Social entrepreneurship as intervention: Findings from a venture development program for marginalized youth

Leadership and career readiness are important goals for youth development. Entrepreneurship has recently been considered as a potential intervention to support these aims. This study examined a venture development program for low-income youth through participant surveys (n?=?57) and a comparison group (n?=?72). Findings from structural equation modeling indicate relationships between the program and project management skills, which in turn was associated with youth leadership. Findings also showed relationships between the program and financial literacy, which was associated with an increase in future orientation. This study shows early evidence of entrepreneurship and venture creation as mechanisms to support marginalized youth.     

Assessing the Impact of Harassment by Peers: Incident Characteristics and Outcomes in a National Sample of Youth

Although there are widely held assumptions about the characteristics of peer bullying that are of greatest concern, very few studies have empirically assessed which characteristics most affect its impact. The current research addresses this gap by using a nationally representative U.S. sample of youth ages 10–20 to examine the relative effects of a variety of potentially aggravating incident characteristics on emotional, physical health, and school-related outcomes. Findings show support for power imbalance and duration (a stronger predictor than repetition) as incident characteristics that exacerbate the negative impact of peer harassment. However, several other incident characteristics have substantial effects with or without the presence of these qualities. Injury, sexual content, involvement of multiple perpetrators, and hate/bias components of peer harassment incidents each increased at least one negative outcome. Findings point to several features of peer harassment that can provide a basis for prioritizing victimization experiences in greatest need of intervention efforts.     

Mapping Cultural Auracy: The Sonic Politics of The Day the Earth Stood Still

Anna Kassabian writes in Hearing Film that “classical Hollywood film music is a semiotic code, and that it can and should be subjected to various semiotic and cultural studies methods, such as discourse analysis and ideology critique” (p. 36). This paper examines the sound of a particular Hollywood film—the B-Grade 1950 science fiction “classic” The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)—in order to perform the kind of analysis Kassabian demands; but also to argue that the analysis needs to encompass not only music, but all sonic elements of the film. Furthermore, the paper argues for development of a cultural auracy that will complement studies of verbal and visual literacies in multimodal and multimedia texts.     

Book Reviews

Small Firms and Local Economic Networks: The Death of the Local Economy?. James Curran and Robert Blackburn, 1994. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. 210 pp.; £29.95 hardback. ISBN: 1 85396 209 0

Tourism and Politics: Policy, Power and Place. Colin Michael Hall, 1994 (reprinted. March 1996). Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. 239 pp.; £14.99 paperback. ISBN: 0 471 9647 2

European Union Spatial Policy and Planning. R. WILLIAMS, 1996. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. 304 pp. £16.95 paperback. ISBN: 1 8539 6 305 4

Disability and the City: International Perspectives. Rob Imrie, 1996. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. 200 pp.; £15.95 paperback. ISBN: 185396 273 2 (paperback)     

RESEARCH NOTE: OBSERVATIONS OF SUICIDAL TERRORISTS IN ACTION

11 September woke the world up to the scourge of the twenty-first century—suicidal terrorism. Hostage-taking coupled with suicidal terrorism is its newest variant, played out in a Moscow theater in late October 2002. Forty Chechen terrorists armed with automatic rifles, grenades and self-detonating bombs announced to 800 plus hostages that the event was a suicide mission. The standoff ended when Russian Special Forces gassed and stormed the building, killing all the terrorists. Suicidal terrorists are rarely, if ever, observed in action. In the first months after the event, an American psychologist collaborated with Russian Academy of Sciences colleagues to collect interviews from the hostages. This article reports on hostages’ observations, interactions and conversations with the 40 suicidal terrorists.     

The Internet: A Virtual Training Camp?

This study aims to investigate how Al Qaeda uses the Internet for military training and preparation. What kind of training material is available on jihadi webpages, who produces it, and for what purpose? The article argues that in spite of a vast amount of training-related literature online, there have been few organized efforts by Al Qaeda to train their followers by way of the Internet. The Internet is per today not a “virtual training camp” organized from above, but rather a resource bank maintained and accessed largely by self-radicalized sympathizers.     

Application of Random Match Probability Calculations to Mixed STR Profiles

Mixed DNA profiles are being encountered more frequently as laboratories analyze increasing amounts of touch evidence. If it is determined that an individual could be a possible contributor to the mixture, it is necessary to perform a statistical analysis to allow an assignment of weight to the evidence. Currently, the combined probability of inclusion (CPI) and the likelihood ratio (LR) are the most commonly used methods to perform the statistical analysis. A third method, random match probability (RMP), is available. This article compares the advantages and disadvantages of the CPI and LR methods to the RMP method. We demonstrate that although the LR method is still considered the most powerful of the binary methods, the RMP and LR methods make similar use of the observed data such as peak height, assumed number of contributors, and known contributors where the CPI calculation tends to waste information and be less informative.