Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect Health Risk Behaviors and Chronic Health of Iowans

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), include childhood abuse and household dysfunction, and are associated with a variety of behavioral risk factors and chronic illnesses in adulthood. This study replicates the original ACEs study (Felitti et al. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258. doi: 10.1016/s0749-3797(98)00017-8, 1998) with a representative sample of adults in Iowa. Data come from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey of 2012 when ACE assessments were first introduced in Iowa by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2012). The majority of adults in Iowa (58%) have experienced at least one ACE, and depending on the type of ACE, co-occurrence of ACEs ranged from 76% to 97%. Health risk behaviors in adulthood, such as drinking, smoking, and obesity were significantly related to the number of ACEs experienced. ACEs were also associated with depression. Chronic health outcomes including heart disease, stroke, and COPD were also significantly predicted by the number of ACEs. This replication study demonstrates that the need for intervention and prevention programs in Iowa are similar to the needs found in other states in the U.S. for addressing the consequences of ACEs.     

Adolescents’ Identity Formation: Linking the Narrative and the Dual-Cycle Approach

The narrative and dual-cycle approach conceptualize and operationalize adolescents’ identity formation in different ways. While the narrative approach focuses on the construction of an autobiographical life story, the dual-cycle approach focuses on the formation of identity commitments. Although these approaches have different emphases, they are conceptually complementary. Yet, their empirical links and distinctions have only scarcely been investigated. Empirical knowledge on these links in adolescence and across time has been especially lacking. In the present research, it was therefore examined whether key characteristics of adolescents’ narration (autobiographical reasoning and agency) were concurrently and prospectively related to engagement in the dual-cycle processes of commitment making, identification with commitment, exploration in breadth, exploration in depth, and ruminative exploration. The findings from a cross-sectional sample of 1,580 Dutch adolescents (M_age?=?14.7 years, 56% female) demonstrated that autobiographical reasoning was significantly positively associated with the commitment and more adaptive exploration processes (i.e., in breadth and in depth). In addition, agency was significantly positively associated with the commitment processes and exploration in depth. Yet, these associations between the narrative characteristics and dual-cycle processes were only weak. Subsequently, the findings from a two-year longitudinal subsample (n?=?242, M_age?=?14.7 years, 62% female) indicated that on average commitment strength remained stable but exploration increased across middle adolescence. A stronger increase in identification with commitment and adaptive exploration (i.e., in breadth and in depth) was predicted by a higher degree of agency in adolescents’ narratives. Overall, these findings indicate that both approaches to identity formation are associated, but the small size of these associations suggests that they predominantly capture unique aspects of identity formation. Both approaches could thus complement and inform each other.

     

Only When We Agree! How Value Congruence Moderates the Impact of Goal‐Oriented Leadership on Public Service Motivation

Questions of how and when managers can motivate the workforce of public organizations are fundamental for scholars and practitioners alike. A dominant assertion is that goal‐oriented leadership strategies, such as transformational leadership, foster public service motivation (PSM). However, existing studies rely on designs that are vulnerable to endogeneity and rarely investigate the scope conditions of the leadership‐PSM relationship. Combining a field experiment with 364 managers and surveys of their 3,470 employees, the authors show that transformational leadership and transactional leadership, when induced experimentally, do not have the claimed positive effect on PSM. In fact, the results indicate that goal‐oriented leadership can have demotivating effects when employee and organizational values are incongruent. Public managers should therefore carefully assess existing levels of value (in)congruence before implementing goal‐oriented leadership strategies, and—in case of value conflicts—seek to align perceptions of the desirable among members of the organization.     

Bargaining Power, Political Transaction Costs and Institutional Change: Private and Public Dental Care in Denmark1

Rational choice institutionalism underexposes institutional change as well as the interaction between institutions at different levels, and this article therefore investigates national and local institutional change. In the Danish dental care sector private and public provision of services have coexisted since the establishment of a publicly financed dental health care system, and the fight between supporters of the two solutions has generated many institutional changes, both nationally and locally. This article analyses all Danish parliamentary proposals and local decisions regarding dental care coverage and provision. The general finding is that increasing pro-public bargaining power seems to promote higher coverage and public provision, while increasing pro-private bargaining power leads to stable coverage and private provision. The institutions do not, however, change whenever bargaining power changes, and national institutional change does not necessarily result in local change. The article explains this in terms of political transaction costs. These costs might also explain why national institutions change more often than local ones, and why local pro-public changes are faster and more frequent than local pro-private changes.     

Malice in Maasailand: The historical roots of current political struggles

Current struggles for power, land and resources in Kenyan Maasailandcan only be understood in a one hundred-year context, by returningto the forced moves and land losses of the 1900s and closelyexamining subsequent complaints about their alleged illegalityand long-term impacts. Drawing upon archival research and oraltestimony, this article explains why the Maasai community'ssense of loss and betrayal is so enduring. Maasai grievancesstem from a feeling that they have been betrayed by the British,from the political ambitions of particular Maasai leaders, andfrom historical divisions between different groups of Maasai.Entangled with all these reasons for grievance is the use ofhistory and myth in constructing nationalist and bounded identities.     

Depressive Symptomatology and Program Efficacy: Examining a Program to Improve Communication in Community Families

Destructive conflict is linked with adjustment problems over time, putting families at risk even when conflict behaviors have not reached levels of clinical concern. The Family Communication Project (FCP) is a psychoeducational program designed to improve communication in families with adolescent children. The present study examines the role of depression in program efficacy over time. Data were collected across four time points, assessing aspects of marital and family conflict, adolescent emotional security, and depressive symptoms in mothers, fathers, and adolescents. Results indicated improvements in conflict strategies for families who received the psychoeducational program (relative to controls), and point to a role of depressive symptomatology in adolescents in relation to treatment outcomes.     

Public Value Dimensions: Developing and Testing a Multi-Dimensional Classification

Further integration of the public value literature with other strands of literature within Public Administration necessitates a more specific classification of public values. This article applies a typology linked to organizational design principles, because this is useful for empirical public administration studies. Based on an existing typology of modes of governance, we develop a classification and test it empirically, using survey data from a study of the values of 501 public managers. We distinguish among seven value dimensions (the public at large, rule abidance, balancing interests, budget keeping, efficient supply, professionalism, and user focus), and we find systematic differences between organizations at different levels and with different tasks, indicating that the classification is fruitful. Our goal is to enable more precise analyses of value conflicts and improve the integration between the public value literature and other parts of the Public Administration discipline.     

Officer Preferences for Male Backup: The Influence of Gender and Police Partnering

Much of the extant literature regarding women in policing focuses on job stress, perceptions of job performance, and inherent difficulties associated with their immersion in a traditionally male-dominated profession. Little attention, however, has been given to perceptions regarding gender and backup preferences among police officers. This study sought to examine the impact of professional and demographic characteristics of municipal police officers in a southern state on preferences for male police officers as backup. Multivariate analysis indicated that gender, partner status, race, and marital status significantly impacted officer preferences for male backup. However, further examination of the interaction effect between gender and partner status revealed a gap in the preferences for officers with no partners. Although officers with no partners reported lower overall preferences for male backup than officers with female or male partners, the disparity of preference between male and female officers with no partners was sizeable.     

Face mask mandates: Unilateral authority and gubernatorial leadership in US states

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the coordination and cooperation between the federal government and the states failed. American governors were thus tasked with making critical public health policy choices—under extreme uncertainty—with varying institutional capacities, partisan pressures, and state demographic differences. Yet most of the nation's governors chose to impose a face covering or mask mandate to limit the spread of cases. We collected each governor's executive order that mandated the conditions under which their residents would be required to wear a mask and employed a sentiment analysis program to extract key qualities of crisis leadership communication. Our analyses provide insights into the institutional and partisan factors that determined a face mask mandate as well as the institutional, demographic, and leadership communication qualities that affected the total number of cases per capita in the states. Our findings have important implications for post-pandemic policy recommendations with respect to the effectiveness of policies that seek to lower the transmission of viruses in public spaces and the characteristics of impactful public health messaging by government leaders.