The Rules of (Dis)engagement: Black Youth and Their Strategies for Navigating Police Contact

Prior work on youth–police relations examines young people's general perceptions of the police, their differential treatment by police officers, and officers' discretion in dealing with youth. Yet researchers have largely neglected the question of how young people attempt to shape these encounters. I address this critical gap, while also incorporating the experiences of “on track” youth and young women—two groups that are not exempt from police contact but traditionally ignored in the youth–police literature. Drawing on semistructured group and individual interviews with 19 black young people in New York City, I investigate the strategies they employ or subscribe to in navigating police contact. Three types of strategies emerged from my analysis: avoidance, management, and symbolic resistance. Avoidance strategies are marked by young people's attempts to preemptively steer clear of officers on the street. Management strategies are employed by young people during police encounters to limit risk or harm, while symbolic resistance is a subtle tactic used by some youth to preserve their dignity in these interactions. This study also considers the gender differences in respondents' approaches and offers new insights into how they assess their police interactions in an era of highly publicized incidents of police brutality.     

Testing the Effectiveness of Fundraiser Job Titles in Charitable Bequest and Complex Gift Planning

Traditional fundraiser job titles are often institution centered, focusing on the benefits of fundraising as “institutional advancement” or “institutional development.” Such institution‐centered job titles may not be as effective with donors given the modern shift toward donor‐centered philanthropy. Alternative job titles can be gift centered (for example, “major gifts”) or donor centered (for example, “donor advising”). A survey of 3,188 respondents tested sixty‐three job titles in four charitable scenarios: a charitable bequest gift, a gift of stock, a gift of real estate, and a charitable gift annuity. Measured by which person donors would be more likely to contact to discuss each donation, the worst‐performing titles were the traditional institution‐focused fundraiser job titles, in particular those using “advancement,” “institutional advancement,” or “development.” This was also true when examining only respondents who had made large gifts ($500+) to a charity. Traditional institution‐focused job titles are both the most commonly used and the worst performing. Nonprofit managers may do well to consider the donor's perspective when selecting job titles for fundraisers rather than following traditional industry practices.     

Your lying,incompetent and selfish member of Congress: Cynical appeals in U.S. Senate advertising

Scholars still do not fully understand what activates cynicism in citizens. Although many expect that negative campaigning contributes to this, no consistent evidence has been found. This research introduces a new measure of appeals to cynicism that expands the commonly used positive–negative taxonomy of tone in advertising. Through a content analyses of more than 600 political advertisements aired during U.S. Senate elections, we identify the extent to which candidates use cynical appeals and the conditions under which these are used. We find that appeals to cynicism are common, are distinct from negative appeals, and that most often, ad sponsors target opponents with cynical appeals, describing them as selfish, dishonest and incompetent. Cynicism appears to be a central part of American campaign rhetoric, used by all sorts of candidates, regardless of party, in many different situations. The prevalence of appeals to cynicism may help explain rising cynicism among the public.     

Information Seeking about Global Climate Change among Adolescents: The Role of Risk Perceptions, Efficacy Beliefs and Parental Influences

Global climate change is likely to have significant impacts on public health. Effective communication is critical to informing public decision making and behavior to mitigate climate change. An effective method of audience segmentation, the risk perception attitude (RPA) framework has been previously tested with other health behaviors and classifies people into 4 groups on the basis of their perceptions of risk and beliefs about personal efficacy. The 4 groups - indifference (low risk, weak efficacy), proactive (low risk, strong efficacy), avoidance (high risk, weak efficacy), and responsive (high risk, strong efficacy) - are hypothesized to differ in their self-protective behaviors and in their motivations to seek information. In this paper, we extend the RPA framework in two ways. First, we use it at the household level to determine whether parental classifications into the 4 groups are associated with their teenage children's classification into the same 4 groups. Second, we predict adolescent information-seeking behaviors on the basis of their and their parents' membership in the 4 RPA groups. Results (N = 523 parent-adolescent pairs) indicated that parental membership in the 4 RPA groups was significantly associated with children's membership in the same 4 groups. Furthermore, the RPA framework was a significant predictor of adolescent information-seeking: those in the responsive and avoidance groups sought more information on climate change than the indifference group. Family communication on global warming was positively associated with adolescents' information-seeking. Implications for interventions are discussed.     

Modeling censored data using modified lambda family

In the present article we propose the modified lambda family (MLF) which is the Freimer, Mudholkar, Kollia, and Lin (FMKL) parametrization of generalized lambda distribution (GLD) as a model for censored data. The expressions for probability weighted moments of MLF are derived and used to estimate the parameters of the distribution. We modified the estimation technique using probability weighted moments. It is shown that the distribution provides reasonable fit to a real censored data.     

Discursive psychology as a method of analysis for the study of couple and family therapy

The field of couple and family therapy has benefitted from evidence generated from qualitative approaches. Evidence developed from approaches relying on language and social interaction using naturally occurring recordings of real‐world practice has the benefit of facilitating practice‐based recommendations and informing practice. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of one approach to discourse analysis, Discursive Psychology (DP), demonstrating how a social constructionist framework and focus on discourse can provide an important contribution to the field of therapy. To illustrate the methodological decision‐making process for researchers and/or practitioners who utilize DP, we draw upon a video‐recorded therapeutic session involving Tom Andersen. To conclude, we make recommendations for practitioners using DP to explore and examine therapeutic practice.