Examining Community Life “in the Making”: Emile Durkheim’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Moral Education</Emphasis>

Although often overlooked in sociological circles, Emile Durkheim’s (1902–1903) Moral Education provides an important cornerstone in the quest to understand community life. Not only does Moral Education give a vibrant realism to the sociological venture in ways that Durkheim’s earlier works (1893, 1895, 1897) fail to achieve, but in addressing discipline, devotion, and informed reasoning as humanly engaged, collectively accomplished fields of activity Emile Durkheim also provides an exceptionally consequential baseline analysis of human knowing and acting. Notably as well, focusing on the organizational, intersubjectively achieved features of elementary education, Durkheim’s Moral Education lays bare the interactional nature of the moral order of community life. Indeed, as a sustained analysis of the way of life of a group of people collectively participating in the educational process, this text addresses the most basic features of people’s relations to one another and the broader society in which they find themselves. Much more than an account of childhood socialization, Durkheim’s Moral Education also presages the more thoroughly humanist sociology that Durkheim develops in The Evolution of Educational Thought (1904–1905), The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) and Pragmatism and Sociology (1913–1914).     

Hazards of neoliberalism: delayed electric power restoration after Hurricane Ike

This case study explores how neoliberal policies shape the impacts of a natural disaster. We investigate the reactions to major damages to the electric power system and the restoration of power in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which devastated the Houston, Texas, metropolitan area in September 2008. We argue that the neoliberal policy agenda insured a minimalist approach to the crisis and generated dissatisfaction among many residents. The short-term profitability imperative shifted reconstruction costs to consumers, and prevented efforts to upgrade the electric power infrastructure to prepare for future disasters. We illustrate the serious obstacles for disaster mitigation and recovery posed by neoliberal policies that privatize public goods and socialize private costs. Neoliberalism neither addresses the needs of a highly stratified public nor their long-term interests and safety.     

Early childhood interventionists' perspectives on serving maltreated infants and toddlers

A 2003 amendment to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) required states to create developmental screening programs for maltreated infants and toddlers. Programs authorized under Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) were directed to work with state and local child welfare authorities to develop the screening program. They were also to ensure that additional assessment and intervention was provided when needed. The degree to which this mandate has been implemented varies widely between state and local programs. Some early intervention experts and Part C program administrators have expressed concerns about providers' willingness to serve families referred from child welfare, but there has been no systematic research on this issue. The Professional Interventionist CAPTA Survey (PICS) is a newly developed measure of early childhood intervention providers' perceptions of their responsibilities under CAPTA. The first aim of this study was to conduct analysis of the PICS using a national sample of providers. This study also reports the perceptions of early childhood interventionists about their responsibilities under CAPTA and examines the relationship between worker characteristics and how they perceive these responsibilities. The PICS appears to be useful for examining early childhood intervention providers' responses to CAPTA.     

Publication bias and outcome reporting bias: agomelatine as a case example

Publication bias and outcome reporting bias contribute to distorted perceptions of drug efficacy and the underreporting of adverse events. To demonstrate these biases, this article describes how the clinical profile of the antidepressant agent agomelatine (Valdoxan(?)) has been presented in the literature. Agomelatine has been systematically assessed in 10 short-term placebo-controlled studies and three long-term placebo-controlled relapse prevention studies. Five published trials demonstrated clinically modest but statistically significant benefits over placebo. Five unpublished trials did not find agomelatine more effective than placebo, but in two of these studies the active comparison drug (fluoxetine [Prozac(?)] or paroxetine [Paxil(?)]) was more effective than placebo. Agomelatine was more effective than placebo in one of three relapse prevention studies, but only the positive study was published. Based on what is evident in the entire published and unpublished dataset, agomelatine does not have a tremendously superior sleep and sexual effects profile. The risk of liver toxicity is also not prominently highlighted in the published literature.     

The Value of Seeking Financial Advice

Retirement planning data gathered from an online survey at a large university in October 2009 are used to examine differences in a variety of retirement planning measures between people who have and have not met with a financial advisor. Problems of self-selection and endogeneity are addressed through the use of propensity scores. The study’s major finding is that working with an advisor is related to several important financial planning activities, including goal setting, calculation of retirement needs, retirement account diversification, use of supplemental retirement accounts, accumulation of emergency funds, positive behavioral responses to the recent economic crisis, and retirement confidence. Use of a financial advisor was not related to self-reported retirement savings or short-term growth in retirement account asset values.     

Sentencing outcomes of convicted child sex offenders

This research examines the sentencing outcomes of convicted child sexual offenders from data collected over an eight year period. Multiple regression and nominal log linear regression are used to examine length of prison sentence, length of probation sentence, and whether the convicted offender is actually sent to prison or to probation. While many independent variables appear to be related to sentence outcome, they fall into three categories: characteristics of the offender, characteristics of the victim, and characteristics of the crime. Additionally, while many variables appear related at the bivariate level, when multivariate analysis is applied, fewer variables remain significant, and these are mostly from the characteristics of the offense.     

Preventing impaired driving opportunities and problems

Impaired driving remains a significant public health problem in the United States. Although impressive reductions in alcohol-related fatalities occurred between 1982 and 1997, during which all 50 States enacted the basic impaired-driving laws, progress has stagnated over the last decade. Substantial changes in the laws and policies or funding for the enforcement of the criminal offense of driving while intoxicated (DWI) are needed for further substantial progress in reducing alcohol-related crash injuries. However, research indicates that evidence-based laws in the 50 States and current best practices in DWI enforcement are not being fully adopted or used. It seems, however, that effective operations, such as the low-staff check points that are routinely applied in many communities, could be extended to many more police departments. In addition, several enforcement methods have been proposed but never fully tested.     

Behavioural criteria of managerial and leadership effectiveness within Egyptian and British public sector hospitals: an empirical case study and multi-case/cross-nation comparative analysis

This paper reports the results of a study of managerial and leadership effectiveness carried out within an Egyptian public sector hospital in which concrete examples of ‘effective’ and ‘least effective/ineffective’ manager and managerial leader behaviour, as observed by superiors, peers and subordinates, were collected using the critical incident technique. These critical incidents were then content analyzed to identify a smaller number of discrete behavioural statements and criteria of effectiveness. The paper also reports the results of a subsequent comparative analysis of these Egyptian findings against equivalent behavioural criteria that emerged from studies in two different British NHS Trust hospitals. This latter multi-case/cross-nation study revealed high degrees of overlap, commonality, and relative generalization across all three organizations. The results lend strong empirical support to those who believe in ‘generic’ and ‘universalistic’ explanations of the nature of managerial and leadership effectiveness.