Silver Alerts: A Notification System for Communities with Missing Adults

ABSTRACT

As the U.S. population ages, the prevalence of dementia will grow and communities will face the problem of older adults wandering or becoming lost. Silver Alert systems are programs designed to locate missing older adults with dementia or other mental disabilities. Such programs have been initiated in all but five states. Data collection for these programs is often minimal or incomplete. Social workers should be involved in prevention, follow up and education with caregivers, community members and law enforcement officers. When reviewing Silver Alert policy, special attention must be given to ethical concerns and protection of older adults‘ civil rights.     

The Influence of Information Costs on Donor Decision Making

This article explores whether an individual's information costs influence the information‐gathering strategies that he or she turns to prior to donating to a nonprofit. The data for the study come from a telephone survey of residents in a large county in southern California (n = 1,002). The sample was selected using random‐digit‐dialing technology and a computer‐assisted telephone interviewing system. A series of binomial logit models revealed that information costs significantly influenced the information‐gathering strategies individuals turned to in order to learn about nonprofit performance prior to making a donation. Results also revealed that greater confidence in nonprofits did not lead individuals to forgo efforts to obtain information on nonprofit performance altogether. The findings from this study suggest that it is important for nonprofit administrators to recognize, and then take into account, that not all individuals will rely on the same information sources when seeking to learn about nonprofit performance.     

Subjectivity in Feminist Science and Technology Studies: Implications and Applications for Sociological Research

Feminist science and technology studies calls the researcher to reconsider subjectivity in three ways. First, who or what has subjectivity? Second, is subjectivity a property of an individual being with sentience, or is it a more diffuse process? Third, who or what acts in meaningful ways to impact social relations (and are thus worthy of sociological study)? According to feminist STS, the conferral of subjectivity has been nationalized, racialized, and sexualized, and the influence of non‐human life and non‐living matter has been underemphasized. We suggest that sociological research could benefit from a more expansive understanding of subjectivity and a more interactive (or “entangled”) notion of social–material relations. Human relations and action need not just be considered in the context of the human and social but can also be considered in relation to the non‐human and material. To make the implications of feminist STS more concrete, we offer specific applications of feminist STS methodologies across a range of sociological methods and topics.     

Vegetation management and benthic macroinvertebrate communities in urban stormwater ponds: implications for regional biodiversity

Urban Ecosystems - Designed ecosystems (e.g., gardens or engineered ponds) are increasingly common components of urban landscapes and contribute valuable ecosystem services. However, management of...     

Tweeted,deleted: theoretical,methodological, and ethical considerations for examining politicians’ deleted tweets

In an election, political candidates often slip up and want a do-over. On Twitter, they get this chance. Candidates can delete tweets and hope no one notices. But organizations such as Politwoops notice. Politwoops archives politicians’ deletions in the hopes of bringing more transparency and accountability to political discourse. This article discusses the theoretical value, methodological challenges, and ethical considerations of examining deleted tweets and using the Politwoops archive. Specifically, this article (a) discusses how analysis of deleted tweets can expand and deepen research on impression management and online self-presentations in elections, (b) proposes the use of an intertextual content analysis ? a hybrid approach that incorporates elements of a qualitative content analysis and an intertextual interpretative analysis ? when analyzing deletions, (c) investigates and exposes some of the limitations of the Politwoops archive, and (d) given the limitations of the Politwoops archive, discusses the potential ethical dilemmas of researchers creating their own datasets of deleted tweets. Overall, analyzing deletions can reveal what campaigns strategically present and hide from voters in order to create electable personas. To uncover the content of candidates’ deleted tweets and how they may contribute to impression management, researchers must first consider several methodological and ethical matters.     

Using the wellness inventory to assess health and well-being in college students at the end of the semester

Abstract

Objective: The authors examined the end of semester outcomes (December, 2017) on the Wellness Inventory and demographics among college students taking a Physical Education (PED 101) course at a university in the southeast United States. Participants: College students were assessed at the end of the semester for health and well-being outcomes according to the Wellness Inventory. Results: Results showed that there were few gender or age differences for the dimensions of well-being. However, there were significant differences for most of the dimensions of health and well-being between frequent exercisers and infrequent exercisers. There were also significant differences between students who reported being in excellent health versus students who reported being in fair or poor health. Conclusions: Consistent exercise throughout the week may play a role in overall health and well-being. The results from this study warrant further investigation into the relationship between the exercise frequency and the dimensions of health and well-being.     

Mutual Positive Emotion with Peers,Emotion Knowledge,and Preschoolers' Peer Acceptance

Preschool children's emotion knowledge was examined as a possible mediator of the link between their mutual positive emotional expressiveness with peers and peer acceptance. Data were collected from 122 preschool children (57 boys, 65 girls; 86 European American, 9 African American, 17 Hispanic, and 10 other ethnicity; M age = 57.61 months) over a period of 2 years. In year 1 observations were made of children's emotional expressiveness with peers, and children completed sociometric interviews. In year 2, children completed emotion knowledge interviews and sociometric interviews. Analyses revealed that children who expressed more mutual positive emotion with peers in year 1 were better liked by peers in year 2, after controlling for year 1 peer acceptance. Mutual positive emotion in year 1 was associated with children's emotion knowledge in year 2. Both year 1 mutual positive emotion and year 2 emotion knowledge made independent contributions to peer acceptance in year 2.     

Local deprivation and the labour market integration of new migrants to England

ABSTRACT

Using data on new migrants to England from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, we show how a key component of migrant integration - labour market progress in terms of wages and unemployment rates – is broadly positive in the early years after arrival across a range of migrant groups and across gender. However, the precise level of labour market success achieved varies considerably across groups reflecting both the initial entry-level and labour market trajectories after migration. Migrants from Western Europe and the Old Commonwealth countries have unemployment rates (wages) which are generally lower (higher) than other groups, particularly non-white groups, while migrants from the Accession countries experience relatively low unemployment but also low wages. Groups which have better outcomes on entry also tend to experience higher rates of progress over time in England. However, the extent of multiple deprivation in the local authority where migrants reside interacts with years since migration to dampen wage trajectories for some groups and accounting for deprivation highlights the importance of internal migration for access to employment. The results emphasise structural explanations for patterns of labour market integration of new migrants to England.