Recruiting,developing, and managing volunteers

Leadership and Management of Volunteer Programs: A Guide for Volunteer Administrators, by James C. Fisher and Kathleen M. Cole. San Frnacisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993. 208 pp., $23.95 cloth. Enhancing the Volunteer Experience: New Insights on Strengthening Volunteer Participation, Learning, and Commitment, by Paul J. Ilsley. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990. 170 pp., $27.95 cloth. How to Recruit Great Board Members: A Guide for Nonprofit Agencies, by Dorian Dodson. Santa Fe, N.M.: Adolpho Street, 1993, 129 pp., $14.95 paper.     

Visual behavior differences in females as a function of self-perceived expertise

The present study investigated the effects of expert power on subjects' visual behavior while speaking and while listening. Female subjects were selected for dyads on the basis of their areas of expertise. Each pair was matched so that the topic on which one subject felt expert was an area in which the other subject felt inexpert. When discussing an area of expertise, subjects exhibited equivalent rates of look-speak and look-listen behaviors; when discussing areas of inexpertise or neutral topics, subjects looked less while speaking and while listening. Factors contributing to visual dominance behavior were considered.The considerable assistance of Deborah Vinicur and Deborah Leuchter is gratefully acknowledged.     

Puritan perverts: notes on accusation

In the course of a variety of projects concerned with fundamentalism and evangelical Protestantism, a surprising number of claims about sexual misdemeanour have been collected. The fact that most of the individuals and movements accused of perversion were claimed to be, and were widely regarded as, puritanical in moral attitudes and behaviour suggests that the widespread distribution of such accusations calls for some explanation other than that they were made because they were true. This paper offers some preliminary thoughts on the appeal of claims of sexual deviance to those making the claims and to the audiences for such claims. As such it represents some introductory thoughts on what might be termed the sociology of accusation'.     

Israeli immigrants in the United States: The question of community

Despite their possession of many social advantages such as high levels of education, familiarity with Western, urban culture, Caucasian appearance, relative economic security and ties to an established, co-ethnic community, much literature on Israeli immigrants in the U.S. depicts them as plagued by social and psychological alienation to the extent that they are incapable of creating viable ethnic communities. This paper uses field work and photography collected within the Israeli immigrant population of Los Angeles to critically examine the assertion that Israeli immigrants in the U.S. are much less organized than would be predicted by recent theories on immigrant adaptation and community formation. Based on this research, we argue that while Israelis are ambivalent about their presence in the U.S., they have created a variety of communal activities involving entrepreneurship, religion, culture, politics and leisure.     

Changing Public Service Organizations: Current Perspectives and Future Prospects

As governments and public service organizations across the globe engage in strategies of institutional and organizational change, it is timely to examine current developments and a future research agenda for public governance and management. The paper commences with reflections on the state of the field, based on an analysis of papers published in the British Journal of Management over the last decade. While there was some variation apparent across the set, the 'typical' article was found to be influenced by the discipline of organizational behaviour, set within the health-care sector, using case-study methods within field-based studies, and investigating shifts in roles and relationships and the management of change. It has also in the past been UK-centric, though the journal editorial policy and our own article call for a stronger international and comparative focus in the future. The second section of the article summarizes the articles and themes contained in this collection of papers on public service organizations. The third section explores a possible research agenda for the future, arguing for the significance of public sector research for the understanding of management more generally, and for examining the interface between private and public organizations (an increasingly common phenomenon). We suggest the need to set public services research in policy and political contexts, and suggest this may reveal organizational processes of wide interest. We call for a wider set of disciplines to engage in public management research, and to engage in moving the agenda from the study of efficiency to effectiveness as defined by a variety of stakeholders. We address the issue of how far public management researchers should become directly engaged with the world of policy and suggest that whether researchers engage in Mode 1 or Mode 2 research, their work would benefit from a stronger theoretical base.     

The Student Watershed Research Project (SWRP): collecting watershed data for use by resource management agencies

From 1992 to 1994, Saturday Academy and the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology instituted the pilot phase of a long-term monitoring program called the Student Watershed Research Project (SWRP). The SWRP program was developed to create and maintain collaboration among eighth through twelfth grade teachers and students, scientists, businesses, governmental agencies, and community members which would couple environmental education with the collection of high quality, reproducible watershed health data.The original authors of this paper set out to evaluate the impacts of the SWRP program in terms of changes in educational attitudes of participants and collection of accurate data. Findings demonstrate that assuring accuracy of student collected data was challenging, that teachers and students benefited greatly from a hands-on research approach to science education, and that such an approach would be difficult without the support of a program like SWRP.The SWRP program is entering its seventh year in the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington metropolitan areas with approximately half of the pilot phase participants still involved. A Quality Assurance Project Plan has been developed to assure data accuracy. Evaluation student science education attitudes documents improved results on a yearly basis.     

Birth spacing dynamics in China: The cases of Hebei and Shaanxi provinces

Even as fertility has declined in China in the last several decades, the first and second birth intervals have become shorter over time and the probability of having a second child has increased since the late 1970s. This increase in the probability of conception seems to be contradictory to the Chinese government's birth planning strategy which explicitly stresses timing and parity. Using retrospective survey reports from 1985 in Hebei and Shaanxi provinces, the study explored this paradox. The study revealed several findings: (1) government intervention, especially the one-child policy of the late 1970s, had a strong, unexpected influence on early conception in China; (2) the timing and probability of having a first birth were associated with macrosocial forces and familial relationships; and (3) the timing and probability of having a second birth were associated with biosocial, familial as well as macro-social characteristics.Abbreviations CBR crude birth rate - DPSB Department of Population Statistics, State Statistical Bureau, China - TFR total fertility rate This article is based on a paper presented at the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, Washington, DC, 21–23 March 1991.     

Vignettes of Communities in Action: an exploration of participatory methodologies in promoting community development in Nigeria

Three interconnected arguments are explored in this article.It begins by a reconsideration of community development, notfrom official and agency definitions but from what makes developmentreal and satisfies not only physical needs, but also the spiritualas well as psychological. The second part looks at Theatre forDevelopment (TFD) as a system of actualizing the participatoryagenda so direly required, so often talked about and very consistentlyignored in community development. I argue that TFD in its performativeapproach to discussing issues, forging alliances and communitycohesion contributes to community development. In this instance,we witness TFD as a community art for instigating participationand change. I also talk about how in combination with otherparticipatory methods, TFD can be empowering. This combinationis what I call methodological conversation and the aestheticsthat defines this conversation involves respect, dialogue, inclusionand flexibility. The case study section narrates the way inwhich this methodology has been applied in the turbulent environmentof the Niger Delta in Nigeria. I argue that TFD, ParticipatoryLearning and Action (PLA) and Questionnaire methods were thetriumvirate of approaches that allowed us to understand issuesand for communities to listen to us. The challenge remains howto define and develop an enduring relationship between researchers,community and government who may have the wherewithal for action.     

Implications of nested designs in school-based mental health services research

Evaluating school-based mental health services for children and youth with emotional disturbance (ED) has been a challenge for researchers. One particular challenge is the study design of using the student as the statistical unit of analysis, which in certain cases may lead to a violation of the "independence of error" assumption. However, the alternative to this nested design, including fewer students and more schools, can be costly and administratively complex. This study examines data from two national studies including 314 students with ED and served in special education programs and their caregivers from 24 schools in the US to identify the extent to which nesting or design effects occur in this population. The results show that variables focusing on psychopathology are less affected by nesting but school-related variables such as academic functioning are more affected. Design effects varied by grade level, suggesting that grade should be considered when designing such evaluations.