Career story: Climatological Statistician

Matthew Perry works for the Meterological Office. He tells Julian Champkin what he does and how he got there.     

"Anything Can Happen With Police Around": Urban Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places

In order to document urban youth experiences of adults in positions of public authority, including police, educators, social workers and guards, a broad based street survey of 911 New York City-based urban youth was conducted in which youth, stratified by race, ethnicity, gender and borough, were asked about their experiences with, attitudes toward, and trust of adult surveillance in communities and in schools. In-depth telephone interviews were conducted with 36 youth who have experienced serious, adverse interactions with police, guards, or educators. Findings suggest that urban youth, overall, express a strong sense of betrayal by adults and report feeling mistrusted by adults, with young men of color most likely to report these perceptions.     

The Politics of the Exhibition: Viewing Corporate Museums Through the Paradigmatic Lens of Organizational Memory

This paper explores corporate museums as little–understood sites of organizational memory and proposes that corporate museums, as a form of organizational memory, are used strategically by organizations in the development of the firm's identity and image. More critically, the authors examine the politics of the exhibition of organizational memory, or what Sturken refers to as 'organized forgetting' or 'strategic forgetting'. The authors propose that organizations, through these museums, choose what is recalled (the politics of remembering) as well as what is not remembered (the politics of forgetting). Four propositions are suggested to guide future research on corporate museums with the purpose of furthering our understanding of these museums and their relationship to the development of organizational identity and image as well as organizational actions – past, present, and future. The paper concludes with implications for the organizational–studies scholar.     

School-based programs to prevent and reduce alcohol use among youth

Schools are an important setting for interventions aimed at preventing alcohol use and abuse among adolescents. A range of school-based interventions have been developed to prevent or delay the onset of alcohol use, most of which are targeted to middle-school students. Most of these interventions seek to reduce risk factors for alcohol use at the individual level, whereas other interventions also address social and/or environmental risk factors. Not all interventions that have been developed and implemented have been found to be effective. In-depth analyses have indicated that to be most effective, interventions should be theory driven, address social norms around alcohol use, build personal and social skills helping students resist pressure to use alcohol, involve interactive teaching approaches, use peer leaders, integrate other segments of the population into the program, be delivered over several sessions and years, provide training and support to facilitators, and be culturally and developmentally appropriate. Additional research is needed to develop interventions for elementary-school and high-school students and for special populations.     

The labeling paradox: stigma, the sick role, and social networks in mental illness

Although research supports the stigma and labeling perspective, empirical evidence also indicates that a social safety net remains intact for those with mental illness, recalling the classic "sick role" concept. Here, insights from social networks theory are offered as explanation for these discrepant findings. Using data from individuals experiencing their first contact with the mental health treatment system, the effects of diagnosis and symptoms on social networks and stigma experiences are examined. The findings suggest that relative to those with less severe affective disorders, individuals with severe diagnoses and more visible symptoms of mental illness have larger, more broadly functional networks, as well as more supporters who are aware of and sympathetic toward the illness situation. However, those with more severe diagnoses are also vulnerable to rejection and discrimination by acquaintances and strangers. These findings suggest that being formally labeled with a mental illness may present a paradox, simultaneously initiating beneficial social processes within core networks and detrimental ones among peripheral ties.     

Local perspectives on rural housing affordability and implications for the localism agenda in England

Drawing on consultation meetings with eight community groups across rural England, this paper examines local perspectives on housing affordability, and the consequences of low levels of ‘within area’ housing access for rural economies and communities, contrasting the reflective understanding of residents with normative and established perspectives on the same issues. Because it now seems likely that rural planning policy in England will, in some measure, be reconstructed from the bottom-up, prioritising local control, an analysis of residents' perspectives gives some insight into the shape of future policy intervention. The research reveals a highly nuanced understanding of affordability and the development needs of villages. Sometimes local views – particularly those of commuting or retired households – are dismissed as being motivated by NIMBYism. But this is a partial truth, with rural residents displaying reflective dissatisfaction with official perspectives on rural housing problems.     

Religion and Spirituality in Social Work Education and Direct Practice at the Millennium: A Survey of UK Social Workers

Correspondence to Dr Leola Furman, 1201 Yale Place, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403, USA. E-mail: furmanlfurman{at}aol.com Summary In recent years, an expanding body of social work publicationsand professional conference presentations has materialized inthe United States due to a resurgence of interest in spiritualityand religion. In order to explore the level of interest in theUnited Kingdom, a random sample of 5,500 practising social workersfrom the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) membershipwere mailed a questionnaire that examined religious and spiritualbeliefs, practices and affiliations. A total of 789 BASW membersin direct practice from England, Scotland Wales, and NorthernIreland returned questionnaires, a response rate of 20 per cent.The majority of respondents believed that spirituality was afundamental aspect of being human. More than three-quartersof the sample reported little or no content on religion andspirituality in their training programme. Respondents stronglyapproved of raising the topic of religion and spirituality withclients who are experiencing terminal illness or bereavement.This also held true in matters of adoption and foster parenting.Approximately 47 per cent of all respondents believed that includingreligion and spirituality in direct practice was compatiblewith social work’s mission. This sample may representthose social workers with a stronger interest in religion andspirituality than a random sample of the general populationof UK social workers. These findings, nevertheless, raise concernabout the availability of practice models and training curriculafor social work practitioners and students.     

The dynamics of social exclusion

Much mainstream analysis of the dynamics of social exclusion is concerned with the changing circumstances of households, using panel and cohort studies. However, changes in these circumstances are mediated by institutional processes and can be adequately explained only if the interactions of institutional and household strategies are taken into account. This is also a precondition of sound inferences for policy. These interactions may involve feedback loops and cumulative change: these require analysis as dynamic systems. The article explores how such dynamic systems can be modelled. It proposes a toolkit that brings together qualitative and quantitative modelling techniques, checks them against empirical data and roots their interpretation within an action frame of reference.