100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.     

Women's Marriage Behavior Following a Premarital Birth in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This study examines the relationship between premarital childbearing and the timing of women's entry into their first marriage in sub‐Saharan Africa. The study shows that African women who have a premarital birth generally experience later transitions to marriage than do their childless peers. Although the birth of a child precipitates a quicker transition to marriage initially, unmarried mothers, on average, marry at older ages than their childless peers and remain single for between 2 and 14 years. Evidence from a subsample of countries confirms that the time between having a child and first marriage has lengthened slightly in some countries; however, this reflects mainly the overall trend toward later marriage, rather than a further bifurcation of the marital trajectories of mothers versus childless women. The study raises policy concerns about the welfare of Africa's single mothers and their children.     

Changes in Parenting and Youth Adjustment Across the Military Deployment Cycle

This study examined how changes in at‐home parents' mental health and parenting practices related to changes in their children's adjustment throughout the course of a service members' military deployment. Participants included at‐home parents from 114 National Guard families who were interviewed at four different occasions across the deployment cycle. The results revealed changes across the deployment cycle among the following three indicators: parental warmth, depressive symptoms, and children's externalizing behaviors. Changes in parental warmth were associated with changes in children's adjustment. Overall, these findings indicate that during parental separation, at‐home parents' responses to children have important implications for children's adjustment.     

Insider/Outsider: A Muslim Woman's Adventure Practicing ‘Alongside’ Narrative Therapy

The following paper centres on my unique experience as a white Australian therapist who is able to sympathise with a Western world view while being immersed in an Islamic world view. The goal is to share my journey as a Muslim Australian via an auto‐ethnography reflexive method. Using diaries, intentional reflexive positioning, and multiple modes of supervision, I contemplate an Islamic identity and value system while negotiating poststructural therapies such as solution‐focused collaborative, and in particular, narrative therapy as viable approaches to working with the Muslim community. There are two inquiries which are of interest. The first is to reflexively describe the experience of being a Muslim practitioner and wondering whether core differences in epistemological views between social constructionism and Islamic doctrine can be overcome. Secondly, this enquiry explores Quranic guidelines about how to perceive ‘problems’ in life, based on the premise that understanding how an Islamic world view addresses life's troubles may add to deeper conceptions of the role of difficulties. I propose that adherent Muslims have a natural metaphorical way of thinking that connects with some of the poststructural therapeutic skills and techniques and at the same time draw on past Quranic solutions for contemporary problems. Little has been written on narrative therapy as a suitable approach to working with Muslim clients. In the current paper I review my personal experience as a veiled Muslim therapist striving to implement narrative therapy alongside an Islamic epistemology.     

Benevolence-dominant,authoritarianism-dominant,and classical paternalistic leadership: Testing their relationships with subordinate performance

We propose a new typology of paternalistic leadership styles based on how leaders demonstrate authoritarianism and benevolence, the two essential components of this type of leadership. Benevolence-dominant paternalistic leadership refers to leaders' sole dependence on the use of benevolence without their strong assertion of authority, whereas authoritarianism-dominant paternalistic leadership is based mainly on authoritarianism itself; classical paternalistic leadership, which best fits early observations of paternalistic leaders, refers to the salient combination of both leadership components. We used two distinct samples and methods to test this typology and the association with subordinate performance. Across the two studies, a field investigation with Taiwanese military supervisor-subordinate dyads and a hypothetical scenario experiment with U.S. working adults, we found a positive relationship between classical paternalistic leadership and subordinate performance as strong as that between benevolence-dominant paternalistic leadership and performance. Our findings echo the phenomenon that paternalistic leaders tend to combine benevolence with authoritarianism to affect subordinate performance.     

Changing effects of family background on transitions to secondary education in the Netherlands: Consequences of educational expansion and reform

Recent developments in educational transitions research suggest a decomposition of qualitative dimensions within educational levels that are (nearly) universal. However, research on long-term trends of social stratification in the structurally tracked educational system of the Netherlands has not been published previously. In the Netherlands, the secondary educational level is divided into four hierarchical tracks which each lead to different options for subsequent educational decisions. A rapid increase of participation in the higher tracks over time however, may have changed the background-specific distribution of early track placement. This paper improves upon previous research on educational inequality by incorporating a long-term perspective into tracking research. The secondary level of the Dutch educational system is decomposed into its four tracks, using a time frame that covers cohorts that entered secondary education between 1946 and 1998. The application of multinomial logit regressions reveals that the choice of a secondary track is strongly depending on social background features, measured as education of the parents and occupational status of the father. We found linear downward trends of effects for fathers’ occupation in the intermediate tracks for the cohorts that entered secondary education between WWII and the 90s. The effects of parental education also decrease after WWII, but the trend is curvilinear and not enduring. Unexpectedly, the effects almost reach their previous level in the youngest cohort. Our results furthermore suggest that a controversial reform of the educational system in 1968 neither triggered nor accelerated equalization of secondary education, although it resulted in a growth of participation in senior general education (HAVO).     

人口计生宣传教育为“先导”的重心和支点

宣传教育为先导的战略决策,是国家人口计生委党组书记、主任李斌同志2007年年底在河南召开全国农村人口文化建设工作现场会和在宁波市召开全国婚育新风进万家活动经验交流会上提出的重大战略思想。宣传教育为先导战略决策的提出,是在科学发展观指引下尊重思想政治工作、精神文明建设和人口计生工作客观规律,总结正反两方面工作经验教训的必然产物,是今后做好人口计生工作的元点工程。本文主要论述了为什么要先导,先什么、导什么,如何先导三个重大问题。     

The regeneration games: purity and security in the Olympic city

This paper examines the wider social impacts of hosting the London 2012 Olympic Games and its 'legacy' ambitions in East London, emphasizing securitization as an inbuilt feature of the urban regeneration project. Drawing on extensive original empirical research, the paper analyses the modalities of Olympic safety and security practices within the Olympic Park itself and their wider impact, while also connecting this research to theorization and debates in urban sociology and criminology. In this complex setting, a raft of formal and informal, often subtle, regulatory mechanisms have emerged, especially as visions of social ordering focused on 'cleansing' and 'purifying' have 'leaked out' from the hyper-securitized 'sterilized' environment of the Olympic Park and become embedded within the Olympic neighbourhood. In such complex circumstances, applying Douglas' (1966) work on purity and danger to the spatial realm provides a key conceptual framework to understand the form and impact of such processes. The imposition of order can be seen to not only perform 'cleansing' functions, but also articulate multiple symbolic, expressive and instrumental roles.