Latino Faces,Corporate Ties: Latino Advocacy Organizations and Their Board Membership

Although they have increased exponentially since the 1960s, social scientists know little about ethnic advocacy organizations. These nonprofits are important bridges between underresourced communities and mainstream funding organizations and their directors are established ethnic leaders. Sociologists study interlocking directorates—or shared board membership—to understand how organizations fit together within broader social networks. Network concepts, particularly the theory of institutional isomorphism, suggest that organizations are likely to be similar to the extent they are connected and operate within a common organizational field. We apply this logic to Latino advocacy organizations to examine the underlying source of cohesion across this ethnic field. We ask whether the organizations are tied by interlocking directorates of ethnic elites who sit on their boards of directors or if board members' common affiliation with other elite institutions creates the structural conditions that facilitate potential ideological or behavioral similarity. A social network analysis of five prominent Latino advocacy organizations reveals support for both hypotheses: Latino board members are both embedded in ethnic‐based networks and entrenched within elite organizational webs. This suggests that ethnic elites who sit on the boards of Latino advocacy organizations are also corporate elites, selected for the social capital they bring to these nonprofits.     

Infants’ Lexical Processing Efficiency is Related to Vocabulary Size by One Year of Age

By 15–18 months, infants’ skill in interpreting familiar words, or lexical processing efficiency (LPE), improves substantially and is correlated with vocabulary size concurrently and several months later. Prior to this age LPE is quite poor, and to date there is little evidence that it is related to vocabulary size. If this relation only emerges once infants have relatively good LPE, and also know a substantial number of words, it could suggest that the processes that support the rapid growth in vocabulary commonly observed as infants approach age 2 may not yet be functional in the earlier stages of lexical development. However, using a modified LPE task we found that 12‐month‐olds with better LPE understood more words at that age and also produced more words several months later. These results suggest that meaningful individual differences in LPE are already emerging by 12 months and may support lexical development across the second year.     

Why is the History of Heterosexuality Essential? Beliefs About the History of Sexuality and Their Relationship to Sexual Prejudice

Heterosexual people with more positive attitudes to lesbians and gay men generally believe that homosexuality is immutable, is not a discrete social category, and that homosexuality exists in all cultures and time periods. Equivalent beliefs about heterosexuality and beliefs about components of sexuality have been less often researched. 136 people with diverse sexualities described heterosexuality as more universal across history and culture than homosexuality (Study 1). 69 heterosexual-identified participants similarly believed that love, identity, behavior, and desire were more historically invariant aspects of heterosexuality than of homosexuality (Study 2). Less prejudiced participants thought all components of homosexuality—except for identity—were more historically invariant. Teasing apart beliefs about the history of components of heterosexuality and homosexuality suggests that there is no “essential” relationship between sexual prejudice and the tension between essentialist and constructivist views about the history of sexual identity.     

Identifying as an evidence-based social worker: the influence of attitudes,access, confidence,and education

This study explored United States-based social workers’ (N = 152) attitudes toward, access to, and confidence in engaging in evidence-based practice (EBP), the extent to which social work education prepared them to engage in EBP, and the factors that contributed to their identification as an evidence-based practitioner. Findings indicated that although practitioners had a positive attitude toward engaging in EBP, they were only moderately confident in doing so, rarely accessed evidence, and were only moderately prepared through their education. Believing that EBP should be implemented, more educational preparation, and positive attitudes contributed to greater identification as an evidence-based practitioner, areas that social work and continuing education should further support to enhance social workers’ EBP skills.     

The embodied becoming of autism and childhood: a storytelling methodology

In this article I explore a methodology of storytelling as a means of bringing together research around autism and childhood in a new way, as a site of the embodied becoming of autism and childhood. Through reflection on an ethnographic story of embodiment, the body is explored as a site of knowledge production that contests its dominantly storied subjectivation as a ‘disordered’ child. Storytelling is used to experiment with a line of flight from the autistic-child-research assemblage into new spaces of potential and possibility where the becomings of bodies within the collision of autism and childhood can be celebrated.     

Young adults in the United States and Benin reason about gendered cultural traditions

This study explored emerging and young adults’ reasoning about cultural practices in West Africa. American (Study 1, n = 78, M = 20.76 years) and Beninese (Study 2, n = 93, M = 23.61 years) undergraduates were surveyed about their evaluations of corporal punishment, scarification, and schooling restrictions in conditions where the practices had gender‐neutral or gender‐specified targets. In Study 1, the majority (69%) of American participants negatively evaluated the practices, especially when targets were female. However, the majority (73%) assumed the cultural practices were consensual. In Study 2, the majority (76%) of Beninese participants negatively evaluated the practices, and their evaluations did not vary by gender of the target. Few (10%) Beninese participants assumed the cultural practices were consensual. In both studies, emerging and young adults who initially judged practices positively changed their evaluations with a change in consent.     

Intimate Partner Violence,Minority Stress,and Sexual Risk-Taking Among U.S. Men Who Have Sex With Men

This article examines the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) among a national sample of Internet-recruited U.S. men who have sex with men (MSM) (n = 1,575), and associations between reporting of IPV, minority stress, and sexual risk-taking. Five outcomes are examined: experiences of physical and sexual violence, perpetration of physical and sexual violence, and unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) at last sexual encounter. MSM who reported experiencing more homophobic discrimination and internalized homophobia were more likely to report experiences of IPV. The results point to the need for prevention messages to address the external and internal stressors that influence both violence and sexual risk among MSM.