Productivity of highly skilled immigrants: economists in the postwar period

Prior work finds declining immigrant quality in the postwar period that is linked to source-country and skill-composition changes associated with the 1965 Immigration Act. This paper uses a unique panel of foreign- and native-born American Economic Association members to show that the highly skilled experienced a similar shift away from European migrants toward those from Asia. However, the findings do not indicate that this change in source-country composition has been accompanied by a decline in quality; rather, the most recent cohorts of foreign-born economists appear to be more productive than their native counterparts.     

Alcohol's effects on women's risk detection in a date-rape vignette

Researchers have established that alcohol is a risk factor for date rape for both victims and perpetrators. OBJECTIVE: The authors tried to experimentally address the link between alcohol consumption and women's risk detection abilities in a risky sexual vignette. PARTICIPANTS: The authors recruited 42 women from undergraduate classrooms at a large midwestern university and randomly assigned them to drink an alcoholic (.04 blood alcohol content) or a placebo beverage. METHODS: Participants completed self-report inventories and listened to a date-rape audiotaped vignette, which began with consensual sexual behavior and culminated in date rape, and the authors asked them to determine if and when the man should refrain from making further sexual advances. RESULTS: Student's t tests and Pearson r correlations showed that women who consumed alcohol and exhibited high levels of rape myth acceptance showed a significant decrease in risk recognition (p = .000 and .001, respectively). CONCLUSION: These findings highlight the significance of even small amounts of alcohol on behavior and cognition in women who are self-reported experienced drinkers.     

Pathologizing behavior: Meanings of behaviors in dementia care

Deficit and problem-based approaches to behavior stigmatize persons with dementia and cause great unnecessary suffering. In order to reduce the harm caused to persons misunderstood, it is important to understand the process by which staff attach meaning to behaviors and how those meanings ultimately influence how staff respond to behaviors. To this end, this research sought to examine the perceptions and meanings that staff attach to behaviors, how staff experience these behaviors, and the role that meanings and experiences have in staff actions and responses to specific behaviors. This paper focuses on one sensitizing concept that emerged from our study — pathologizing behavior — that reflects how behaviors become pathologized and problematized in the long-term care context. Conducted as part of a larger interpretive grounded theory study, active interviews were conducted with 48 staff members working in a range of positions in long-term care homes in Ontario, Canada. All staff interpreted and placed residents' behaviors in context through a complex process that started with the process of filtering behavior through the lens of pathology, and guided how staff then assigned meaning to the behaviors, how they characterized behaviors as “challenging”, and ultimately reacted through crisis management. The findings demonstrate the impact biomedical discourses have on meanings attached to behaviors and responses to behaviors and point to the need for alternative discourses that emphasize understanding meanings of actions using multidimensional lenses.     

Youth conferences as a context for engagement

Youth conferences can be effective means for engaging youth in the life of their schools, communities, and nation, bringing benefits not only to youth themselves but also to the community, which gains through the energy, ideas, and values that youth contribute.