Integrating research,policy, and practice in juvenile justice education

This article provides an overview of the history and context leading to Florida's efforts to implement an evaluation-driven research and associated quality assurance system for its juvenile justice education policies and practices. The Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program began implementing Florida's evaluation research and quality assurance system to juvenile justice education in 1998. The article includes a brief summary of articles comprising this special issue of Evaluation Review that address the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's various functions, methodological components, data, preliminary findings, continuing evaluation research efforts, and impediments.     

Sexual functioning and self-reported depressive symptoms among college women

We conducted an exploratory study comparing 47 college-aged women reporting depressive symptoms but not receiving antidepressant medication to 47 age-matched controls. We examined various dimensions of sexual functioning, including sexual desire, arousal, orgasm, pain, pleasure, and satisfaction. The women with depressive symptoms reported more inhibited sexual arousal, more inhibited orgasm, more sexual pain problems, and less sexual satisfaction and pleasure than control participants. Novel to this study, the women with depressive symptoms reported greater desire for sexual activity alone (masturbation) than the nondepressed women. The findings are discussed in terms of primary reinforcers and depressive symptomology.     

The psychological contract: retaining newly employed physicians

You spend lots of time and money recruiting the best candidates to fill your physician positions. But sometimes you lose those physicians after only a year or two on the job. Discover ways to help stop the turnover and keep valued employees happy.     

Imaginandose Mexicano: The Symbolic Context of Mexican American Ethnicity Beyond the Second Generation

This study explores how third-plus-generation Mexican Americans are able to perpetuate Mexican ethnicity within the relatively integrated environments they occupy in and around Phoenix, Arizona and San Jose, California. By using an imaginary approach in this analysis, I seek to demonstrate the limited applicability of the symbolic ethnicity approach for this group, in particular, as well as to downplay thinking about culture as a set of traits or fixed characteristics that define an ethnic subgroup. I do this through an exploration of how the third-plus-generation Mexican Americans interviewed for this study utilize a range of relational resources—specifically, religion, Spanish-language television, and cross-national encounters—to reinforce and recreate Mexican ethnicity in their day-to-day lives.     

Cognitive-behavioral treatment for adolescents who sexually offend and their families: individual and family applications in a collaborative outpatient program

This article describes an outpatient treatment program for adolescent sexual abusers that was established by a mental health agency in collaboration with a specialized probation program in the juvenile court. Individualized treatment is based on a comprehensive clinical assessment with the youth and guardian, for which examples are provided. Given the heterogeneity of this population, we describe several treatment strategies directed to various individual or family clinical targets, including psychiatric disorders, sexual deviance and sexuality, normal adolescent development and adaptive skills, and parent and family relationships. Ongoing collaborative and coordination issues are also reviewed. The integration of mental health and probationary services provides a balanced approach to the community management and treatment of the low-risk, primarily first-time, adolescent sexual offender.     

Das vereinte Deutschland — Eine lebenswerte Gesellschaft?

This paper focusses on the question how people measure the quality of life in the German society. The analysis shows that citizens perceive a number of problems: lack of equal opportunities and social justice, insufficient protection from crime and deficits in social security. Some people even hold that elementary rights of freedom have not been realized. Against this background, the citizens’ overall evaluation of the German society is presented as well as the importance of the aspects of freedom, security, justice and wealth. Finally, the question is discussed why east Germans regard the social conditions in the Federal Republic in a far more critical way than west Germans. It becomes obvious that neither an interpretation based on the theory of socialization nor an interpretation based on the actual situation is apt to provide an adequate explanation of this phenomenon. For this purpose, an alternative model of explanation has been introduced that integrates objective and subjective aspects and gives them a historic dimension, following Koselleck’s definition of “experience” and “expectation”.     

Forthcoming in Sociological Forum

Volume Contents

Forthcoming in Sociological Forum