Influence of Perceptions of Current and Future Community on Residential Aspirations of Rural Youth

Outmigration of youth has concerned rural communities and researchers for several decades. Yet not all communities experience extensive youth outmigration and some youth want to stay in their rural communities as adults. This article examines youth satisfaction with their current community and the importance of characteristics of the community in which they would like to live as an adult for youth preferences to leave or stay in their rural community. The data are for rural ninth‐grade youth in Pennsylvania from the Rural Youth Education Project. The results suggest that perceptions of available jobs and educational opportunities in both current and future community, parental and friend influences, and the quality of the natural environment and outdoor recreation are important in determining residential aspirations. In particular, identifying a clean natural environment and outdoor recreation as important in the adult community increases the likelihood that rural youth have residential aspirations to stay in their rural community. This research adds to our knowledge about factors important in determining youth residential aspirations by identifying attributes of community beyond jobs and educational opportunities that youth find attractive as they consider places to live as adults.     

Service Learning and Community Engagement: A Comparison of Three National Contexts

One of the presumptions of a well-functioning, viable democracy is that citizens participate in the life of their communities and nation. The role of higher education in forming actively engaged citizens has long been the focus of scholarly research, but recently an active debate has emerged concerning the role of service as a third core function of institutions of higher learning. Service learning (SL), a teaching approach that extends student learning beyond the classroom, is increasingly seen as a vehicle to realize this third core function. By aligning educational objectives with community partners’ needs, community service is meant to enhance, among other objectives, reciprocal learning. Although the term and its associated activities originated in the United States (US), theoretical debates linking civic engagement and education extend far beyond the US context. Nevertheless, research on SL as a distinctive pedagogical approach remains a nascent field. A significant gap exists in the literature about what this pedagogical approach seeks to achieve (in nature and in outcomes) and how it is construed in non-western contexts. Using a comparative analysis across three widely different contexts, this article explores the extent to which these differences are merely differences in degree or whether the differences are substantive enough to demand qualitatively different models for strengthening the relationship between higher education and civil society.     

Policy Analysis of Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008

Youth “age out” of the child welfare when they are no longer eligible for services due to their age. These youth often face hardships across multiple domains of their lives. Recent evidence shows youth remaining in care beyond age 18 fare better than those who exit care at age 18. With the passage of recent federal legislation, states have more opportunities for federal funding to extend services to youths “aging out.” This article explores the issue of youths aging out of the child welfare system and analyzes the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008.     

Intercountry Adoption Flows from Africa to the U.S.: A Fifth Wave of Intercountry Adoptions?

This article addresses whether there is the beginning of a fifth wave of intercountry adoptions (ICAs) from Africa to the United States (U.S.). ICAs function as a “quiet migration” of children [ Weil (1984) International Migration Review 18(2):276–293; Lovelock (2000) International Migration Review 34 (3):907–949; Selman (2002) Population Research and Policy Review 21:205–225]. U.S. Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) data from 1971 to 2009 indicate that there were 421,085 ICAs to the U.S. Tarmann (2003:2 , http://www.prb.org/Articles/2003/InternationalAdoptionRateinUSDoubledinthe1990s.aspx?p=1 ) reported that in 2000, U.S. parents completed one ICA for every 200 births. In the past, top sending countries have followed flows from Europe, South America, and Asia. INS data are used to analyze the increase in the intercountry adoptees from Africa from 1996 to 2009. Similar Hague Convention data are used for the comparison of the number of ICAs from Africa to other top recipient nations. Demographic and economic data are used to support the suggestion that ICAs, similar to other migratory flows, are from developing to developed countries.     

Plasticity in Early Alzheimer's Disease: An Opportunity for Intervention

The scientific evidence of plasticity, or the brain's dynamic ability to alter its organization and activation throughout one's lifetime, has increased significantly over the last decade. This analytic review evaluates selected evidence regarding the persistence of plasticity in people with early-stage Alzheimer's disease (AD). Functional neuroimaging provides persuasive evidence of plasticity throughout aging as well as the early stages of dementia, including the possibility of a heightened response during the prodromal period of AD. Behavioral outcomes research demonstrates the ability of people with early-stage AD to relearn previously forgotten information or otherwise improve cognitive abilities following a cognition-focused intervention. Both of these bodies of evidence support the existence of compensatory processes at work, even in the presence of dementia-related pathology. This retained ability of the brain to adapt to neurodegenerative disease in an attempt to maintain function may provide a valuable opportunity for intervention, particularly in the prodromal or earliest stages of AD.     

Career mobility and satisfaction of women administrators in postsecondary education: A review and research agenda

The purpose of this article is to examine the formal and informal organizational and environmental structures and processes that influence the opportunities, achievements, and satisfaction of women administrators in postsecondary education. A model is developed that synthesizes the research from human capital and structural approaches to occupational mobility and applies it to university contexts. Emphasis is placed on the structural factors, including organizational characteristics, and membership in formal and informal networks. A set of hypotheses is derived from this model. Gaps in current literature and research and proposed avenues for future research are discussed.     

Doing Good and Feeling Well: Exploring the Relationship Between Charitable Activity and Perceived Personal Wellness

In this exploratory study into the relationship between participation in charitable activity and self-reported measures of personal wellness, social exchange theory was used to model factors that operationalize socioeconomic variables as costs, religious orientation and charitable orientation as rewards, and wellness as profit. Structural equation modeling was applied to data from the 2004 General Social Survey, including the Module on Altruism, to measure the effects, both direct and indirect, and infer knowledge from the results. Results suggest the indication of a relationship between charitable behavior and personal wellness is valid. Specifically, those who are more charitable and those with an enhanced religious orientation exhibit greater wellness. Results also indicate that charitable orientation acts as a mediating variable between income, education, religiosity, and wellness.     

Absent and Problematic Men: Demographic Accounts of Male Reproductive Roles

Both men and women are important actors in bringing children into life, yet demographic studies on reproduction have tended to focus on women alone. The aims of this article are: 1) to describe why men have attracted limited interest as subjects of such research; 2) to evaluate existing research on men's roles in developing countries; and 3) to suggest directions for future research on male reproductive roles. Men, once neglected, are now included in research on fertility but from a narrow, overly problem‐oriented perspective. A review of the literature, however, raises questions about the adequacy of a problem oriented approach. The authors argue that demography should focus on men not only as women's partners, but also as individuals with distinct reproductive histories. In situations, now increasingly common, where the links between marriage and childbearing erode, the differences in men's and women's reproductive experiences and the costs and benefits of parenting will become more salient for future research.     

Power and negotiation: Young women’s choices about sex and contraception

This paper explores issues of power and negotiation for two decisions affecting young women’s sexual lives: die decision to have sexual intercourse and the decision to contracept. Using data from two recent Australian surveys the paper explores the complexity of these decisions and the way in which gender relations between young people can influence dieir reproductive outcomes; young women experience a high rate of sexual coercion and violence and current data collections do not allow analysis of their cause.