Coping with peer victimization predicts peer outcomes across the transition to middle school

The present study examined strategies for coping with peer victimization as predictors of peer victimization experiences and broader peer relationship outcomes across the transition to middle school, and tested for possible gender differences in these associations. Participants included 123 early adolescents (M_age = 12.03 years at T1; 50% males; 58.5% European Americans, 35% African Americans, 6.5% of other races/ethnicities) who reported on strategies for coping with peer victimization at T1 (summer before the transition to middle school) as well as experiences of peer victimization and loneliness at T1 and T2 (spring of the first year of middle school). Teachers reported on peer victimization and peer competence at T1 and T2. Conflict resolution predicted higher teacher‐reported peer competence. In contrast, revenge‐seeking predicted higher self‐reported peer victimization (among girls but not boys) and loneliness, and support‐seeking predicted higher teacher‐reported peer victimization and lower teacher‐reported peer competence. In addition, cognitive distancing predicted lower teacher‐reported peer victimization and lower self‐reported loneliness among boys but not girls. Results are discussed with reference to the specific context of peer victimization and developmental period of early adolescence.     

Is 60 the New 50? Examining Changes in Biological Age Over the Past Two Decades

Increasing life expectancy has been interpreted as improving health of a population. However, mortality is not always a reliable proxy for the pace of aging and could instead reflect achievement in keeping ailing people alive. Using data from NHANES III (1988–1994) and NHANES IV (2007–2010), we examined how biological age, relative to chronological age, changed in the United States between 1988 and 2010, while estimating the contribution of changes in modifiable health behaviors. Results suggest that biological age is lower for more recent periods; however, the degree of improvement varied across age and sex groups. Overall, older adults experienced the greatest improvement or decreases in biological age. Males, especially those in the youngest and oldest groups, experienced greater declines in biological age than females. These differences were partially explained by age- and sex-specific changes in behaviors, such as smoking, obesity, and medication use. Slowing the pace of aging, along with increasing life expectancy, has important social and economic implications; thus, identifying modifiable risk factors that contribute to cohort differences in health and aging is essential.     

Teaching Note—Diversity and Difference Through a Rural Lens

This teaching note demonstrates how the PEN-3 cultural model provides an opportunity to address, embrace, and achieve cultural competence among social work programs. By facilitating a more complex and nuanced understanding of diversity and difference, the PEN-3 model allows social work students and practitioners alike to move beyond a historic understanding of diversity and difference to an awareness that truly addresses the intersectionality of the multiple dimensions of diversity, including place diversity. This teaching note particularly focuses on the importance of understanding how place diversity, or the unique social and environmental context where individuals, families, and communities are embedded, influences the interactions and individual experiences among rural individuals and their subsequent health outcomes.     

Migration,Imagination and Identity in Modern Sarawak

This analysis of changing perceptions of ethnic identity in Sarawak revolves around migration and imagination. The research is based on a case study of one longhouse, Levu Lahanan, and its imagined community from the mid-1980s on the Balui River to their resettlement in the Bakun Resettlement Scheme in 1999. One of fifteen longhouse communities belonging to five different ethnic groups, they were resettled to make way for Bakun Dam, which was completed in 2012. My use of the term imagination is linked to Sarawak state planning in organising the staged migration of the fifteen longhouse communities, the appeal to emerging Christian communities by calling the operation Exodus, and the exercise in salvage ethnography by recording oral histories, songs and other evidence of migration and difference. My argument is linked to recent developments in communication technology in the form of Facebook, WhatsApp and mobile phones which link the Lahanan longhouse and its urban and international diasporas. In their imagination, if not in reality, members of the diaspora return to their apartments of origin to revive their sense of belonging to a longhouse community, a place and an ethnic identity in a time of state, national and global change.     

When Heterosexuality is Questioned: Stifling Suspicion Through Public Displays of Heterosexual Identity

This study examined public heterosexual identity management practices of heterosexual-identified young adults in the United States. Analysis of 415 participants’ written narratives indicated that 41% (n = 169) described consciously engaging in public displays of their heterosexual status in relation to suspicion about their sexual orientation. This article describes our findings regarding five aspects of these narratives of suspicion: types of suspicion, causes of suspicion, reasons for concern about suspicion, the types of public displays of heterosexual status employed to quell suspicion, and intended audiences for these displays. Overall, the results indicated that heterosexual identity suspicion is multifaceted, this suspicion serves as a catalyst for public displays of heterosexual status, and the climate of suspicion described by our participants reflects and reinforces contemporary heterosexism.     

Post-truth and public relations: Special section introduction

With spindoctoring, publicity seeking stunts and evidence of mal-practice, public relations is easily associated with the development of post-truth society. The elevation of bullshit as political coinage presents a challenge for the rational public debate which the public relations profession at large should have an interest in maintaining. In this introduction, we briefly highlight some of these challenges for public relations. We point to how papers in the special section tie into these challenges, by for instance, helping to understand the construction of truth, how to construct a defense for legitimate public relations and engage with publics, as well as to build a professional practice through developing and measuring communication.     

Illustration of a Method to Incorporate Preference Uncertainty in Benefit–Cost Analysis

Benefit–cost analysis is widely used to evaluate alternative courses of action that are designed to achieve policy objectives. Although many analyses take uncertainty into account, they typically only consider uncertainty about cost estimates and physical states of the world, whereas uncertainty about individual preferences, thus the benefit of policy intervention, is ignored. Here, we propose a strategy to integrate individual uncertainty about preferences into benefit–cost analysis using societal preference intervals, which are ranges of values over which it is unclear whether society as a whole should accept or reject an option. To illustrate the method, we use preferences for implementing a smart grid technology to sustain critical electricity demand during a 24‐hour regional power blackout on a hot summer weekend. Preferences were elicited from a convenience sample of residents in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. This illustrative example shows that uncertainty in individual preferences, when aggregated to form societal preference intervals, can substantially change society's decision. We conclude with a discussion of where preference uncertainty comes from, how it might be reduced, and why incorporating unresolved preference uncertainty into benefit–cost analyses can be important.     

Verteilungseffekte von Finanzialisierung

Financialisation is often associated with rising income inequality. The article describes the major aspects of financialisation in the foreign, financial, business and household sector, and identifies several hypotheses how financialisation affects functional income distribution. We discuss enhanced exit options of firms, rising financial overhead costs for businesses, increased competition in capital markets, and weakened bargaining power of workers due to indebtedness. The different hypotheses are operationalised through empirical measures and their effect on the wage share is tested econometrically by means of a panel data set of 14 OECD countries over the period 1992–2014. We find statistically significant negative effects of financial payments of firms and financial openness on the wage share.     

Connectivity and Resilience: A Multidimensional Analysis of Infrastructure Impacts in the Southwestern Amazon

Infrastructure is a worldwide policy priority for national development via regional integration into the global economy. However, economic, ecological and social research draws contrasting conclusions about the consequences of infrastructure. We present a synthetic approach to the study of infrastructure, focusing on a multidimensional treatment of indicators of connectivity and resilience. As our study case, we adopt a tri-national frontier in the southwestern Amazon being integrated by a highway, and use survey data for rural leaders to evaluate the relationship of community connectivity to market towns and social-ecological resilience. The findings show varying relationships among different dimensions of connectivity and resilience, which bear implications regarding indicator approaches to the study of infrastructure impacts.