Medical withdrawals from college for mental health reasons and their relation to academic performance.

A collaborative study among the university health service, the dean's office, and the registrar's office examined the academic performance of 77 students who took medical withdrawals for mental health reasons from Dartmouth College during a 3-year period. In 71.4% of the cases, students withdrew from a term in progress; the remainder arranged to withdraw after they had completed a term but before starting a new term. Depression was a major factor in approximately half of the withdrawals. Grade point average improved significantly after return from the withdrawal, with a large jump in individual term averages occurring between the terms immediately preceding and immediately following return. We found no significant difference between the number of students who experienced disciplinary trouble before withdrawal and those who were disciplined afterward. Students who were depressed at the time of withdrawal did not fare as well academically upon return as those students who had not been depressed. The data suggest that procedures for handling mental health withdrawals and readmission are important ways in which the campus counseling center can support the university's academic mission.     

I've Got You Under My Skin: Marital Biography and Biological Risk

Social relationships shape adult health in profound ways. This study informs our understanding of this association by investigating how the transitions, timing, and exposures to marriage are associated with types of biological risk presumed to serve as pathways to disease and disability. Drawing on the 2005–2006 National Social Health and Aging Project (N = 1,062), the authors evaluated how marital biography was associated with cardiovascular, metabolic, and chronic inflammation risk. The results showed that the effects of marital biography were highly sensitive to gender, the dimension of marital biography, and type of biological risk. For example, marital exposure was protective of cardiovascular risk for women, but not men, whereas an earlier age at first marriage had a pernicious effect on chronic inflammation among men, but not women. Health behaviors did not explain these associations. The implications of these findings are discussed as they pertain to under‐the‐skin risk processes and chronic morbidity.     

Self-perceived Social Acceptance and Peer Social Standing in Children with Aggressive–Disruptive Behaviors

Examining children's perceptions of their social acceptance in conjunction with others’ ratings of their peer social standing can enhance our understanding of the heterogeneity in children exhibiting disruptive behavior problems. Using a sample of 213 youth rated in the top 31 percent of their class on aggressive–disruptive behaviors, the current study examined the interaction between children's perceptions of their social acceptance and their peer‐rated social standing in predicting emotional and behavioral problems. Overall, lower peer‐rated social standing was associated with higher levels of antisocial behavior, academic problems, and hyperactivity/inattention. On the other hand, higher self‐perceived social acceptance was associated with increased levels of peer‐rated fighting at school. For children who were rated as having high social standing among their peers, poorer self‐perceived social acceptance was associated with increased oppositional behaviors and conduct problems at home. In addition, children who reported lower self‐perceived social acceptance exhibited increased levels of depressive symptoms, even when they were relatively well liked by their peers. The potential implications for working with subgroups of children with aggressive–disruptive behaviors are discussed.     

Materiality and Change in Social Fields

As field change is often explained by recourse to agentic efforts of a few or revolutionary turbulence of many, this paper provides a complementary explanation of change grounded in the quotidian dynamics of physical objects and settings. Using the culinary and mountaineering fields, we demonstrate how attending to the materiality of objects and settings offers analytical leverage into the ways fields conflict and change. More specifically, we argue field instability is normal because, at the level of social action, mass and energy are inherently finite. As a result, actors responding to effects from distal fields may nevertheless collide over the objects and settings in which they are compelled to act.     

The categorical generation of organizational inequality: A comparative test of Tilly's durable inequality

This paper develops a theoretical and methodological application of Tilly's [Tilly, C. (1998). Durable inequality. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press] assertions that inequalities are inherently relational and categorical. We focus on the specific proposition that inequalities are exaggerated when categorical social distinctions are mapped onto positional distinctions internal to organizations. Using samples of Australian and U.S. organizations we examine the influence of sex and other status distinctions upon between-class wage inequality. In both countries class inequality is exaggerated when workers are women and managers men. These between-class inequality producing processes are also present for other categorical distinctions available in the data we use (education, permanent vs. temporary worker, dominant vs. marginal linguistic group in Australia, permanent vs. temporary worker and white vs. non-white in the U.S.). In the U.S. the coefficients for relational sex composition are twice as large as in Australia, suggesting historical–institutional differences between the countries enables gender to exert a stronger influence on between-class inequality in the U.S. We further examine the institutional differences in these categorical bases for inequality by examining the extent to which they vary within the two countries as a function of two historically relevant institutional distinctions in wage setting regimes—formalization in the U.S. and centralized wage awards in Australia. As expected these institutional differences shape the extent and type of between-class wage inequality. We conclude that researchers should move methodologically towards observing relations within organizations to reflect the theoretical advances of the past two decades.     

Disciplinary mechanisms and the discourse of identity: The creation of ‘silence’ in an elite sports academy

Organization studies research exposes the need to examine power relations embedded within the design of organizations, the construction of normative behaviour, and the production of socially constructed meanings that lead to the removal of employee voice. Drawing upon 21 qualitative interviews with Premiership football academy members, this article examines the regulation, control and ‘silencing’ of young English professional footballers. Building upon two existing literatures concerning the institutional dynamics of footballing traineeship, and the concept of organizational ‘silence’, the article explains how characteristics associated with surveillance mechanisms and the perpetuation of institutional norms lead to the configuration of a climate of silence. Utilizing the work of Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman, the article addresses the call for an understanding of the interplay between social actors and the confines of their structural context as an example of restrictive practice and for providing insight into the ‘how’ of silencing.     

Social Media and Social Movements

What role does social media play in social movements and political unrest? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google have all been cited as important components in social revolutions, including those in Tunisia, Egypt, Iceland, Spain, and the global Occupy movement. This essay explores social science claims about the relationship between social networking and social movements. It examines research done on the relationship between social networking, the promotion of activism, and the offline participation in the streets. Can the technology of social networking help activists to achieve their goals? If so, is it just one of many tools they may use, or is the technology so powerful that the right use will actually tip the scales in favor of the social movement? This scholarship divides into optimistic, pessimistic, and ambivalent approaches, turning on an oft‐repeated question: will the revolution be tweeted?     

On density and regression estimation with incomplete data

We consider the problem of estimation of a density function in the presence of incomplete data and study the Hellinger distance between our proposed estimators and the true density function. Here, the presence of incomplete data is handled by utilizing a Horvitz–Thompson-type inverse weighting approach, where the weights are the estimates of the unknown selection probabilities. We also address the problem of estimation of a regression function with incomplete data.