The complexity of diversity and importance for equitable philanthropy

The current U.S. climate of racial and social injustice has prompted a renewed call for diverse and equitable ways to rethink community philanthropy. Community foundations are vehicles for community philanthropy which offer vast benefits for social improvement and community development. The board of directors ensures these organizations fulfill their mission, making decisions on funding priorities and holding the organization functionally and fiscally responsible. Drawing on constructs of diversity and representative bureaucracy and a case study of Florida community foundations, we suggest that diversity is understood in different ways and the presence of diverse board members may be linked to advancing the interests of diverse communities and in achieving outcomes that assist in the needs of certain social groups. Increased understanding of diversity can improve foundation and philanthropic effectiveness and bring broader social change by promoting equity and social justice among community‐based philanthropic organizations.     

Unconditional government social cash transfer in Africa does not increase fertility

Among policymakers, a common perception surrounding the effects of cash transfer programmes, particularly unconditional programmes targeted to families with children, is that they induce increased fertility. We evaluate the Zambian Child Grant Programme, a government unconditional cash transfer targeted to families with a child under the age of 5 and examine impacts on fertility and household composition. The evaluation was a cluster randomized control trial, with data collected over 4 years from 2010 to 2014. Our results indicate that there are no programme impacts on overall fertility. Our results contribute to a small evidence base demonstrating that there are no unintended incentives related to fertility due to cash transfers.     

Predicting Children's Prosocial and Co‐operative Behavior from Their Temperamental Profiles: A Person‐centered Approach

The goal of this study was to examine how aspects of self‐regulation and negative emotionality predicted children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior concurrently and longitudinally using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Mothers completed measures of children's temperamental proneness to negative emotionality and self‐regulation at 54 months. Teachers and parents completed measures of children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior at 54 months, first grade, and third grade. A latent profile analysis of the temperamental variables revealed four profiles of children: those high in regulation and low in negative emotionality, those moderate in regulation and moderate in negative emotionality, those low in regulation and high in negative emotionality, and finally those who were very low in regulation but high in anger emotionality. Generally, children with profiles that were high or moderate in terms of regulation and low or moderate in terms of negative emotionality were rated as the most prosocial and co‐operative. Children with profiles that were less well regulated and who were high in negative emotionality (particularly anger proneness) were rated as less co‐operative and prosocial by parents and teachers.     

Administrative case reviews: Improving outcomes for children in out-of-home care

For nearly three decades foster care review has been required and practiced in the United States. It is well established that foster care review was designed with the intent to reduce the time children spend in foster care and increase permanent placements for children. This article presents that foster care review, as practiced in Colorado, is a social work intervention and quantitative results of this study demonstrate that as an intervention, timely administrative case review is an effective social work intervention related to improving child welfare outcomes for the children and families served in Colorado. The major findings show that timely administrative case review and increased levels of review attendance (mother, father, Guardian ad litem's, and foster parents) are predictors of the child welfare outcomes of permanency and length of time in out-of-home care. Bivariate results indicate a median length of stay approximately 10.76 months longer for children who do not consistently receive timely case reviews. Additionally, the results show that timely care review moderates the underlying casework process related to caseworker contacts, demonstrating that a child's length of stay differs depending on the level of timely case review. In essence, the administrative case review process in Colorado is effectively achieving its goal and is an effective intervention for improving the lives of children in foster care.     

Energy expenditure during physically interactive video game playing in male college students with different playing experience

OBJECTIVE: Researchers have yet to explore the effect of physically interactive video game playing on energy expenditure, despite its potential for meeting current minimal daily activity and energy expenditure recommendations. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Nineteen male college students -- 12 experienced Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) players and 7 inexperienced players -- completed maximal oxygen uptake assessments and a 30-minute DDR gaming session. The authors recorded heart rate (HR), rating of perceived exertion (RPE), respiratory exchange rate (RER), oxygen consumption (VO2), and total steps (TS30). RESULTS: Experienced participants showed higher exercise HR, RPE, RER, VO2, total and relative energy expenditure, exercise intensity, TS30, and average steps per minute, and less time and steps to expend 150 kilocalories (p < .05). CONCLUSIONS: Participants with greater playing experience can work at higher intensities, promoting greater energy expenditure.     

The musical composition of social reality? Music,action and reflexivity1

Developments in the sociology of music during the 1980s have brought the sub-field more firmly in to the center of sociological concerns, The ‘worlds’ concept, and the concern with music and social status have helped to ground and specify links between music and society. Meanwhile however, questions concerning music's social content have been sidelined. This paper explores music as an active ingredient in the constitution of lived experience. As with other cultural/technical forms, music provides a resource for the articulation of thought and activity. Bodily conduct and movement, the experience of time, and social character within opera are used to illustrate this point. Recent developments in feminist music analysis have been suggestive for the ways in which music metaphorizes social processes and categories of being. These developments can enrich the sociology of music. However, as with all attempts to ‘read’ music's social content, they should be conceived as claims made by analysts who are themselves engaged in social projects. Analytical readings of music have no a priori claim of privilege. A constructivist sociology of music should therefore be devoted to the question of how specific music users forge links between musical significance and social life. A sociology of the construction and deployment of musical realities is capable of avoiding the naive positivism otherwise implicit in attempts to ‘read’ music's social content.     

Racism‐Related Stress and Ethnic Identity as Determinants of African American College Students' Career Aspirations

Drawing primarily on the construct of psychological buffer, the purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which racism‐related stress and ethnic identity are determinants of career aspirations. A total of 163 African American college students from a predominately White Midwestern university participated in the study. A moderation regression analysis was conducted. Results indicate that ethnic identity interacted with racism‐related stress (p= .04) to predict career aspirations. In other words, as racism‐related stress increases in the context of low identity development, career aspirations decrease. Conversely, as perceived racism increases in the context of high identity development, career aspirations increase. Implications for professionals and future research in the field of career counseling are discussed.     

Constructing Emotional and Relational Understanding: The Role of Mother–Child Reminiscing about Negatively Valenced Events

Although there is some evidence from cross‐sectional studies that reminiscing is an important context in which children construct socioemotional understanding, longitudinal evidence is lacking. The goal of this study was to examine longitudinally the links between the quality of reminiscing at 42 months and children's subsequent socioemotional development at 48 months. At 42 months, mothers and children reminisced about a past negatively‐valenced emotional event. These conversations were coded for maternal elaboration, the children's contribution and engagement, and the degree to which meaning was co‐constructed by the dyad. At 42 and 48 months, children took part in laboratory measures of socioemotional development. Whereas there were few links between concurrent reminiscing quality and sociomoral development, aspects of reminiscing quality at 42 months (including children's engagement and the dyad's co‐construction of meaning) were related to children's emotional understanding, empathy, representations of relationships, and moral‐self at 48 months. This study provides some of the first longitudinal evidence that reminiscing conversations are linked with children's subsequent sociomoral understanding.     

Is Working with Your Spouse Good for Business? The Effect of Working with Your Spouse on Profit for Rural Businesses

The goal of this article is to uncover more precise and unbiased estimates of the relationships between relationship satisfaction, a copreneurial business structure, and profit. Because of the suspected simultaneity between profit levels, the choice to be copreneurial and relationship satisfaction, a multivariate recursive probit is used to test for endogeneity between these variables. The results of the empirical analysis suggest that spouses self-select into a copreneurial business structure depending on the level of satisfaction they feel in their interpersonal relationships. Additionally, copreneurial businesses with high relationship satisfaction are more likely to have higher profit than if they were non-copreneurial.     

Parent–youth communication to reduce at-risk sexual behavior: A systematic literature review

There are nearly 110 million cases of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that annually there are more than 19.7 million new STI cases. Of those, more than half are accounted for by youth aged 15–24 years. Although some STIs are not considered to be life threatening, they can lead to severe health problems, risk of HIV infection, or infertility if they are not properly treated. Some research has shown that parent–youth communication can reduce youth’s at-risk sexual behaviors. The following is a systematic review of the literature on parent–youth sexual communication and family-level interventions designed to reduce risky sexual behavior in youth.