The use of metaevaluation to plan evaluations of conservation programs

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is sponsoring and will be required to evaluate a wide range of conservation programs. The development of evaluation plans for such programs can often be improved by reviewing evaluations that have been done on similar programs. The Residential Conservation Service (RCS), sponsored by DOE, is discussed as an example of how conducting metaevaluations can improve evaluation planning. Many utilities have sponsored programs that are similar to the RCS. A review of the utility program evaluations suggested key methodological issues and data problems that should be considered in the development of an RCS evaluation plan. The implications of these metaevaluation findings for an RCS evaluation plan are discussed.     

‘Doing things with words’: Sociology and ‘Family Policy’ debates

In examining ‘family policy’, previous work on ‘family ideology’ is developed to demonstrate that ‘traditional family sociology’ has been ‘doing things with words’. In this area sociology, far from being innocuous, has had real impact upon society and may well have been oppressive and deeply reactionary.     

中国特色的政治学：为何混合式方法论路径更适合中国

中国的政治学,与这个国家一样,从十年的动乱中走出来,又经历了30多年的改革开放,取得了显著的成就。中国政治学在学科声望与严谨性方面都有快速的进步,并正准备争取它在世界学术舞台上的合理地位。那么,我们应期望中国产生何种政治学呢?这是一个重要的问题。中国政治学是否应当模仿一种美式或西式研究路径?或者,它是否应该大胆地采用一种不同的研究路径——或许一种具有中国特色的政治学?这篇论文提供了一个有关中国政治学政策和学术内涵的探讨,中国政治学追求一种混合式的研究路径,它给予问题导向式研究和理论导向式研究给予同等的重视。     

Why Do People Vote? A Psychological Analysis of the Causes of Voter Turnout

A great deal of scholarship has explored why some democratic citizens vote while others do not. This article reviews that literature through a lens presuming that a person's likelihood of turning out on election day is a multiplicative function of his or her ability to vote, her or her motivation to vote, and the difficulty of obtaining the needed information and carrying out the behavior of voting. We conclude that (a) turnout is made more difficult and less likely by onerous registration procedures; (b) turnout is more likely among some demographic groups because of greater motivation or ability or less difficulty; (c) the social setting in which a person lives and the psychological dispositions he or she possesses can affect turnout by shaping motivation, ability, or difficulty; (d) characteristics of a specific electoral contest can inspire or discourage turnout; and (e) canvassing and interviewing people about an election can increase turnout, but preelection polls and election-day outcome projections do not. Consequently, an individual citizen/s turnout behavior is a joint function of his or her social location, his or her psychological dispositions, the procedures involved in voting, and events that occur at the time of each election .     

Calorie Intake and Gambling: Is Fat and Sugar Consumption ‘Impulsive’?

Excessive calorie intake constitutes a global public health concern, due to its associated range of untoward outcomes. Gambling is commonplace and gambling disorder is now considered a behavioral addiction in DSM-5. The relationships between calorie intake, gambling, and other types of putatively addictive and impulsive behaviors have received virtually no research attention. Two-hundred twenty-five young adults who gamble were recruited from two Mid-Western university communities in the United States using media advertisements. Dietary intake over the preceding year was quantified using the Dietary Fat and Free Sugar Short questionnaire (DFS). Clinician rating scales, questionnaires, and cognitive tests germane to impulsivity were completed. Relationships between dietary fat/sugar intake and gambling behaviors, as well as other measures of psychopathology and cognition germane to addiction, were evaluated using correlational analyses controlling for multiple comparisons. Greater dietary fat and sugar intake were associated with lower educational levels and with male gender. Controlling for these variables, higher dietary fat and sugar intake were correlated significantly with worse gambling pathology and anxiety scores. Dietary sugar intake was also significantly associated with higher depressive scores, more alcohol intake, lower self-esteem, and with greater risk of having one or more mental disorders in general. Dietary intake did not correlate significantly with ADHD symptoms, presence of one or more impulse control disorders, Barratt impulsiveness, or cognitive functioning. These data suggest a particularly strong relationship between fat/sugar intake and symptoms of gambling pathology, but not most other forms of impulsivity and behavioral addiction (excepting alcohol intake). Providing education about healthy diet may be especially valuable in gamblers and in community settings where gambling advertisements feature prominently. Future work should explore the mediating mechanisms between calorie intake and gambling symptoms, such as whether this could be driven by environmental factors (e.g. advertising) or common dysfunction of brain reward pathways.     

Social Monogamy in Nonhuman Primates: Phylogeny,Phenotype, and Physiology

Monogamy as a social system has been both a scientific puzzle and a sociocultural issue for decades. In this review, we examine social monogamy from a comparative perspective with a focus on primates, our closest genetic relatives. We break down monogamy into component elements, including pair-bonding and partner preference, mate guarding or jealousy, social attachment, and biparental care. Our survey of primates shows that not all features are present in species classified as socially monogamous, in the same way that human monogamous relationships may not include all elements—a perspective we refer to as “monogamy à la carte.” Our review includes a survey of the neurobiological correlates of social monogamy in primates, exploring unique or common pathways for the elemental components of monogamy. This compilation reveals that the components of monogamy are modulated by a suite of androgenic steroids, glucocorticoid hormones, the nonapeptide hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, and other neurotransmitter systems (e.g., dopamine and opioids). We propose that efforts to understand the biological underpinnings of complex human and animal sociosexual relationships will be well served by exploring individual phenotypic traits, as opposed to pursuing these questions with the assumption that monogamy is a unitary trait or a species-specific characteristic.     

Putting the fragments (back) together: towards a theorisation of Jewish sampling

This article argues that there is an elective affinity between the Jewish worldview and sampling. Sampling has a history much longer than its use in hip hop. Here, though, I am concerned with Jewish artists who have used sampling since the 1980s such as Steinski, the Beastie Boys, Edan and SoCalled. These artists have worked within the generic form of hip hop but have created texts that are quite distinct from texts created by African Americans. My list here is by no means definitive but is a function of the artists that I use for illustrative purposes. I suggest that the Jewish worldview, founded on ideas of catastrophe and exile, and of the bringing back together of fragments to form a new cultural whole, has a synergy with sampling which utilises fragments in the service of creating a new text. These reference points are different from the assumptions that underpin African-American uses of hip hop.