Supporting family life: A survey of homeless shelters

Survey data from a national sample of homeless family shelters (N=59)were analyzed to describe the family support programming available to residents. Data were reported on facility and resident characteristics and family support programming, as well as on facility admission criteria and program participation requirements. Four independent variables (length of stay, shelter capacity, sponsorship, and program philosophy) were examined for their relationship to the family-oriented services offered. Facilities sheltered an average of 17 families, with a range of 2–200; the average length of stay for families was slightly over 5 months. Regarding family programming, services of an educational nature were more popular than those focused on providing support or therapy/intervention; services to parents to further adult development were more often offered than those either directed to parents in their parenting roles or to the family as a unit. Virtually all shelters (98%) applied eligibility criteria to families seeking admission. The most common reasons for exclusion were active drug (86%) and alcohol (83%) abuse by a family member; 40% also refused acceptance to families with adolescent males. Seventy-eight percent of facilities mandated participation in some support services. Smaller shelters operated with greater numbers of exclusions (¯x=5.98773; p<.05);larger shelters had higher percentages of mandatory family programming (¯x= 9.21823; p<.06).These findings shed light on shelter directors' beliefs about the etiology of family homelessness and proper steps to solve the problem.     

Undercover Social-distancing Techniques

This article explores the excuses undercover narcotics officers in high schools make to maintain social distance (i.e., affective detachment) from students. Social distance is necessary to prevent students from later claiming in court they were entrapped. Officers used four social-distancing techniques, each linked to particular conditions and circumstances: (1) claims of existing interpersonal attachment, (2) parental-recrimination excuses, (3) extracurricular-role-obligation excuses, and (4) feigned interest followed by unforeseen-circumstance excuses or appeals to defeasibility. Discussion focuses on the conceptual importance of social-distancing excuses for the sociology of accounts. The data's larger microstructural implications are considered through the notion of attenuated ties. I interviewed 30 undercover officers operating out of a large U.S. city.     

Determinants of Charitable Donations to Large U.S. Higher Education,Hospital, and Scientific Research NPOs: New Evidence from Panel Data

We provide improved evidence on effects that fund-raising, government support, and program revenue of U.S. higher education, hospital, and scientific research nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have on donations to those NPOs and provide improved estimates of price elasticities of donations to, and donor demand for output of, those NPOs. Applying econometric tests, we find the best-specified model is two-way fixed effects, which controls for organization-specific and time-specific factors. Results suggest that U.S. higher education, hospital, and scientific research NPOs fund-raise to the point where the marginal fund-raising dollar brings in zero dollars of donations, donor demand for output of hospitals and scientific research NPOs is price inelastic and price elastic, respectively, and results are not sensitive to specification of price.     

Children of problem gamblers

An anonymous 37-item Health Survey was administered to 844 randomly selected ninth- to twelfth-grade students in four Southern California public high schools. Systematic information was gathered about their general health, quality of life, school and work adjustment, involvement with a range of potentially addictive substances and activities, and indications of psychosocial maladjustment, including difficulties with the law and suicide attempts. A series of self-ratings of students who characterized one or both of their parents as having a compulsive gambling problem (N=52) were contrasted with those of their classmates who reported no gambling problem among their parents (N=792). Findings have been grouped into three major areas: (a) comparative levels and reported effects of involvement with health-threatening behaviors (i.e., smoking, drinking, drug use, overeating, and gambling); (b) comparative incidence of psychosocial risk indicators (i.e., broken home, unhappy childhood and teenage years, legal action pending, overall quality of youth rated as poor); and (c) comparative incidence of dysphoria, school and work problems, and suicide attempts. Across each of these areas children of parents said to gamble excessively were found to be at consistently greater risk than their classmates who did not describe their parents as having a problem with compulsive gambling. These findings strongly suggest that without early and competent intervention, children of parents who gamble excessively: (a) will be seriously disadvantaged when attempting to solve their present adolescent and future adult problems of living; and (b) as a consequence are, themselves, high-risk candidates for developing one or another form of dysfunctional adjustment, including an addictive pattern of behavior.