School Order,Justice, and Education: Climate,Discipline Practices,and Dropping Out

There is a growing body of research that explores how school climate, order, and procedural justice are related to violence within American public schools. What remains in the background, however, is how school climate, order, and justice are related to aspects of education such as dropping out. This study uses multilevel analysis, drawing from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, to examine the effect of school climate, order, and justice on dropping out. Results indicate that, when considering the various dimensions of school climate, order, and justice, a student receiving a formal school sanction remains the strongest factor related to the likelihood of a student dropping out of school. These results underscore the importance of careful design and implementation of school discipline and safety policies.     

A guideline for designing experimental studies in marketing research and a critical discussion of selected problem areas

Experiments are a well-suited method for empirically studying cause-and-effect relationships. This article provides a guideline for designing experiments. We develop an integrative framework that illustrates the key decisions in designing experimental studies. With this framework, we discuss important problem areas in the design of experiments (e.g., determining the experimental setting, choosing participants). Finally, for the different decisions and identified problem areas, we derive concrete recommendations for designing experimental studies in marketing research.     

Women's adjustment to widowhood: does social support matter?

Widowhood is a stressful event for women, often coinciding with health, financial, and relationship losses. Researchers have considered many aspects of women's adjustment to widowhood, typically including social support in analyses. This study analyzed relationships between social support and adjustment from 19 previous widowhood studies. Contrary to intuition and most researchers' assumptions, the majority of relationships did not show that social support positively impacted adjustment. Analyses examined whether type of support or study methods affected the likelihood of finding a significant relationship between support and adjustment. Chi-square statistics indicated that neither of these factors influenced the effect of social support on women's adjustment to widowhood.     

Young women's experiences and perceptions of cunnilingus during adolescence

Recent studies indicate that cunnilingus may be as prevalent as fellatio among American adolescents. Despite this approximate equivalence in rates, there is an imbalance in the amount and type of attention paid to fellatio and cunnilingus. Furthermore, there has been little empirical examination of young women's experiences and perceptions of cunnilingus during adolescence. Two studies in response to this gap in knowledge were conducted. In Study 1, regression analyses indicated that a young woman's sexual assertiveness was linked to having more lifetime cunnilingus partners, as well as more cunnilingus experiences in the past three months. Study 2 explored young women's perceptions of cunnilingus and their speculations about their male partners' perceptions thereof. Linear mixed modeling revealed that participants had highly favorable impressions of cunnilingus, which they believed their male partners shared. These findings are considered in terms of positive adolescent sexual development and cultural norms regarding female sexuality.     

Multiple Response System: Evaluation of Policy Change in North Carolina's Child Welfare System

Systemic challenges within child welfare have prompted many states to explore new strategies aimed at protecting children while meeting the needs of families, but doing so within the confines of shrinking budgets. Differential Response has emerged as a promising practice for low or moderate risk cases of child maltreatment. This mixed methods evaluation explored various aspects of North Carolina's differential response system, known as the Multiple Response System (MRS), including: child safety, timeliness of response and case decision, frontloading of services, case distribution, implementation of Child and Family Teams, collaboration with community-based service providers and Shared Parenting. Utilizing Child Protective Services (CPS) administrative data, researchers found that compared to matched control counties, MRS: had a positive impact on child safety evidenced by a decline in the rates of substantiations and re-assessments; temporarily disrupted timeliness of response in pilot counties but had no effect on time to case decision; and increased the number of upfront services provided to families during assessment. Qualitative data collected through focus groups with providers and phone interviews with families provided important information on key MRS strategies, highlighting aspects that families and social workers like as well as identifying areas for improvement. This information is useful for continuous quality improvement efforts, particularly related to the development of training and technical assistance programs at the state and local level.     

Integrated or isolated? The impact of public housing redevelopment on social network homophily

Do mixed income housing programs increase the poor's social network diversity? Using unique, longitudinal, egocentric social network data, this research investigates changes in social network homophily for both Vietnamese and English-speaking original residents of a public housing redevelopment site. Changes in mixing occur for both those who return and those who moved away, but only increases in ethnic mixing were associated with returning to the new site. Thus, changes in social networks may be associated with disruption rather moving to a mixed-income site. Vietnamese residents also experienced increases in ethnic diversity compared to English-speaking respondents. The results raise questions about the social mixing intent of such programs. The high expectations for social network benefits of income mixing housing programs should be tempered.     

Job Quality and Employment of Older People in Europe

We study the relationship between job quality and retirement using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, a longitudinal survey covering individuals aged 50+ in several European countries. Although most previous studies looked at the impact of bad working conditions on retirement intentions, we can use the panel dimension to study actual retirement as well as other pathways out of a job. As indicators for job quality we use three different approaches: overall job satisfaction, over‐ and undereducation for a particular job as well as effort–reward imbalance, which measures the imbalance between a worker's effort and the rewards he or she receives in turn. The analysis gives some evidence that poor job quality decreases retirement age, in particular for women.