Using Service‐Customer Matrices in Strategic Analysis of Nonprofits

This article demonstrates the value of service‐customer matrices (SCMs) for managers performing strategic analysis of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Some of the benefits of using SCMs are understanding the portfolio of businesses; clarifying what sponsors and clients value; identifying rivals, key attributes, and revenues on a service‐customer segment basis; and understanding and formulating positioning strategy.     

The Association Between Natural Amenities, Rural Population Growth, and Long-Term Residents' Economic Well-Being

Population growth in rural areas characterized by high levels of natural amenities has recently received substantial research attention. A noted concern with amenity-driven rural population growth is its potential to raise local costs-of-living while yielding only low-wage service sector employment for long-term residents. The work presented here empirically models long-term rural residents' economic well-being, making use of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In general, the results suggest that long-term rural families residing in high-growth amenity and recreation areas tend to have higher annual incomes than do their counterparts in non-growth amenity/recreation areas, regardless of the sex, race, or age of the family head. However, higher costs-of-living in these areas supplant any relative gains in income. As such, these analyses provide empirical evidence of patterns inferred by earlier anecdotal evidence and case studies.     

Low birth weight,social factors,and developmental outcomes among children in the United States

We used six waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Data (1986-1996) to assess the relative impact of adverse birth outcomes vis-à-vis social risk factors on children's developmental outcomes. Using the Peabody Individual Achievement Tests of Mathematics and Reading Recognition as our outcome variables, we also evaluated the dynamic nature of biological and social risk factors from ages 6 to 14. We found the following: (1) birth weight is significantly related to developmental outcomes, net of important social and economic controls; (2) the effect associated with adverse birth outcomes is significantly more pronounced at very low birth weights (< 1,500 grams) than at moderately low birth weights (1,500-2,499 grams); (3) whereas the relative effect of very low-birth-weight status is large, the effect of moderately low weight status, when compared with race/ethnicity and mother's education, is small; and (4) the observed differentials between moderately low-birth-weight and normal-birth-weight children are substantially smaller among older children in comparison with younger children.     

Population Growth in High‐Amenity Rural Areas: Does it Bring Socioeconomic Benefits for Long‐Term Residents?*

OBJECTIVE: A widely noted concern with amenity-driven rural population growth is its potential to yield only low-wage service-sector employment for long-term residents, while raising local costs of living. This research examines change in socioeconomic status during the 1990s for long-term residents of high-amenity, high-growth rural counties in the United States. METHODS: Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, in combination with county-level information, we estimate growth-curve models to examine the extent to which the socioeconomic status of long-term residents is associated with amenity-related in-migration. RESULTS: We find that, on average, residents in high-growth, amenity-rich rural areas have higher income growth over time and higher levels of initial occupational prestige compared to those from other rural areas, but that socioeconomic gains are primarily for individuals with low baseline prestige. CONCLUSIONS: The socioeconomic gains made by long-term residents of high-growth, amenity-rich rural areas associated with net in-migration may be limited to individuals with low initial prestige and growth may be due to low-skill service-sector jobs.     

Population Composition,Public Policy,and the Genetics of Smoking

In this article, we explore the effect of public policy on the extent to which genes influence smoking desistance. Using a sample of adult twins (n _mz = 363, n _dz = 233) from a large population registry, we estimate Cox proportional hazards models that describe similarity in the timing of smoking desistance among adult twin pairs. We show that identical twin pairs are significantly more likely to quit smoking within a similar time frame compared with fraternal twin pairs. Importantly, we then show that genetic factors for smoking desistance increase in importance following restrictive legislation on smoking behaviors that occurred in the early and mid-1970s. These findings support the social push perspective and make important contributions to the social demography and genetic epidemiology of smoking as well as to the gene-environment interaction literatures.     

Multiple Measures of Fixation on Social Content in Infancy: Evidence for a Single Social Cognitive Construct?

The preference of infants to fixate on social information in a stimulus is well known. We examine how this preference manifests across a series of free‐viewing tasks using different stimulus types. Participants were thirty typically developing infants. We measured eye movements when viewing isolated faces, faces alongside objects in a grid, and faces naturally presented in photographed scenes. In each task, infants fixated social content for longer than nonsocial content. Social preference scores representing distribution of fixation to social versus general image content were highly correlated and thus combined into a single composite measure, which was independent of demographic and behavioral measures. We infer that multiple eye‐tracking tasks can be used to generate a composite measure of social preference in infancy. This approach may prove useful in the early characterization of developmental disabilities.     

Police Crime: The Criminal Behavior of Sworn Law Enforcement Officers

This essay examines the criminological conceptualizations and research on police crime, that is, the criminal behavior of sworn law enforcement officers. It starts with an overview of the conceptualization of police crime as it relates to organizational and scholarly perspectives of social deviance. Police deviance is often conceptualized to include various misconduct, corruption, and/or crime committed by police organizations and police officers. This essay focuses on police crime resulting in the arrest of a sworn law enforcement officer and is organized within a conceptual framework that incorporates five types of police crime: sex‐related police crime, alcohol‐related police crime, drug‐related police crime, violence‐related police crime, and profit‐motivated police crime.     

Establishing an Office of Scientific and Public Affairs

Procedures for high-interaction two-variable color mapping are described, whereby the user interacts with a graphic display to produce a color statistical map in a few seconds. The approach emphasizes the methodological benefits derived from the ability to examine the nature of the linkage between the statistical and spatial distributions of bivariate data. A series of examples illustrate this method.     

Transition from Home Care to Nursing Home: Unmet Needs in a Home- and Community-Based Program for Older Adults

A major effort is under way nationally to shift long-term care services from institutional to home- and community-based settings. This article employs quantitative and qualitative methods to identify unmet needs of consumers who transition from a statewide home- and community-based service program for older adults to long-term nursing home residence. Administrative data, care manager notes, and focus group discussions identified program service gaps that inadequately accommodated acute health problems, mental health issues, and stressed family caregivers; additional unmet needs highlighted an inadequate workforce, transportation barriers, and limited supportive housing options. National and state-level policy implications are considered.