What you really want: Two-year-olds prioritise ultimate goals when helping

Toddlers are motivated to help others achieve their goals, but providing effective help also requires toddlers to consider what will be most helpful to another individual. Sometimes, helping requests provide conflicting information about an individual's goals, so we need to decide which information to prioritise in order to decide how is best to help. The current studies investigate how toddlers prioritise conflicting information about immediate and ultimate goals when helping. In Study 1, 2-year-olds were shown an opaque container of blocks (hidden blocks), a transparent container of blocks (visible blocks), and a colourful tube that plays music when a block is dropped inside. For half of the participants, both hidden and visible blocks played music but, for the other half, only the hidden blocks worked. A naïve experimenter asked for a block (immediate goal) to play music with (ultimate goal), and when both blocks were equally functional, we found that toddlers prioritised fulfilling the immediate request by providing a visible block; but when only the hidden block was functional, toddlers prioritising fulfilling the ultimate goal and helped by providing the functional but hidden block. Study 2 demonstrated that toddlers considered the experimenter's goal when helping, and not just their own attraction to the musical toy. This work adds to a growing body of literature investigating not only whether young children help, but also how young children reason when engaging in helping behaviour.     

Income Inequality and Chronic Health Conditions: A Multilevel Analysis of the U.S. States

Recently, scholarly work has examined the effect of rising income inequality on health outcomes. However, this work is somewhat inconclusive. The mechanisms that could produce such an association are still being sorted out. Much of this work focuses on mortality outcomes with little attention to how this process operates for actual health conditions, including chronic health problems—arguably the main public health concerns of the developed world. In a series of multilevel binary logistic regression models using data from the 2005 and 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we examine the association between state-level income inequality, poverty, and social welfare measures on spending and policy to examine the association between these factors for three chronic health outcomes: diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart disease. We find that income inequality is conditionally positively related only to the diagnosis of diabetes and hypertension, and only in 2007. However, absolute poverty is related to the outcome across all three dependent variables. Certain social welfare measures attenuate the effects of both income inequality and absolute poverty, suggesting that some policies reduce this association.     

The Implementation of Functional Family Therapy (FFT) as an Intervention for Youth Probationers in Singapore

Family functioning is predictive of youth recidivism in Singapore. However, there is a lack of family based interventions for youth offenders on community probation. Evidence‐based family interventions developed in Western populations, such as Functional Family Therapy (FFT), have been found to be effective in mitigating subsequent youth criminal behavior. However, no study has examined whether such interventions can be implemented and adapted for use in Eastern cultures. Thus, this paper sought to detail the implementation of FFT in Singapore. Rationale for the adoption of FFT is discussed, and key activities undertaken during the first 18 months of implementation are described. Preliminary data suggest that initial implementation efforts were successful. Challenges encountered, and implications in relation to the broader literature are discussed.     

Racial Residential Segregation,Perceived Neighborhood Conditions,and Self-Rated Health: The Case of Houston,Texas

Previous research has linked racial residential segregation to a number of poor health outcomes. Yet, the mechanisms that could account for this association remain poorly understood and have seldom been empirically tested in the literature. In an analysis of the Houston area, we test one potential mechanism—perceived neighborhood conditions, as measured by two indices for neighborhood disorder and environmental quality. Using individual-level health data from a survey of Houston residents and neighborhood-level sociodemographic data from the U.S. Census, we estimate a series of multilevel models. We find that black and Latino segregation are linked to the perceived neighborhood disorder index, but no such relationship for the environmental quality index. Moreover, we find that both indices are related to poor self-rated health in that residents who evaluate their neighborhood conditions negatively are more likely to evaluate their health as poor. We also find a direct effect of black and Latino segregation on poor self-rated health, and that perceived neighborhood disorder partially mediates this relationship. We do not find a mediation effect for environmental quality. The results suggest that in order to improve the health of these communities, both residential segregation and neighborhood conditions need to be addressed.     

Continuity,change and complexity in the performance of masculinity among elite young footballers in England

Following recent research evidencing that young men are redefining the essential components of what it is to be a man, this paper draws on qualitative interviews with 22 elite‐level, English Premier League academy level football (soccer) players to investigate their performances and understandings of masculinity in relation to decreasing homohysteria. Even in this gender‐segregated, near‐total institution, these working‐class, non‐educationally aspiring adolescents evidence an attenuated performance of ‘maleness’ and improved attitudinal disposition toward homosexuality. Congruent with insights developed by inclusive masculinity scholars, respondents maintained emotional closeness and physical tactility with male teammates and friends. These more inclusive attitudes and homosocial behaviours were, however, slightly more conservative than in other recent research. We close by explaining this variation with reference to theoretical apparatus’ provided by Goffman and Bourdieu to advance theoretical debates about social class and masculinities.     

CITATIONS OR JOURNAL QUALITY: WHICH IS REWARDED MORE IN THE ACADEMIC LABOR MARKET?

Research quality can be evaluated from citations or from the prestige of journals publishing the research. We relate salary of tenured University of California (UC) economists to their lifetime publications of 5,500 articles and to the 140,000 citations to these articles. Citations hardly affect salary, especially in top‐ranked UC departments where impacts of citations are less than one‐tenth those of journals. In lower ranked departments, and when journal quality is less comprehensively measured, effects of citations on salary increase. If journal quality is just measured by counting articles in journal tiers, apparent effects of citations are overstated. (JEL A14, J44)     

PENALTY STRUCTURES AND DETERRENCE IN A TWO‐STAGE MODEL: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

Multiperiod models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of Becker (1968) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat or declining. We present the first experimental test of a two‐stage theoretical model that predicts decreasing penalty structures will yield greater deterrence than increasing penalty structures. This prediction is based on the belief that if the penalty for the first offenses is sufficiently low, the agent should commit the offense and continue to offend if undetected. Our results are consistent with the theoretical prediction that decreasing fine structures are more effective at reducing risky behavior. (JEL C91, K42, K10)     

The Formality of Informal Civil Society: Ukraine’s EuroMaidan

Over a period of three months, starting in late 2013, Ukraine experienced a remarkable civic transformation. What started as peaceful protests largely consisting of young idealists, grew quickly into an organized yet decentralized social movement, a conglomeration of semi-formal initiatives, and a loosely defined network of related formal and informal organizations—a process that ultimately prompted significant political and social changes in Ukraine. This paper offers three case studies related to EuroMaidan to provide insight into the formal and informal dimensions of civil society, contrasting those with official designations. The discussion contributes to the long-debated question of the strength or weakness of civil society in the context of Eastern Europe and suggests directions for future research with regard to the conceptualization of civil society and our understanding of formality.     

Adaptation and Validation of the Life Events and Difficulties Schedule for Use With High School Dropouts

The Life Events and Difficulties Schedule (LEDS) is considered the standard for measuring psychosocial stressor exposure, but it has not been used with academically at‐risk adolescents, including high school dropouts. The goal of this study was to (1) adapt the LEDS for use with this population, and (2) examine the reliability (interrater) and validity (concurrent and predictive) of this adaptation among a sample of vulnerable adolescents (N = 545). Good reliability coefficients (.79–.90) were obtained, and stressor exposure was associated with concurrent criteria indexing mental health outcomes (depression) and major risk factors for dropout (administratively recorded and self‐reported). Also, LEDS scores predicted dropout beyond these risk factors. The adapted LEDS appears useful for describing academically struggling adolescents’ stressor exposure.