100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.     

Differential predictors of academic achievement: individual and familial factor interactions with community poverty

We present an analysis of the contexts within which adolescents graduate from high school and enroll in college. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health show that adolescents’ school engagement, maternal academic monitoring, and community poverty significantly interact to explain differences in high school graduation and college enrollment rates (n?=?7100). To examine this association, we performed weighted logistic regression analyses, controlling for gender, race, block level unemployment, and block level median income. Findings suggest that protective factors can help youth overcome the challenges associated with community poverty and achieve academically in low and medium levels of poverty, but that youth in high-poverty contexts may need more resources to reach higher levels of academic attainment.     

Living with the parents: the purpose of young graduates’ return to the parental home in England

Young graduates in England often return to the parental home after a period of living away during their university studies. Little is known, however, about why they return and how coresidence with parents fits within a life trajectory. This paper reports upon an in-depth cross-sectional qualitative study of young graduates’ coresidence with their parents. It identifies a five-part typology of the purpose of coresidence as perceived by the graduates: a base camp for exploration before settling into adulthood; a launch pad for careers; a savings bank, in particular for future property purchases; a refuge for respite and reflection; and a preferred residence, whether on account of comfort, cultural practice or to support parents. The paper further explores how far these purposes were associated in young adults’ accounts with social structures, individual agency or some combination of these. It concludes that the default understanding of graduates’ return and coresidence as a residual function when other options fail is insufficient. Such a generalisation obscures the different purposes which the return can enable; it overplays some notion of a broken biography rather than the positive contribution of coresidence to graduates’ trajectories towards adulthood and to their life experiences.     

Arenas of comfort and conflict: peer relationship events and young people's educational attainment

Previous research suggests that developments in young people's peer relationships may either compound or alleviate the adverse impacts of other major life changes during adolescence. We explored this proposition with respect to young people's educational attainment upon leaving high school, using longitudinal data from a large cohort of Australian secondary school students (n?=?1612) who have taken part in the Our Lives research study between the ages of 12/13 and 19/20 years. Our analysis focused on the role of peer relationship events such bullying, friendship problems, falling in love, and breaking up with someone. Bullying and romantic involvement were associated with lower odds of receiving a competitive tertiary entrance rank at the end of high school. However, close, resilient friendships – in which status and identity conflicts may be more easily tolerated and resolved – may help to offset the role of these other events. As well as reviewing the consequences of our findings for young people's educational and occupational trajectories in the longer-term, we highlight their implications for future research and policy in this area.     

The red and the black: China’s social credit experiment as a total test environment

China's social credit system is an unusually explicit case where technology is used by multiple actors to turn human behavior into a test object on behalf of the state's goal of modifying the larger social environment, making it an intriguing setting for thinking about the new sociology of testing. This article considers how China's search for a usable “credit” score to both allocate financial resources and explicitly measure a citizen's trustworthiness creates an emergent experimental system of governance similar to, yet not quite captured by, the kinds of experimental processes observed in literature on the platform as a form of market-based governance. As a site where “seeing like a state” and “seeing like a market” converge, the social credit system is a vantage point for observing the changing relationship between moral and economic domains in an era of digital platforms. The article highlights the experimental quality of the system and its emerging system of governance structured around reward and punishment and argues that strategic ambiguity, institutionalized through the affordances of digital platforms, is an important part of the design of this large-scale social experiment.     

Toward a Viable Progressive Third Party in 2020 and Beyond1

Creating a strong, influential third party has been an abiding aspiration on the American left, and were this goal to be achieved, it could be a great boon to subordinate groups in the United States. Yet widespread doubts persist, even among progressives that this is desirable, and especially that it is possible. Here, I briefly review compelling reasons for thinking otherwise; I then consider in some depth the potential for starting to build a viable left third party leading up to and after the pivotal 2020 election. In doing so, I go beyond the existing literature on third parties, which has yet to reflect systematically on progressive third party prospects in this period. Specifically, I assess how the emerging political environment may shape left third-party building, and I evaluate ongoing and developing attempts by key groups engaged in that effort. I find a distinct tension between conditions encouraging progressives to reform versus abandon the Democratic Party, and I identify one alternative party-building tendency that seems most able to exploit the latter impulse due to its already established electoral viability. Last, I highlight relevant questions that remain for activists hoping to create an effective national left third party.