Changing Attitudes Toward the Homeless: The Effects of Prosocial Communication With the Homeless

One hundred, thirty-four undergraduate students participated in a field experiment designed to examine the effects of extended, prosocial communication with homeless persons, upon attitudes toward the homeless problem, of behavioral intentions towards the homeless, and of causal attributions about homelessness. It was expected that prosocial interaction with the homeless would produce shifts in attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the homeless and homelessness and result in greater attributions of external causes to explain homelessness. Nineteen experimental participants worked 15 hours at a local homeless shelter. Their responses to a posttest questionnaire that measured a range of attitudinal and behavioral orientations toward the homeless were compared with control participants who did not work at the shelter. Subsequent analyses furnished strong evidence of positive changes in attitudes and intentions toward homelessness among the shelter workers. These participants evaluated homeless people as less blameworthy and more socially attractive than did control participants; moreover, shelter workers indicated more personal responsibility and behavioral commitment to helping the homeless than control participants. They also perceived the homeless problem to be more serious and were more likely to attribute homelessness to bad luck than control participants. However, the two groups were equally likely to attribute homelessness to various external causes such as the economy, housing costs, and governmental policies. The results are interpreted as having policy implications for volunteer service.     

Teachers,Schools, and Academic Achievement

This paper disentangles the impact of schools and teachers in influencing achievement with special attention given to the potential problems of omitted or mismeasured variables and of student and school selection. Unique matched panel data from the UTD Texas Schools Project permit the identification of teacher quality based on student performance along with the impact of specific, measured components of teachers and schools. Semiparametric lower bound estimates of the variance in teacher quality based entirely on within‐school heterogeneity indicate that teachers have powerful effects on reading and mathematics achievement, though little of the variation in teacher quality is explained by observable characteristics such as education or experience. The results suggest that the effects of a costly ten student reduction in class size are smaller than the benefit of moving one standard deviation up the teacher quality distribution, highlighting the importance of teacher effectiveness in the determination of school quality.     

Adult self-sufficiency and social adjustment in care leavers from children's homes: a long-term assessment

This paper presents a study carried out in Spain that followed up 260 young people, the majority of them adults, who had been in residential care for significant periods. The follow‐up takes place between 1 and 9 years after participants had left residential care, and assesses their level of social and work integration, as well as considering the incidence of problems related to marginalization and social exclusion. Furthermore, it analyses the reasons for the child being taken into care, the socio‐family context, length of stay, changes in placement and other features or incidents in relation to the residential care. The data show that close to 15% have serious problems (drug dependence, delinquency, etc.), 25% receive help from the social services and the rest manage independently to a greater or lesser extent. We discuss the significance of these data, especially the relationship between the final result and the initial and process variables.     

Ethnic Prejudice and Discrimination in Europe

This article provides an introduction to research on European prejudice and discrimination. First, we list the distinctive characteristics of a European perspective and provide a short sketch of European immigration and ethnic groups. Europe has become a multicultural community. Nevertheless, public opinion and the continent's politics often do not reflect this empirical fact. Prejudice and discrimination directed at immigrants are a widespread phenomena across Europe. Several cross-European surveys support this conclusion, although theoretically driven surveys on prejudice and discrimination in Europe remain rare. Cross-European research studies classical and modern theories of prejudice and discrimination and attempts to uncover the psychological mechanisms that explain individual readiness to exclude ethnic groups. A brief sketch of recent European research is presented. This issue offers both important cross-national perspectives as well as needed comparisons with the more studied case of racial prejudice and discrimination in the United States.     

Relative Deprivation and Intergroup Prejudice

Using three diverse European surveys, we test the relationship between relative deprivation (RD) and anti-immigrant prejudice. We find that both group relative deprivation (GRD) and individual relative deprivation (IRD) are found primarily among working-class respondents who are politically alienated. We also find that GRD, but not IRD, serves as a proximal correlate of prejudice. IRD's effects on prejudice are largely mediated through GRD. In addition, GRD partially mediates the effects of such distal predictors of prejudice as education and family income. Finally, blaming the victim mediates in part the GRD link with prejudice. These results lead to a socially situated path model of RD's effects on prejudice with public policy implications.     

Electoral Simultaneity: Expressing Equal Respect

The principle of simultaneity—that citizens should vote as far as possible at the same time—is more significant than is usually appreciated. It is based on a fundamental value of democratic theory, and it has substantial implications for electoral practice. It also invites further normative and empirical research.
The most important value that simultaneity expresses is a form of equality—equal respect. First, if citizens have only information they would have had if they were voting at the same time, the value of each citizen's choice is no greater than that of any other citizen. Second, when citizens go to the polls on the same day, publicly participating in a common experience of civic engagement, they demonstrate their willingness to contribute to the democratic process on equal terms. Taking simultaneity seriously has implications for electoral practices. It would limit the practice of media projections of election results, including the reporting of exit polls, and the calling of elections before all the polls close. It also casts doubt on the increasingly widespread use of early voting—absentee ballots and voting by mail. Early voting weakens the value of the experience of participating in a civic activity. Voting alone may be worse than bowling alone.     

CHOOSING (AND RENEGING ON) EXCHANGE RATE REGIMES

We use data on announced and actual exchange rate arrangements to ask which countries follow de facto regimes different from their de iure ones, that is, do not do what they say. Our results suggest that countries with poor institutional quality have difficulty in maintaining pegging and abandon it often. In contrast, many countries with relatively good institutions display fear of floating, that is, they manage more than announced, perhaps to signal their differences from those countries incapable of maintaining promises of monetary stability. (JEL: F3, O1)