Psychometric properties of the Transitions from Foster Care Key Leader Survey

This study summarizes the development and piloting of the Transitions from Foster Care Key Leader Survey (TFC-KLS), an instrument designed to measure change in systems serving young people transitioning from foster care to adulthood. The Jim Casey Youth Opportunity Initiative’s logic model was used as a basis for instrument development. The instrument was piloted with 119 key leaders in six communities. Seven of eight latent scales performed well in psychometric testing. The relationships among the 24 measures of system change were explored. A CFA testing overall model fit was satisfactory following slight modifications. Finally, a test of inter-rater reliability between two raters did not find reliable reporting of service availability in a supplemental portion of the survey. The findings were generally positive and supported the validity and utility of the instrument for measuring system change, following some adaptations. Implications for the field are discussed.     

Social inclusion through employment: the marketisation of employment support for people with learning disabilities in the United Kingdom

Employment for people with learning difficulties is considered key to their social inclusion. This contradicts the perceived un-employability of people with learning difficulties that has been part of their social identities throughout their history hitherto. The national rate of employment for people with learning difficulties remains extremely low and has barely changed in the 20?years between 1990 and 2010. This paper investigates links between learning disabilities and employment, drawing on interview-based research. It analyses the quality of experience of the minority in employment to consider whether employment can serve the inclusive purpose expected of it.     

青春文学的崛起

＂青春文学＂的崛起是新世纪以来中国文坛最靓丽的景观之一。以＂80后＂为主体的青春文学作家,创作了一大批风靡国内的、以青少年为消费群体的文学作品,并在文学市场上取得令前辈作家侧目的成绩。从崛起到分化,再到逐渐成熟,青春文学走过了一段波澜壮阔的历程,成为和＂纯文学＂并峙的文学种类。尽管青春文学还显稚嫩,但随着青春文学作家的成长,我们有理由相信他们能写出无愧于时代的作品。     

多重身份的复合--论唐顺之对曾巩散文的评价

唐顺之作为一名笃诚的心学家、理学家，势必会从思想价值的角度对文学作品进行评价。同时他又是一个优秀的八股文名家、古文评点家，有时又会摆脱心学和理学的思维模式，从文学自身的角度考量创作。受此多重身份的复合影响，唐顺之对道学气息浓厚而艺术性较差的曾巩散文进行评价时，就显得颇为矛盾：既认为“三代以下之文未有如南丰”，又以为曾巩散文法度平实，缺少变化，只能居于唐宋八家之末。     

Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel

Research on the transnational diffusion of ideas and practices shows how cultural objects go through translation, adaptation, and vernacularization when implemented in new localities. Less attention is given to the translators themselves and their heterogeneous and often conflicting visions. Drawing on the notion of transnational social fields (TSF s), this article investigates how cultural objects get vernacularized differently in different parts of the TSF , demonstrating how processes of translation reflect larger social and political struggles over questions of identity. As a case study, we focus on the attempt of actors from Israel and the United States to institutionalize spiritual care in Israeli health‐care organizations. The analysis reveals how spiritual care functioned as a porous cultural object, open to a wide range of interpretations and debates. While actors in New York saw in spiritual care the opportunity to bridge to Israeli Jews and create a global Jewish identity, Israeli actors split between using spiritual care as a vehicle for creating a local Israeli Jewish identity and seeing in spiritual care the opportunity to establish universal identities, broader than the Jewish one. The disagreement and conflicts between the groups influenced the translation process, turning it into a contentious struggle that involved different positions on the continuum between particularism and universalism.     

Young people's views of the outcomes of non-formal education in youth organisations: its effects on human,social and psychological capital,employability and employment

This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role of youth organisations in enhancing the employability of young people through the development of different forms of capital: human, social and psychological. Instead of asking questions about who access extra-curricular activities that may provide young people with positional advantages in the labour market and the class biases that arise in access, the article explores whether the benefits obtained from participation vary by socio-economic background. We make use of the Youth organisations and employability (YOE) database, which contains data from over 1000 young people in more than 40 European countries on the effects of involvement in youth organisations on different forms of capital: human, social and psychological. We find positive effects of involvement on all three forms of capital. The analysis suggests that the characteristics of the involvement in youth organisations are better predictors of its outcomes than are personal characteristics, and find no significant effects of socio-economic background on the reported benefits of participation in our sample. Policy implications are derived from these findings, calling for greater policy support to increase opportunities for the involvement of young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds in youth organisations and for better informing young people of the benefits of sustained involvement with youth organisations.     

浙江农村青年创业小额贷款项目在基层的实施效果研究———以乐清市为例

浙江农村青年创业小额贷款项目自推出以来受到浙江基层创业青年广泛关注,该项小额贷款制度申请程序简便、担保形式灵活、政府扶持力度逐年加大,已逐步发展成为基层创业青年融资的主要途径之一.近年来,在浙江“两创”总战略鼓励下,农村青年创业小额贷款项目发展前景广阔、发展势头良好,同时在担保、风险控制、贷款覆盖面等方面也不乏矛盾和困惑     

Stop the Beat: Quiet Regulation and Cultural Conflict1

This article explores a recent conflict over the youth phenomenon known as “raving” in the City of Chicago. By interviewing participants involved in the conflict, I set out to understand the extent to which the crackdown on raves in Chicago was similar to earlier social reactions to jazz, comic books, rock and roll, and Dead Head culture, as well as to more recent conflicts over punk, rap music, and raves in other cities. While most previous research on cultural conflict has focused on moral crusades, campaigns, and panics, the Chicago conflict represents an example of “quiet regulation.” Opponents refrained from highly visible, morally charged attacks; instead, in the absence of media hype and visible public discourse, public officials justified the crackdown in highly bureaucratic terms—avoiding risk, collecting taxes, enforcing codes. Nonetheless, they also drew on cultural schemas that linked raves and raving with drugs, sex, and deviance. As a result, officials selected a course of regulation that criminalized DJs and discredited the artform. In the absence of a highly visible moral campaign, the rave participants were unable to mobilize and resist the regulation and defend their lifestyle. Sociologists must move beyond highly visible campaigns and crusades and pay greater attention to quiet regulation, both because such regulation is likely to increase in the future and because it has significant consequences for power, cultural expression, and identity.     

‘You Get More Respect,’ Reasons for Sex Among African American High School Youth: A Qualitative Study

ABSTRACT

African American adolescents continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and unanticipated pregnancies. In-depth, face-to-face interviews among a convenience sample of 32 African American adolescents (16 male and 16 female) were used to explore the reasons why some adolescents decided to engage in sex while others chose to delay sexual debut. Data were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Among the overall sample, psychological motivations, external pressure, physical pleasure seeking, and relationship-related motivations were the major themes cited for engaging in sex by participants and their friends. External support, motivation to avoid negative consequences, not feeling ready or lacking interest in sex, and having negative views about sex were among the major reasons for delaying sex. Several of the emergent themes showed gender differences. Suggestions for future research include the need for sexual education, and STI/HIV prevention programs that are gender sensitive and flexible enough to accommodate multiple factors related to sexual debut.