Evaluation of the U.S. Air Force Family Support Center Program

This article provides an overview of the implementation and evaluation of Family Support Centers (FSC) in the U.S. Air Force. After describing the FSC model, the quantitative aspect of the evaluation is discussed, including the evaluation design, implementation methods, survey response rates, and procedures for data analysis. A summary of evaluation results also are presented as well as a discussion of administrative and methodological issues encountered in performing the evaluation. The results of the evaluation suggest that the FSC has become an integral part of the base human service delivery system, especially for married members and civilian spouses.     

All glamour, no substance? How public relations majors and potential majors in an exemplar program view the industry and function

Studies in public relations often conclude that the field is misunderstood [Kopenhaver, L. L. (1985). Aligning values of practitioners and journalists. Public Relations Review, 11(1), 34–42; Stacks, D. W., Botan, C., & Turk, J. V. (1999). Perceptions of pubic relations education. Public Relations Review, 25, 9–29] and misrepresented in media [Spicer, C. (2000). Public relations in a democratic society: Value and values. Journal of Public Relations Research, 12(1), 115–130]. Public relations professionals themselves often do not know what is involved in or support public relations education [Wright, D. K., & Turk, J. V. (2007). Public relations knowledge and professionalism: Challenges to educators and practitioners. In E.L. Toth (Ed.), The future of excellence in public relations and communication management: Challenges for the next generation (pp. 571–588). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum]. Both the special issue (Public Relations Review, 1999) on public relations education and a following study published in this journal [Bowen, S. A. (2003). I thought it would be more glamorous: Preconceptions and misconceptions of public relations among students in the principles course. Public Relations Review, 29, 199–214] argued that public relations majors often do not realize what is involved in the academic discipline or the professional field. This research builds on the findings of those studies to ask: are public relations educators doing any better in communicating the core competencies, responsibilities, knowledge requirements, skills, and abilities of the discipline and the public relations major? Through the use of 10 focus groups across majors at a top research university, we can see that little is known about public relations among non-majors, but public relations majors can articulate the requirements and functions of the field. Several primary areas of confusion emerged about public relations related to: marketing or promotion, spinning the truth, image, and public relations as a career choice. These ideas show a critical lack of transparency in public relations. Credibility of the public relations function is hampered by this failure to communicate about the functions and core competencies of the field. Implications for both the public relations practice and for public relations education are discussed.     

大学的发展与制度创新

上世纪九十年代以来 ,围绕建设一流大学 ,高等教育在宏观体制方面进行了大刀阔斧的改革 ,并开始了以人事分配制度改革为主要内容的大学内部管理结构和运行机制创新的大胆尝试 ,但这些并不能直接解决人才培养质量问题。促进大学的跨越式发展、达到一流的建设目标 ,还必须将高等教育改革的触角进一步深入到大学内部 ,通过为大学定性定位、营造发展的环境氛围、构建现代大学制度体系 ,努力推进现代大学制度创新 ,并以此改造大学 ,实现大学自身的发展。     

In the Context of Adult Support: The Influence of Peer Support on the Psychological Well-Being of Middle-School Students

This study examines the influence of adult and peer support on the psychological well-being of middle-school students. Using data representing 13,843 middle-school students from seven U.S. states, which were collected with the School Success Profile, hierarchical regression analysis is used to examine a hypothesis in 2 models of relationships: continuity/cognitive and compensatory/competition. Results support the continuity/cognitive model, and indicate peer support is an important contributor to middle-school students’ psychological well-being at various levels of adult support. When adult support is low, high levels of peer support do not improve psychological well-being. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Of Disciplined Minds and Disciplined Bodies: On Becoming an Ecologist

Phenomenologically speaking, the body is the hinge between the sociomaterial world and individual knowing. To illustrate the importance of this hinge in the making of ecologists, we draw on a two-year ethnographic project among field ecologists. Our study shows that becoming an ecologist involves not just the acquisition of skills and conceptual knowledge or just enculturation to a set of practices, such as occurs in university schooling, but also a disciplining of both mind and body, deriving from the physicality of engaging in the fieldwork itself. Becoming an ecologist therefore involves a disciplining that mingles the mental and the physical.     

工会会员身份对农民工工资率的影响——基于代际差异的视角

本文采用2013年和2016年广东省佛山市南海区“雇主—雇员”匹配数据库,利用倾向得分匹配和工具变量等估计方法,实证检验了工会会员身份对农民工工资率的影响及其在两代农民工之间的差异,并进行了影响机制的探索和分析。研究发现,将工会会员身份的工资溢价效应分解为覆盖效应和会员效应后,覆盖效应的影响难以发挥,而会员效应的影响则存在代际差异,其只在新生代农民工中显著,而在第一代农民工中不显著。进一步研究发现,覆盖效应难以发挥主要是由于工会未能有效地开展集体协商,会员效应存在代际差异则是源于两代农民工不同的需求层次所导致的入会行为导向的不同。本文研究,有利于企业工会着力解决农民工的工资问题,建立农民工工资的长效增长机制,同时为企业构建和谐劳动关系以及实施多元化的人力资源管理策略等提供参考和借鉴。     

Effect of Perceived Crisis Response on Consumers' Behavioral Intentions During a Company Scandal – An Intercultural Perspective

In the context of a multi-national company scandal, namely Volkswagen's Dieselgate, we examine the effect of customers' perception of organizational crisis response on their revenge and avoidance intentions in different cultural settings. Using data collected in the US and in Germany, we are able to show that the perception of appropriate crisis response reduces customers' revenge as well as avoidance intentions. However, due to the domestic bias of German respondents, the mechanism linking perception of the organization's crisis response to the respective outcomes differs between Germany and the US. Our results demonstrate for the first time that domestic bias is not always associated with being an amplifier of positive factors; rather, in the context of an organizational scandal, it dampens the effects of organizational crisis response.