Electile Dysfunction

This essay combines Burke's burlesque frame and Jamieson's double binds to create a hybrid gendered theory for rhetorically analyzing the aggressive sexualization of 2008 United States vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The essay develops our theory titled the “burlesque binds” and explicates a specific form of a burlesque bind: the “MILF frame.” Palin's aggressively sexualized representation was united under the crass acronym MILF, which stands for “Mom I'd Like to Fuck.” The MILF frame emphasized Palin's feminine qualities, positioning her as a “trophy vice” with no political acumen, and highlighted her masculine behaviors, but deflated them through sexual objectification. The unification of the binds and burlesque theories reveals how Palin's role as a social actor was not simply circumscribed but shut down: she was deemed unfit by both masculine and feminine standards, by both public and private sphere conventions. Although Sarah Palin has arguably been the most prevalent subject of the political MILF frame, our essay catalogues other instances of female political leaders experiencing this type of symbolic degradation, suggesting the MILF frame's vast influence.     

American High School Students’ Perceptions of Determinants of Life Satisfaction

Life satisfaction can be assessed either globally or with regard to satisfaction with specific domains of life. The latter multidimensional approach presumes science has delineated with confidence the specific domains most relevant to evaluating whether the criteria for a good life have been met. This paper shares results of a qualitative study of the perceived determinants of life satisfaction among 30 high school students who were diverse in terms of mental health; 6–10 participants were classified as complete mental health, vulnerable, symptomatic but content, or troubled at two time points separated by a year. Thematic analyses of transcribed individual interviews suggested eight themes that capture the domains of life adolescents perceive influence their happiness. These themes are compared and contrasted to domains included in existing multi-dimensional measures of youth life satisfaction. The factors likely to be particularly salient to students with different levels of mental health are noted.

     

Ethical Numbers: Ethics Training in U.S. Graduate Statistics Programs, 2013–2014

As important members of research teams, statisticians bear an ethical responsibility to analyze, interpret, and report data honestly and objectively. One way of reinforcing ethical responsibilities is through required courses covering a variety of ethics-related topics at the graduate level. We assessed ethics requirements for graduate-level statistics training programs in the United States for the 2013–2014 academic year using the websites of 88 universities, examining 103 biostatistics programs, and 136 statistics degree programs. We categorized programs’ ethics training requirements as required or not required. Thirty-one (35.1%) universities required an ethics course for at least some degree students. Sixty-two (25.5%) degree programs required an ethics course for at least some students. The majority (77.4%) of required courses were worth 0 or 1 credit. Of the 177 programs without an ethics requirement, 19 (10.7%) listed an ethics elective. Although a single ethics course is insufficient for instilling an ethical approach to science, degree programs that model expectations through coursework point to the value of ethics in science. More training programs should prepare statisticians to consider the ethical dimensions of their work through required coursework. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

What might Normalisation Process Theory bring to policy implementation studies? Learning lessons and uncovering questions through a case study of the profound implementation failure of a new policing policy

Normalisation Process Theory (NPT), used nationally and internationally to explore implementation within health services research, is used for the first time within policing to understand profound policy implementation failure and to generate broader discussion of policy implementation theory. The policy in question (Police to Primary Care [P2PC]) was an intervention designed to notify GPs when women are assessed by police as at high risk of future domestic abuse. Designed to improve interagency communication, it took place amidst radical organisational change. Using qualitative interviews with domestic abuse specialist and frontline officers, this paper addresses how NPT helps to explain the (non)implementation of P2PC, how such an analysis differs from other policy implementation approaches, and what this means for our understandings of policy implementation more broadly. NPT proved useful in understanding mechanisms leading to (non)implementation of the intervention: fuzzy alignment with existing practice, faulty communication of purpose, and inattention to discretionary implementation spaces. It helped us understand why the intervention came to be invisible. Dwarfed by its organisational context, made institutionally hard to read by a lack of formal protocols, and given restricted view to police officers, it was compromised by a failure to instigate systems of organisational learning. More broadly, NPT helped reveal practices intersecting top‐down and bottom‐up implementation theory. The paper concludes by asking how NPT and theories of street‐level bureaucracy might be better used in tandem and, particularly, how this might help explorations of policy implementation where human actors are joined by technological actors in interpreting and making policy in vivo.     

Can a Self-Regulation Skills and Cultural Arts Program Promote Positive Outcomes in Mental Health Symptoms and Academic Achievement for At-Risk Youth?

ABSTRACT

Self-regulation skills programs focusing on emotional regulation and executive functioning and arts programs have separately demonstrated reductions in internalizing and externalizing disorders and academic difficulties and have shown improvement in self-regulation skills. This study sought to evaluate participants in Prodigy (a program synthesizing arts and self-regulation skills) regarding changes in mental health symptoms and academic performance. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest was conducted with 108 at-risk adolescents and their parents. Significant reductions in internalizing and externalizing mental health symptoms and increases in academic self-efficacy with positive trends in improved academic achievement were noted. Future research regarding the potential of these two modalities is discussed.     

Conflicts of Interest in Academic Research: Policies,Processes, and Attitudes

Few studies have examined academic researchers' understandings of or attitudes toward conflict of interest policies even though these understandings and attitudes represent a crucial component of both compliance and educational efforts. This study reports the results of a large-scale, cross-sectional survey of research faculty at the nine campuses of the University of California regarding their understandings of and attitudes toward campus conflict of interest policies. We gathered information on their general assessments of investigators with financial ties to industry sponsors and reactions to the process of implementing conflict of interest policies at their respective campuses. We surveyed 1,971 faculty members from the nine-campus University of California system and had 779 responses (39% response rate). The sampled faculty were in the ten departments with the most number of financial disclosures at each campus. We utilized the WebSurveyor software to create a secure, online, 21-item survey. Our study reveals faculty with complex, sometimes contradictory, feelings about academic-industry relationships and highlights perceived gaps in policy and process. Most respondents were concerned about unlimited financial relationships, but a sizable number also viewed campus policies as irrelevant. Some expressed considerable anger over the process of policy implementation, rejecting the policies on the basis of professional and individual self-determination and moral integrity. Our study suggests the need for renewed efforts to encourage awareness of the relevance of conflict of interest policies for all faculty, new efforts to increase understanding of the situational nature of conflicts of interest, and a reexamination of the processes of policy implementation at the campus level.     

THE PROCESS OF CHANGE IN COUPLES THERAPY: A QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION

Open-ended interviews with 24 couples therapy clients regarding their experience of the process of change revealed shifts in clusters of affect, communication, and cognition. Six additional contextual preconditions for change were also identified. The change process within couples was uniformly reported to be gradual.