From Bad to Worse? Pornography Consumption,Spousal Religiosity,Gender, and Marital Quality

Pornography consumption is consistently associated with lower marital quality. Scholars have theorized that embeddedness within a religious community may exacerbate the negative association between pornography use and marital quality because of greater social or psychic costs to porn viewing. As a test and extension of this theory, I examine how being married to a religiously devout spouse potentially moderates the link between respondents' reported pornography consumption and their marital satisfaction. Data are taken from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study. In the main effects, porn consumption is negatively related to marital satisfaction, while spousal religiosity is positively related to marital satisfaction. Interaction effects reveal, however, that spousal religiosity intensifies the negative effect of porn viewing on marital satisfaction. These effects are robust whether marital satisfaction is operationalized as a scale or with individual measures and whether spousal religiosity is measured with respondents' evaluations their spouses' religiosity or spouses' self‐reported religiosity measures. The effects are also similar for both husbands and wives. I argue that for married Americans, having a religiously committed spouse increases the social and psychic costs of porn consumption such that marital satisfaction decreases more drastically as a result.     

COP 21 Charades: Spin,Lies and Real Hope in Paris

Abstract

UN Climate talks have become an annual fixture on the global diplomatic calendar since 1995. Some have been praised, others denounced, but the levels of greenhouse gas emissions have risen regardless year-on-year. This essay and eyewitness account argues that the Paris COP 21 talks like its predecessors failed to deliver a meaningful result, judged from either a scientific or social justice point-of-view. However it did reveal the presence of a growing and increasingly sophisticated and powerful climate justice movement that heralds the most hope for a just response to the global climate crisis     

Same-Sex Adoption as a Welfare Alternative? Conservatism,Neoliberal Values,and Support for Adoption by Same-Sex Couples

Despite conservatives’ long-term opposition to gay and lesbian parenting, scholars theorize that a strong commitment to neoliberalism may influence conservative Americans to become more tolerant of same-sex adoption as a way to relieve the government from subsidizing poor families. Drawing on national survey data (2010 Baylor Religion Survey), we test whether holding neoliberal values is associated with greater support for same-sex adoption in general and across political or religious conservatives. We find no support for either theory—emphatically the opposite, in fact. Neoliberal values are negatively associated with support for same-sex adoption for Americans in general and among political and religious conservatives. We find little evidence of a tension among conservatives regarding same-sex adoption as both their neoliberal values and moral beliefs incline them to oppose same-sex adoption along with other same-sex family relationships.     

Toward the justification of claims in evaluation research

Four types of claims generally arise in evaluation research: research claims, policy claims, evaluation claims, and management claims. The relationships among these types of claims can be seen both in the similarity of the questions under the types, and in their inlerrelatedness in making evaluation recommendations. By construing these claims as question-answer propositions, it is possible to identify the specific kinds of questions associated with each of the four types of claims. Under this view, evaluation research is predominantly a form of applied inquiry, and the justification of evaluation claims becomes the validation of question-answer propositions.     

The green factor: Unpacking green job growth

Drawing on data from the Labour Force Survey of the United Kingdom (2011–14), this article estimates the number of green jobs in Scotland and identifies change over time, using a methodological framework that can be applied to any region, based on ISCO‐08 and O*NET. The findings highlight the value of charting changes in green jobs based on inclusive rather than “purist” definitions to better capture the broader impact of greening on jobs. The findings also indicate a need for greater analytical attention to issues of green job quality and inclusive green job growth.     

Teachers’ multicultural attitudes and perceptions of school policy and school climate in relation to burnout

ABSTRACT

There is a growing number of ethnically and culturally diverse students in Dutch junior vocational high schools. This article examines teachers’ multicultural attitudes, their perceptions of cultural diversity related to school policy and school climate, and the chance of general and diversity-related burnout. The present research also characterises teachers in terms of their multicultural attitudes and perceptions of school policy and climate through cluster analysis. Results are based on questionnaire data of 120 teachers, working at five locations of a multicultural junior vocational high school in a highly urbanised part of the Netherlands. Correlational, regression, and variance analyses indicated that the highest levels of general and diversity-related burnout were found among teachers categorised as assimilationist in attitude and who perceived their school as pluralistic. Teachers could be divided into three types of profiles: (1) relative assimilative attitude, (2) no pronounced assimilative attitude, and (3) moderate assimilative attitude. Teachers with the second profile showed the highest chance for burnout.     

Supporting open innovation with the use of a balanced scorecard approach: a study on deep smarts and effective knowledge transfer to SMEs

Abstract

This study aims to develop the theory of knowledge management and organizational performance within a small and medium enterprise (SME) context using action research (AR) involving a higher education institution (HEI) and an SME. The vehicle for the knowledge exchange was Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs), the United Kingdom’s primary mechanism for delivering government funded knowledge transfer to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). KTPs facilitate knowledge exchange from HEIs to SMEs via the recruitment of a graduate plus an academic supervisor from the partnering HEI. The AR study was an award-winning KTP and the project deliverable included the implementation of a balanced scorecard for the SME to improve organizational performance. The transfer of knowledge was subsequently fed-back into the university in order to develop a performance framework for measuring the effectiveness of KTP research within the HEI in order to share knowledge and improve effective for other KTP projects.     

Visual Narrative and Temporal Relevance: Segueing Instant Replay into Live Broadcast TV

Professional production of live TV combines real‐time and recorded video into a single broadcast stream. In “live” TV, non‐live “instant replay” footage can help viewers to make sense of what has just happened. This article shows how multi‐person TV production teams assemble timely and relevant instant replays that can be seamlessly combined with real‐time footage during live broadcasts. Detailed interaction analysis demonstrates how this work is dependent on coordinated practices, and how team members achieve this by orienting to narrative concerns across multiple temporalities to produce topically useful instant replays, displaying clip relevance, and help segueing transitions between the ongoing action and replay. We conclude by examining the interrelationships between the sequential flow of visual content, the role of talk in mediating time‐shifted visual alignments, and how members make their work visible and accountable to one another and to their intended audience.