Blurring the Lines Between Civil Society,Volunteering and Social Movements. A Reflection on Redrawing Boundaries Inspired by the Spanish Case

Citizen participation is manifested through various concepts, such as activism, social movements, volunteering or civil society. The different ways of understanding popular engagement are often separated by delimitations that define them, particularly volunteering and civic action, as two highly differentiated forms of participation in the distinct academic disciplines: political science, volunteering studies, social movement studies or civil society theory. This article considers whether this basic theoretical differentiation can be problematised in the Spanish political context by exploring four paradigmatic cases of popular engagement, using qualitative case study methodology, specifically, a historic case from the 1990s and three more recent cases. It is hoped that the results of the study—which differentiates between organisational hybridity and fuzziness—will encourage reflection on the traditional boundaries between different forms of popular engagement.     

21st Century Parent–Child Sex Communication in the United States: A Process Review

Parent–child sex communication results in the transmission of family expectations, societal values, and role modeling of sexual health risk-reduction strategies. Parent–child sex communication’s potential to curb negative sexual health outcomes has sustained a multidisciplinary effort to better understand the process and its impact on the development of healthy sexual attitudes and behaviors among adolescents. This review advances what is known about the process of sex communication in the United States by reviewing studies published from 2003 to 2015. We used the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycINFO, SocINDEX, and PubMed, and the key terms “parent child” AND “sex education” for the initial query; we included 116 original articles for analysis. Our review underscores long-established factors that prevent parents from effectively broaching and sustaining talks about sex with their children and has also identified emerging concerns unique to today’s parenting landscape. Parental factors salient to sex communication are established long before individuals become parents and are acted upon by influences beyond the home. Child-focused communication factors likewise describe a maturing audience that is far from captive. The identification of both enduring and emerging factors that affect how sex communication occurs will inform subsequent work that will result in more positive sexual health outcomes for adolescents.     

Relative Deprivation and Career Decision Self‐Efficacy: Influences of Self‐Regulation and Parental Educational Attainment

Nearly 70% of Korean women pursue postsecondary education, yet they occupy lower‐status positions than do men (K. Kim & Han, 2008 ). Therefore, the authors examined relative deprivation in equal opportunities and its effect on career‐related self‐efficacy among 603 Korean female college students. Self‐regulation was hypothesized to mediate the effects of relative deprivation on career decision self‐efficacy. This effect was hypothesized to differ according to parents’ educational attainment due to different degrees of parental support. As expected, self‐regulation mediated the relationship between relative deprivation and career decision self‐efficacy for participants whose parents had high education levels. However, participants whose parents had low education levels demonstrated less involvement in resolving relative deprivation. Findings suggest that career counselors should use different interventions based on parental education level to influence students’ self‐regulation and to enhance career decision self‐efficacy.     

Episodic Volunteering at a Religious Megaevent

In preparation for Pope Francis's visit to Philadelphia and the 2015 World Meeting of Families, organizers looked for thousands of volunteers to help carry out these events. This is common for many one‐time and episodic events, such as large sporting events (from marathons to Special Olympics), arts and cultural events (such as festivals and concerts), and fundraising events. After the pope's visit, volunteers were asked to respond to a questionnaire about their experiences and the volunteer management of the event; 2,408 responded (34.4 percent). Data on motivation, who volunteered, recruitment, training, assignment, supervision, communication, satisfaction, and suggestions for improvement were elicited. We focused on episodic volunteering at a religious event and on a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to management of episodic volunteers. Our findings add to the knowledge regarding volunteer management and also add to conceptual understanding of the distinction between ongoing and episodic volunteers.     

Medicaid expansion and ethnoracial disparities in health insurance coverage

ABSTRACT

Medicaid expansion, as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), was touted by many policymakers as a potentially powerful force for reducing ethnoracial disparities in health insurance coverage. Using a unique county-level dataset at two time points (before and after the passage of the PPACA), we test whether Medicaid Expansion predicted change in ethnoracial disparities. Specifically, we use fixed-effect regression models to predict the Black-white, Hispanic-white, and Asian-white disparities in health insurance coverage. Using states that did not expand Medicaid as a counterfactual, our models show that this policy expansion was not significantly associated with a decrease in ethnoracial health insurance disparities. Overall, these findings suggest the need for scholars and policymakers to be more cautious and tempered about Medicaid expansion’s relationship with ethnoracial disparities in health insurance coverage. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on ethnoracial health insurance disparities, as well as policy efforts to increase coverage in minority communities.     

Socioemotional wealth’s implications in the calculus of the minimum rate of return required by family businesses’ owners

This paper demonstrates that the minimum rate of return (k _e ) required by family business shareholders is inversely related to the emotional endowment presented in these firms. After reviewing the socioemotional wealth (SEW) literature, we find empirical support to justify that different SEW dimensions influence k _e . Findings from a population of 207 family firms show that the identification of family members with the firm and the renewal of family bonds with the firm through dynastic succession have consistently negative impacts on k _e , while family control and influence have significantly positive impacts on k _e .     

The Reform of the Local Social Services In Israel: 1984 Compared to 1977

In 1977, there was a nationwide reform of the Local Departments of Social Services (LDSS) in Israel. This article reports on the findings of two independent and complementary studies which sought to evaluate the consequences of this comprehensive planned change. To determine what changes if any, occurred from 1977 to 1984, the first seven years following the reform, the article presents seven major foci of change. Each reflects an objective set forth by those who planned the change at the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Preceding the report of these changes are a review of the historical background of the reform and a summary of the components of this planned change. This article focuses on the changes identified in these studies and concludes with a discussion of policy and organizational implications.     

Bounds on Average and Quantile Treatment Effects on Duration Outcomes Under Censoring,Selection, and Noncompliance

Abstract

We consider the problem of assessing the effects of a treatment on duration outcomes using data from a randomized evaluation with noncompliance. For such settings, we derive nonparametric sharp bounds for average and quantile treatment effects addressing three pervasive problems simultaneously: self-selection into the spell of interest, endogenous censoring of the duration outcome, and noncompliance with the assigned treatment. Ignoring any of these issues could yield biased estimates of the effects. Notably, the proposed bounds do not impose the independent censoring assumption—which is commonly used to address censoring but is likely to fail in important settings—or exclusion restrictions to address endogeneity of censoring and selection. Instead, they employ monotonicity and stochastic dominance assumptions. To illustrate the use of these bounds we assess the effects of the Job Corps (JC) training program on its participants’ last complete employment spell duration. Our estimated bounds suggest that JC participation may increase the average duration of the last complete employment spell before week 208 after randomization by at least 5.6 log points (5.8%) for individuals who comply with their treatment assignment and experience a complete employment spell whether or not they enrolled in JC. The estimated quantile treatment effects suggest the impacts may be heterogeneous, and strengthen our conclusions based on the estimated average effects.     

Becoming a Marriage, Family and Child Counselor: Notes from a Chicano

Becoming a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Counselor (MFCC) in California is presented from a Chicano's perspective based on the author's own training. He reports that 1) there is a need for Chicanos trained extensively in marriage and family counseling to serve the large Mexican American population; 2) MFCC is a growing profession yet few Chicanos are entering it; 3) few Chicano professionals are involved in the training, teaching and supervision of marriage and family counselors; and 4) the state licensing board and the two marriage and family counselors' associations do not identify minority counselors nor those who provide Spanish speaking services .