Sociometric methods and difference: a force for good – or yet more harm

This paper offers a critique of sociometrics as a ubiquitous method of measuring social relationships among children in social groups such as school classes. This is important in relation to disability politics and research as the apparently scientific measures are frequently used in the process of labelling children or predisposing the children involved, or others involved with them, to view disabled and other children in particular ways. We open a debate about judgements concerning whether the use of sociometric techniques needs to be better informed by questions about the underpinning normalising frameworks on which they depend, about the connotations of blame associated with particular sociometric statuses, and about the way that research constructs difficulties and reflects an adult agenda, marginalising the voices of (disabled) children. We argue for the value of the transactional turn in understanding the implications of this approach and for highlighting alternative perspectives.     

Age discrimination and working life: Perspectives and contestations – a review of the contemporary literature

This review highlights some of the principal issues and debates surrounding age discrimination at the workplace. Essentially, the existing research in this area can be divided into three broad, although somewhat overlapping, categories. The first explores the underlying causes and consequences of age discrimination at the workplace from one or other theoretical tradition. The second broad body of literature encompasses empirical studies which document the nature and extent of age discrimination, based on the use of official statistics, and/or firm‐level survey evidence. The third explores the effects of various governmental initiatives to reduce the incidence of age discrimination and policy options in this area. Even though age discrimination is widely accepted to be prevalent, its causes are rather more contentious. Age discrimination has variously been ascribed to market imperfections, the product of rational choices and the effects of long‐term changes in the nature of the economy. Policy interventions may be prompted by economic pressure, demographic changes or cultural shifts, and have involved voluntary codes as well as legislation. Although voluntary codes have generally proved ineffective, the literature indicates that more formal regulations may still have only limited efficacy, underscoring the deeply rooted nature of age discrimination in society.     

Achieve Boston: a citywide innovation in professional development

Achieve Boston is a broad-based collaborative effort to improve the overall quality of programs for children and youth by establishing a professional development infrastructure that supports those who work with young people during the out-of-school-time hours.     

Attitudes towards lesbians and gay men and support for lesbian and gay human rights among psychology students

A questionnaire comprising two scales, the short form of the Attitudes Towards Lesbians and Gay Men Scale (ATLG-S; Herek, 1984) and the newly devised Support for Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Scale (SLGHR) were administered to 226 students taking undergraduate psychology courses at universities in the United Kingdom, to assess their attitudes towards lesbians and gay men, and their level of support for lesbian and gay human rights. The results indicated that whilst only a small percentage of respondents expressed negative attitudes towards lesbians and gay men on the ATLG-S, the sample as a whole did not overwhelmingly support lesbian and gay human rights. The lack of support for lesbian and gay human rights is discussed in relation to its implications for psychology students as future practitioners and policymakers.     

Exploring heterosexual women's anti-lesbian attitudes

Previous research on attitudes toward gays has mostly focused on heterosexuals' attitudes toward gay men, with little research specifically directed at anti-lesbian attitudes. Using a sample of 269 undergraduate heterosexual women, the present study tested two feminist propositions: Anti-lesbian attitudes would be associated with (1) conservative beliefs regarding the female gender-role and (2) attitudes toward men that support the differential status of women and men in the patriarchy. Findings based on a series of multiple regression analyses support these propositions across three components of anti-lesbian attitudes (contact apprehension, morality beliefs, and stereotypic beliefs). Directions for future research on anti-lesbian attitudes are discussed.     

County child poverty rates in the US: a spatial regression approach

We apply methods of exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and spatial regression analysis to examine intercounty variation in child poverty rates in the US. Such spatial analyses are important because regression models that exclude explicit specification of spatial effects, when they exist, can lead to inaccurate inferences about predictor variables. Using county-level data for 1990, we re-examine earlier published results [Friedman and Lichter (Popul Res Policy Rev 17:91–109, 1998)]. We find that formal tests for spatial autocorrelation among county child poverty rates confirm and quantify what is obvious from simple maps of such rates: the risk of a child living in poverty is not (spatially) a randomly distributed risk at the county level. Explicit acknowledgment of spatial effects in an explanatory regression model improves considerably the earlier published regression results, which did not take account of spatial autocorrelation. These improvements include: (1) the shifting of “wrong sign” parameters in the direction originally hypothesized by the authors, (2) a reduction of residual squared error, and (3) the elimination of any substantive residual spatial autocorrelation. While not without its own problems and some remaining ambiguities, this reanalysis is a convincing demonstration of the need for demographers and other social scientists to examine spatial autocorrelation in their data and to explicitly correct for spatial externalities, if indicated, when performing multiple regression analyses on variables that are spatially referenced. Substantively, the analysis improves the estimates of the joint effects of place-influences and family-influences on child poverty.

Community-based accompaniment & social work—A complementary approach to social action

Accompaniment, or the intentional practice of presence, emphasizes processes and relationships over outcomes, with the ultimate goal of leveraging privilege and collectively changing destructive systems. Though not widely recognized in social work, accompaniment has been applied globally. Here, we outline an overview of accompaniment, including how it has been applied in social work literature and practice. We then propose community-based accompaniment as an approach to complement traditional models of social action as a necessary, yet accessible way to further advance community organizing in social work education and practice, and ultimately promote transformative social change.     

Reactions to resistance: the role of contextual factors in sex offending

Upon encountering victim resistance during the commission of a sexual assault, an offender makes a decision as to how to react to the resistance via the use of varying degrees of coercive or noncoercive tactics. Exhaustive chi-squared automatic interaction detection (CHAID) analyses were performed on a sample of 369 criminal events to detect the significant situational and crime-specific factors, the pertinent interactions between these factors, and how these affect an offender's reaction to victim resistance depending on whether the victim is a child or an adult. Findings show that multiple interactions do occur and, moreover, factors affecting the offender's reaction to victim resistance are very different depending on whether the victim is a child or an adult. Planning and preparation variables, such as the offender's attack strategy, were found to be significant in the child victim model, whereas reactive variables, such as the type of victim resistance, were found to be significant in the adult victim model. The findings lend support to the social interac-tionist perspective and the importance of victim-offender dynamics.