The impacts of welfare reform on federal assistance to persistently poor children

During the late twentieth century, the US social safety net was transformed to incentivize work by providing generous wage subsidies for low-income workers and reducing federal assistance to able-bodied unemployed adults. Following the transformation and during the economic boom of the 1990s, welfare rolls and annual poverty rates plummeted, especially for children. Despite the economic boom, there were still many persistently poor children living with parents who did not work, and little is known about how the reforms impacted these children's finances. In this paper we compare rates of persistent child poverty before and after the welfare reforms and examine how federal assistance received by persistently poor children changed as a result of the reforms. We find that federal assistance to persistently poor children declined following the reforms, but with divergent results depending on parental employment. While persistently poor children with employed parents benefited from increased income via the Earned Income Tax Credit, those with chronically unemployed parents did not and also experienced substantial reductions in cash welfare and food stamps. These findings demonstrate how persistently poor children fared financially in the years following the reforms and suggest possible implications for the current period of high unemployment.     

Media labeling versus the US disability community identity: a study of shifting cultural language

This study examines disability terminology to explore how the news media frame cultural representations of the disability community. More specifically, the paper examines the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on journalist's language choices about disability topics. A content analysis of news stories using disability terms in The Washington Post and The New York Times during the past decade was conducted. The paper illustrates that disability community identity continues to be formed, transformed and maintained through news media presentations of disability terminology. The paper argues that the US Disability Rights Movement had some success during the 1990s in putting forth language that advances its aims, though the study also suggests that some journalists continue to use terms that perpetuate limiting, narrow stereotypes about people with disabilities.     

Resolving and avoiding conflict with the professional staff

The professional staff perspective radically diverges from that of management. Whereas the professional staff sees the hospital in terms of its providing quality health care to each individual patient, hospital executives see the hospital in terms of its financial and systemwide performance. Unless these divergent perspectives are effectively integrated to solve problems and formulate hospital policies, chronic conflict between hospital management and the professional staff is inevitable.     

College Student Perceptions of the Content of Father Stereotypes

This study used a three‐step procedure to examine 663 Midwestern university students' perceptions of the content of social stereotypes related to seven types of fathers. Married and adoptive fathers were the most positively stereotyped groups, and divorced residential fathers were also viewed quite positively. There were relatively neutral views of stepfathers and gay fathers, whereas divorced nonresidential and never‐married fathers were the most negatively stereotyped groups. Our results empirically supported the notion that younger adults' stereotypes of fathers depend on the father’s marital status, parental status, and sexual orientation.     

Meaningful Performances: Considering the Contributions of the Dramaturgical Approach to Studying Family

This article highlights the contributions of Erving Goffman's dramaturgical approach to both understanding and researching family. With its interest in the performative nature of human interaction and the active construction of social reality, the dramaturgical perspective is particularly well-suited to study a dynamic social institution like the family. This article offers a brief introduction to the dramaturgical study of family by addressing important components of dramaturgy and contrasting it with other approaches to the sociology of family. The authors then demonstrate this approach in action by introducing two research areas that currently employ dramaturgical analyses – work on 'doing family' and the social construction of motherhood – and another that might benefit from such analyses, research on blended families. The article closes with further suggestions for future research attending to the performative aspects of family life.     

Recognition of Emotions in Gait Patterns by Means of Artificial Neural Nets

This paper describes an application of emotion recognition in human gait by means of kinetic and kinematic data using artificial neural nets. Two experiments were undertaken, one attempting to identify participants’ emotional states from gait patterns, and the second analyzing effects on gait patterns of listening to music while walking. In the first experiment gait was analyzed as participants attempted to simulate four distinct emotional states (normal, happy, sad, angry). In the second experiment, participants were asked to listen to different types of music (excitatory, calming, no music) before and during gait analysis. Derived data were fed into different types of artificial neural nets. Results showed not only a clear distinction between individuals, but also revealed clear indications of emotion recognition in nets.     

From C. P. Ellis to School Integration: The Social Psychology of Conflict Reduction

In this article, the authors review social psychological theories of intergroup conflict reduction. Emphasis is placed on three interrelated social conditions which facilitate conflict reduction: intergroup contact, superordinate goals, and shared identities. Bridging experimental research with real‐world studies of schooling, these concepts are applied to understanding the process of school integration. Social contexts which present conflicting parties with a new shared goal and identity, as well as opportunities to become familiar with others beyond stereotypes and anxious reactions, dramatically increase the likelihood of diffusing conflict.     

Research Orientations and Sources of Influence: Agricultural Scientists in the U.S. Land‐Grant System*

Abstract This research builds on the work of Busch and Lacy, who have written extensively about the sources of influence on the choice of research problems in the agricultural sciences at land‐grant universities. Employing data from a 1995–1996 nationwide survey of land‐grant agricultural scientists, I use multiple regression techniques to investigate the relative importance of 19 sources of influence on agricultural scientists engaged in six research areas: productionist‐oriented, sustainable agriculture, environmental, basic, consumer‐oriented, and rural community‐oriented. The first objective of this paper is to revisit and assess many of Busch and Lacy's findings about the influences on land‐grant agricultural scientists. I find that different types of land‐grant research are influenced by distinct combinations of factors. The second major objective is to extend Busch and Lacy's work by spotlighting the significant influences on sustainable agriculture research. My multivariate findings show that this research appears to exhibit influences that reflect its dual productionist and environmental character.     

A programme evaluation of the Family Crisis Intervention Program (FCIP): relating programme characteristics to change

This study evaluated the Family Crisis Intervention Program (FCIP), focusing on crisis, child safety, family functioning and child behaviour problems. Questionnaires were completed by 183 families in crisis and their FCIP worker. After FCIP, the crisis had decreased and child safety had increased. Although problematic family functioning persisted after intervention, improvements were found in parent–child interaction, parenting stress, parental competence and child behaviour problems. Crisis change, safety change and improved family functioning were associated with programme characteristics, especially the therapeutic relationship, analysis of the crisis situation, duration of the intervention and the solution‐focused approach. The discussion addressed implications of this study with regard to outcome measures in the evaluation of family crisis intervention and the importance of particular programme characteristics.