GENDER AND RACE PATTERNS IN THE PATHWAYS FROM SPORTS PARTICIPATION TO SELF-ESTEEM

Athletics is the most prominent extracurricular activity in U.S. secondary schools in terms of student participation and school budgets. The latter is often justified on the grounds that healthy bodies produce healthy minds, that school sports boost school spirit, and that participation in school-based sports increases students' self-esteem. In this article we examine the interrelationships among participation in a school-based sport and the benefits assumed to be associated with it. Specifically, we test a model that postulates that school spirit, operationalized as attachment to school, and healthy bodies, operationalized as a sense of physical well-being, mediate the relationship between school sports and self-esteem. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health on Caucasian and African American girls and boys were employed to test the model. School attachment and physical well-being absorbed the statistical effect of participating in a sport for all four gender-by-race groups. Among Caucasian girls a negative residual effect of sports participation was observed, which suggests that sports participation encapsulates multiple effects with contradictory influences. For African American girls school attachment by itself was not a significant mediator of the effect of sports participation on self-esteem. For all groups a sense of physical well-being was the more powerful mediator.     

Female Labor Migrants to Shanghai: Temporary “Floaters” or Potential Settlers?1

Using data on 54,373 migrants from the Fifth Sampling Survey of the Floating Population of Shanghai, this article isolates a group of 32,967 rural labor migrants who hold rural household registrations and whose previous occupations were in agriculture, and focuses on the women among them. The demographic and occupational characteristics of these 9,124 women are described, demonstrating that migration to Shanghai is a highly gendered process, with men and women working in different occupations and sectors. Moreover, important differences are found to exist between unmarried and married female rural labor migrants that indicate that the latter are probably accompanying and working with their migrant husbands. A significant proportion of female “social” migrants also exhibit characteristics that indicate that they are the spouses of male rural labor migrants, bringing to over one third the proportion of rural labor migrants to Shanghai who could be migrating as couples. These couples and their children may be the vanguard in a transition from temporary labor migration to settlement in China's large cities.     

Child Care “Packaging” Among TANF Recipients: Implications for Social Work

This article reports the results of a study that examined the ways in which current and recent TANF recipients assembled or “packaged” their child care arrangements among formal and informal providers. The findings are drawn from in-person, in-depth interviews with current and former welfare recipients. The study found that most of the respondents used multiple providers within the category of informal child care for reasons including availability, the use of a network of social acquaintances as a problem-solving resource, the need to accommodate irregular work hours, and personal trauma that contributed to a distrust of strangers in formal settings. The findings can affect the efficacy of practice with TANF recipients by contributing to social workers’ understanding of the context of decision-making regarding child care.     

Predicting Participation in Environmental Treaties: A World-System Analysis*

Which countries tend to sign international environmental treaties and why? This study tests the ability of quantitative cross-national political and economic analysis to predict participation in international environmental agreements over the period 1963–1987. Cross-sectional ordinary least squares regressions suggest that poor, highly indebted countries that are dependent on very few trading partners and that have repres-sive regimes are far more likely to be nonsignatories. The results suggest strategies for increasing the likelihood that nations will ratify hture environmental treaties.     

Training with o (observing) and T (treatment) teams in live supervision: reflections in the looking glass*

Working with a treatment and observing team at the same time, behind the oneway mirror, offers a variety of ways to: (a) generate multiple realities; (b) work with two different models of family therapy simultaneously; and (c) provide feedback on the teams' own roles, rules and group process. The process that 6 trainees and two supervisors used with T and O teams to examine their own coevolution as a therapeutic system using the Milan model of family therapy and Ericksonian hypnotherapy is described. The article concludes with a discussion of the advantages and pitfalls of this type of dual supervision.     

China's "tidal wave" of migrant labor: what can we learn from Mexican undocumented migration to the United States?

"The purpose of this article is to place Chinese labor migration from agriculture within the context of the literature on labor mobility in developing countries by comparing it to undocumented Mexican migration to the United States. The similarities fall within three general areas: the migration process, the economic and social position of migrants at their destination, and the agrarian structure and process of agricultural development that has perpetuated circular migration. The last section of the article draws upon these similarities, as well as differences between the two countries, to generate predictions concerning the development of labor migration in China."     

Comparison of indirect and direct approaches to measuring patient satisfaction

One indirect (PSQ) and two direct (CSQ-18B and ERS) measures of patient satisfaction were compared across a series of psychometric, acceptability, and concurrent validity criteria. None of the three measures was significantly related to health status or demographic characteristics. Each measure performed as expected from prior research on their psychometric properties. The scales contrasted, however, in regard to acceptability, with the PSQ being much less acceptable to patients than the other two. The PSQ also produced more missing data. The results on the PSQ reflected patient inconsistency on cross-check items and patients tended to be uncertain in their responses to many items. In multivariate analyses the three measures were used as predictors of patient-rated indices of global service satisfaction. The CSQ-18B and the ERS were significant predictors of patient-rated indices of global service satisfaction, whereas the PSQ was unrelated to these indices. It was concluded that the direct and indirect approaches measure different satisfaction domains. The PSQ likely assesses more generalized attitudes about health services while the CSQ-18B and the ERS efficiently reflect opinions about the specific setting in which they are administered.     

What Drives Citizen Participation in Political Gatherings in Modern South Africa? A Quantitative Analysis of Self-Reported Behaviour

Social Indicators Research - Community and public gatherings are an important component of political participation in sub-Saharan Africa. Formal and informal community meetings and rallies are...     

Child Poverty Measurement in the UK: Assessing Support for the Downgrading of Income-Based Poverty Measures

Social Indicators Research - In 2016 the UK’s Conservative Government radically changed the official approach to child poverty measurement, scrapping targets for income poverty and material...