0.048; CFI = 0.951, 0.978, TLI = 0.935, 0.970). Three items had significant uniform differential item functioning (DIF) by gender, and adjustment for DIF revealed that measurement noninvariance was partially masking men’s lower propensity than women to justify IPV. A CFA model for the six items without DIF had excellent fit (RMSEA = 0.019, CFI = 0.994, TLI = 0.991) and an attitudinal gender gap similar to the DIF-adjusted nine-item model, suggesting that the six-item scale reliably measures attitudes about IPV across gender. Researchers should validate the scale in urban Vietnam and elsewhere and decompose DIF-adjusted gender attitudinal gaps.     

Education and Social Policy in Central Asia: The Next Stage of the Transition

This paper discusses the challenges facing the education system of Central Asia and evaluates how these have been addressed in the market economy. We first review the evidence on the economic return to education and determine how the rewards to different levels of education changed during the transition. We then examine the trends in school enrolment and evaluate whether changes in supply or demand explain the enrolment trends we observe. Finally, we evaluate the efficiency of the delivery of education and whether market forces have improved the management of schools. We conclude with a summary of the economic and policy lessons derived thus far from the educational transition. The paper uses aggregate administrative data supplemented with survey data, primarily from the Kyrgyz Republic and Kazakhstan, on enrolment, completion, and expenditures.