The role of civic leadership in fostering economic resilience in City Regions

This paper examines the role of civic leadership in fostering economic resilience in City Regions. Extant research on resilience has examined ‘economic’ factors. This paper adds to the academic discourse by considering how effective leadership shapes economic development within sub-national economies. Through a case study of the Sheffield City Region (SCR), UK, the paper considers the role of civic leadership in enabling Local Enterprise Partnerships to work collaboratively to foster resilience. The paper finds that while civic leadership is emergent in the SCR, it holds potential to foster economic resilience by bringing together the public, private and third sectors to develop locally informed strategies. The paper concludes with implications for governance issues in City Regions and how the challenges and impacts of civic leadership may be assessed over time.     

Examining the impact of family services on homeless children

This study examined the impact on children of services delivered through a collaborative initiative designed to provide supports to working poor families who are homeless or at immediate risk of becoming homeless. Overall, a number of positive findings can serve to inform the development of promising intervention strategies for children in homeless families and highlight areas for further research. Along with improved housing status, there was a statistically significant improvement in the economic self‐sufficiency of the families served, regardless of whether they completed the full programme cycle. In addition, youth self‐report data indicated significant improvements in externalizing and internalizing behaviour. The ability to combine programme data with school data for participating children also made it possible to explore school performance outcomes. Although these results did not indicate a change in participants’ levels of attendance or reading performance, there was a statistically significant improvement in students’ math scores. Moreover, when participating children were compared with a group of students matched on their level of academic performance at baseline who had not received housing or homeless services, no significant differences were detected between groups post‐intervention, indicating that services may help reduce the risk of homeless students’ falling further behind their peers academically.     

Welcome to the Neighborhood? Long‐Term Impacts of Moving to Low‐Poverty Neighborhoods on Poor Children's and Adolescents' Outcomes

This study examined 7‐year follow‐up data from the Yonkers Project, a study of a 1985 court‐ordered neighborhood desegregation program in Yonkers, NY. Low‐income Black and Latino families residing in impoverished neighborhoods who were randomly selected to relocate to publicly funded townhouses in middle‐class communities and demographically similar families who were not selected to move were interviewed. Self‐ and parent‐report data on 8–18‐year‐old children and youth's educational outcomes, problem behavior, and parent–child relations were examined (N=221). Youth 15–18 years of age who relocated to more advantaged neighborhoods reported lower school performance and more hyperactive behavior problems and substance use than peers who remained in impoverished neighborhoods. Program effects on parenting also emerged, with mover parents reporting less stringent monitoring and harsh disciplinary techniques than stayers. Family economic resources and neighborhood conditions, assessed approximately 5 years before, accounted for some of the program effects at 7 years.     

Do training programs work? An assessment of pharmacists activities in the field of chemical dependency

OBJECTIVES: The primary objective of this study was to determine if a selected sample of pharmacists who had attended a chemical dependency training program were performing more chemical dependency related activities than a group of American Pharmaceutical Association (APhA) members who had not had this training. Additionally, an assessment of the perceived barriers to performing chemical dependencyrelated activities was performed. DESIGN: A confidential mail questionnaire was sent to 305 Utah School participants and 305 APhA members who had not participated in the program (See Appendix). RESULTS: Respondents who had received educational training in chemical dependency were more likely to perform the following activities: lecture to community groups and health care professionals about chemical dependency, participate in a pharmacists' recovery program, provide patients with information about treatment centers, and counsel patients about the alcohol in over-the-counter products. Respondents who had not received chemical dependency training indicated that the following barriers prevented them from taking a more active role in the chemical dependency field: lack of knowledge of chemical dependency resources in the community, unaware of how to get involved with the state recovery program, belief that involvement in the state recovery program would hurt their professional reputation, belief that chemically dependent individuals cannot be rehabilitated, and uncomfortable working with chemically dependent patients. CONCLUSIONS: Pharmacists who have attended substance abuse training programs are performing more chemical dependency activities than pharmacists who have not received training in chemical dependency. In addition, different barriers to performing chemical dependency related activities exist between pharmacists with and without training in this field.     

Estimating Quality of Life and Place with Location Theory: The McBucks Index

This paper explores the changes in inequality and welfare between EU regions at the NUTS 3 level over the 2003–2011 period. Changes in absolute and relative inequalities are broken down into components explaining the effects of population change, re-ranking of regions and income growth between regional per capita incomes. Each component of inequality change is further decomposed by subgroup, revealing the contributions arising from changes within subgroups and from changes between subgroups. The decomposition of the change in absolute inequality is used to develop a decomposition of the change in welfare between EU regions.     

Ambivalent Homoprejudice towards Gay Men: Theory Development and Validation

ABSTRACT

Myriad social groups are targets of hostile and benevolent (i.e., ambivalent) prejudice. However, prejudice toward gay men is typically conceptualized as hostile, despite the prevalence of benevolence toward gay men in popular media. This article aims to compare gay men with other targets of ambivalent prejudice (i.e., women and elderly people) and draw on the stereotype content and microaggressions literatures in order to develop a theory of ambivalent homoprejudice. The resultant framework, comprising repellent, adversarial, romanticized, and paternalistic homoprejudice was investigated using seven focus groups of heterosexuals and gay men (N = 22), and the findings were consistent with stereotype content theory. Directions for future research into the deleterious effects of ambivalent homoprejudice and possible empowering interventions are discussed.     

Conceptual Remixing in Criminology: Tracing Durkheim and Marx's Influence on Etiological Theories of Crime

Sociologists have previously argued that our current knowledge and inquiries stem from our standing on the shoulders of giants. Exactly how this occurs, however, may be less clear. This paper identifies how the works of two of the most valued classical social theorists – Durkheim and Marx – have influenced theories of crime causation. In doing so, I reveal that classical social theory continues to be relevant in the advancement of criminological thought. Identifying this lineage is crucial in developing more informed research and policy on crime and social control, which is especially important given the widespread interest in crime and delinquency among students (and citizens more generally).     

Alternative Foldover Plans for Two-Level Nonregular Designs

Foldover is a classic technique used to select follow-up experimental runs when an initial experiment yields ambiguities. While foldover has been soundly investigated for regular designs, less research has been devoted to this technique for nonregular designs. Previous work focuses on the use of the generalized minimum aberration criterion to obtain optimal foldover plans. In contrast, this article utilizes the concept of minimal dependent sets (MDSs) and associated criteria to rank foldovers of nonregular designs. We propose an integer programming-based solution to aid in the location and enumeration of MDSs. MDS-optimal foldovers for selected nonregular designs are presented and discussed.     

Identifying rational distributed lag models using a joint test applied to the corner table

Often a distributed lag response pattern can be usefully represented in rational polynomial form. When the impulse response function decays, the corner table may be useful for model identification if appropriate statistical tests may be done. One or more joint tests are called for since use of the corner table involves studying groups of its elements. We consider an asymptotic x2 statistic that permits joint tests. We report simulation results showing that the distribution of this statistic follows the x ² distribution, for certain sample sizes and degrees of freedom, well enough to be useful in practice. With two data sets we illustrate how this statistic can be a useful aid when using the corner table.