The "experimenting agency". The California Youth Authority Research Division

During the 1960s and 1970s, the California Youth Authority embarked on a series of randomized field trials to test interventions for juvenile and young adult offenders. This article examines the institutional and political reasons why rigorous tests were adopted for such interventions as the Community Treatment Program. It also describes the effect these trials had on the agency and on California justice, as well as how the experimental method eventually became less often used in the Youth Authority. The authors explore some general reasons why this happened.     

Understanding and the listener: Conflicting views

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Skinner’s (1957, 1974) distinction between three senses of the term understanding is presented. For Skinner, a listener understands if she (a) can repeat...     

A Big Brother: New Findings on How Low-Income Fathers Define Responsible Fatherhood

I interviewed 57 low-income fathers about how they define responsible fatherhood. Unlike findings from previous research, their definition did not include financial provision or daily caregiving. Instead, their definition included six dimensions, some of which resemble a “Big Brother”: spending time in non-caregiving activities; avoiding harm by voluntarily distancing from the child when it is in the child’s best interest; acknowledging paternity in non-legal forums; spending money on gifts, joint activities, and special needs; monitoring the child’s home for trouble; and minimizing absences in the child’s life. Because these fathers do not emphasize traditional breadwinning or primary caregiving, their responsible fathering beliefs and behavior may be unappreciated by academics, practitioners, and policy makers.     

The Significance of Shift Work: Current Status and Future Directions

This paper provides a review and synthesis of research literature on the effects of shift work on workers’ physical health, mental health/well-being, and family life. The focus is on current knowledge, unanswered questions, and new directions for future research. The selection of research literature is guided by a general conceptual framework that identifies predictor variables, moderating variables, and outcome variables. The paper concludes with a discussion of the variables that should be incorporated into an agenda for future research.     

Racial Salience and the Consequences of Making White People Uncomfortable: Intra‐Racial Discrimination,Racial Screening,and the Maintenance of White Supremacy

Most sociological research on racial discrimination has had an “inter‐racial” focus. That is, researchers have been principally concerned with the disparate treatment that people of color receive relative to Whites in different social contexts. However, recent theoretical work emerging from legal studies suggests that an alternative conception of “intra‐racial” discrimination exists that extends beyond colorism. This theory of intra‐racial discrimination stipulates that many organizations in the “post‐racial” era desire some measure of racial diversity. Yet, in their efforts to achieve this racial diversity they screen people of color based on their degree of racial salience. Whether a given person of color is hired, promoted, or in the case of college admissions, accepted, is a function of whether or not Whites within the organization consider them racially palatable, or not overly concerned with race. This creates an incentive for people of color to work their identity to allay any concerns among Whites that they may be too racially salient. In this paper I critically review this work and attempt to further buttress its claims by highlighting how this process has clear historical precedent. I conclude by showing how the audit method can be used to empirically examine this practice contemporarily.     

An instance of reverse heaping of ages

This note reports on an interesting example of reverse heaping of ages for data from the Saudi Arabian social insurance system. Peaks occur for the number of workers at ages corresponding to years of birth ending in zeroes and fives, while there are troughs at such ages for the average monthly wages. Such troughs almost certainly are the result of workers with less education using a rounded year of birth, and, correspondingly, such workers would tend to have lower earnings.     

The Special Historical Section of the Journal of American College Health

Abstract

Objective: To identify human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and HPV vaccine–related attitudes among college-aged women and the relationship between HPV vaccine uptake and subsequent sexual behaviors. Methods: PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Google Scholar searches were performed from 2006, the date after the first HPV vaccine became available, to present. Results: Of the 13 studies identified, most were cross-sectional. College-aged women saw HPV infection as serious and had positive attitudes toward the HPV vaccine. Barriers (ie, cost, lack of insurance coverage) existed that prevented women from obtaining the vaccine and many women did not see themselves at risk for HPV. The vaccine uptake rate, although increasing, has been slow. Conclusion: College-aged women in the United States may need unbiased information about HPV and HPV vaccine. Studies that focus on risk perception and the relationship between knowledge, attitudes, vaccine uptake, and sexual behaviors are needed to inform interventions and public health programs.