Testing for Measurement Invariance in the Satisfaction with Life Scale: A Comparison of Russians and North Americans

This study examined the comparability of Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) [Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985, Social Indicators Research, 34: 7–32] scores across U.S. and Russian student and community groups. Criteria for weak measurement invariance were met when comparing U.S. and Russian groups (combining student and community samples). Criteria for weak and strong measurement invariance were met when comparing the U.S. and Russian student samples. However, when comparing the U.S. and Russian community samples, the results showed a significant statistic for a baseline model, indicating a lack of comparability across samples. The costs of failing to meet criteria for weak, strong, and strict measurement invariance are discussed. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Mutualistic relationships versus hyper-efficiencies in the sustainable building and city

The quest for sustainability in the design and development of buildings and cities has expressed itself predominantly as a pursuit of ever-greater efficiency. Urban systems have been developed to achieve energy and resource savings in an attempt to eliminate their environmentally negative impacts. The end goal would seem to be to make buildings and cities virtually invisible within the context of the natural environment and to extract humanity from that which is natural. This approach could be termed as a hyper-efficiency sustainability model. In this approach, the impacts of human beings and their functional systems are seen as contaminants that need reduction or removal. Although driven by a desire to preserve the Earth’s natural systems, such an approach ultimately creates greater division between humanity and nature and may not bring sustainability. As an alternative to a hyper-efficiency model of sustainability, a model should be pursued that focuses more on developing an integrative relationship between civilization and environment akin to mutualism in biology. Such an approach, which could be termed as a mutualistic sustainability model, incorporates natural systems and elements into the structures and functions of buildings and cities, with the goal of achieving cooperative and positive interaction between humanity and nature. Such integration can create opportunities to support living organisms and biological systems in an ecologically contributive manner, while fulfilling human infrastructural needs. It offers a more positive alternative to efficiency based strategies and has the potential to establish a healthier and more productive relationship between humanity and the Earth’s natural systems. This paper elaborates on these two distinct approaches to sustainability and presents an examination of recent green building projects and green infrastructure projects. It analyses specific strategies and methods to contrast and compare manifestations of both approaches, providing valuable lessons and insights for designing sustainable buildings and cities.     

Effects of agricultural development policies on migration in peninsular Malaysia

State planning plays a central role in Malaysia's social and economic development. The government's rural development policies are designed to promote agricultural incomes and help counterbalance ethnic inequalities. The Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) implements one of the internationally most successful land development and resettlement programs. In this article, we quantify the impact of FELDA settlements on local out-migration rates, linking macro and micro approaches and using data from the Malaysian Family Life Survey, national censuses, and other sources. A model of instantaneous migration rates specifies an individual's migration rate as a function of individual-level sociodemographic characteristics, the level of urbanization of the origin and destination, and the extent of rural development at the district of current residence. Our results show that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the existence of rural development centers in a district reduced the levels of out-migration to pre-1965 levels.     

Beyond School Spirit: The Effects of Youth‐Led Participatory Action Research in Two Urban High Schools

Prior research highlights the mismatch between adolescents' growing capacities for autonomy and the limited opportunities for influence in U.S. secondary schools. Youth‐led participatory research (YPAR), an approach in which young people research and advocate for change on problems of concern to them, could increase students' autonomy in secondary schools. This qualitative study of YPAR examined whether and how the intervention meaningfully affected the interactions and roles of students and adults in two distinctive urban high school settings, identifying concepts for further empirical investigation. Results suggested that YPAR enabled processes of student professionalization that led to novel student‐adult “collegial” interactions, expansion of domains of student influence, and diversification of students with opportunities to influence policies and practices across these two schools.     

Proportional hazards life table models: an illustrative analysis of socio-demographic influences on marriage dissolution in the United States

The proportional hazards life table is a recently developed approach to the analysis of survival data when mortality risks vary among individuals. It assumes that at a given age (or duration since the start of a life) the force of mortality is a constant (specific to that age) multiplied by a proportionality factor which is determined by the characteristics of the individual and does not change unless these covariates do. In this paper, the method is reviewed for the case where the covariates are fixed at the start of the lifetime and illustrated by an application to marital dissolution in the United States.