Identifying Trajectories of Adolescents’ Depressive Phenomena: An Examination of Early Risk Factors

Few studies have examined risk factors of childhood and early adolescent depressive symptomatology trajectories. This study examined self-report depressive symptomatology across a 6-year time period from 2nd to 8th grade to identify latent groups of individuals with similar patterns of depressive phenomena in a sample of 951 children (440 girls, 511 boys). Analyses, using semiparametric group modeling (SGM), identified 5 trajectory groups for girls and boys: low depressed stables, low depressed risers, mildly depressed stables, moderately depressed changers, and moderately depressed risers. Individual risk factors, with the exception of shy/withdrawn behavior, were significantly different across trajectory group membership for boys and girls, as was low-income status for boys. Boys in the low depressed and mildly depressed stable trajectory groups had significantly higher levels of antisocial behavior, attention problems, and lower social competency compared to girls in similar groups. These results suggest that universal prevention programs implemented in early elementary school that target selected risk factors may be helpful in reducing future adolescent mental health problems, specifically depressive symptomatology.     

Governance and Policing

The theme of this issue is governance, a term with multipleand often contested meanings. By governance, in its broadestsense, I mean those more or less systematic attempts to shapehuman conduct. In civil society, these can range from self-governancethrough prayer and exercise, family and commercial management,the organization of residential and religious communities, strugglesover turf by street gangs and organized crime networks, to paramilitaryand ‘terrorist’ networks. As radical feminists andevolutionary theorists argue, the core of collective governanceor state government is patriarchal. This is so whether or notthere is an effective sovereign     

Cultivating Public Service Motivation through AmeriCorps Service: A Longitudinal Study

The public service motivation literature has helped scholars and practitioners better understand who is attracted to public service and why. However, little is understood about how public service motivation in individuals may be cultivated or how it changes over time. This article uses panel data collected by the Corporation for National and Community Service to track the longitudinal effects of participation in the AmeriCorps national service program on participants’ public service motivation. Findings reveal that participation in AmeriCorps programs had positive effects on participants’ levels of commitment to the public interest and civic awareness immediately after the program; many of these program effects were sustained seven years later. However, when observed in isolation, the comparison group showed significant declines in levels of commitment to public interest and civic awareness over an eight‐year period, suggesting that public service motivation may initially decline upon entry into a public service career.     

US presidential elections and real GDP growth, 1961–2004

In this paper I show that, since 1960, an electoral cycle in US output growth can both be seen by the naked eye in the raw data and confirmed by a statistical analysis that allows for rational partisan effects as well as a wide range of control variables. That is, controlling for multiple lags of interest rate changes, inflation, money growth, energy prices, lagged output growth, government spending (or its growth) and temporary partisan effects, the timing of elections exerts a significant influence on quarterly real GDP growth.     

Inside the Presidential Communications Machine: An Interview with Martha Joynt Kumar

Martha Joynt Kumar is a professor of political science at Towson University. Her book, Managing the President’s Message: The White House Communications Operation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), examines the media and communications operations of the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In March 2008, Professor Kumar was interviewed in the White House Press Briefing Room by Kevin R. Kosar on behalf of Public Administration Review. As this interview went to press, the American Political Science Association’s Presidency Research Group announced that it had awarded Managing the President’s Message the Richard E. Neustadt Award for best book on the U.S. presidency published in 2007.