Internalizing Symptoms: Effects of a Preventive Intervention on Developmental Pathways from Early Adolescence to Young Adulthood

This study examined the mediated and moderated effects of a universal family-focused preventive intervention, delivered during young adolescence, on internalizing symptoms assessed in young adulthood. Sixth grade students (N=446; 52% female; 98% White) and their families from 22 rural Midwestern school districts were randomly assigned to the experimental conditions in 1993. Self-report questionnaires were administered at seven time points (pre-test to young adulthood-age 21) to those receiving the Iowa Strengthening Families Program (ISFP) and to the control group. Results showed that growth factors of adolescent internalizing symptoms (grades 6-12) were predicted by ISFP condition and risk status (defined as early substance initiation). Moderation of the condition effect by risk status was found, with higher-risk adolescents benefitting more from the ISFP. Results also supported the hypothesis that the ISFP's effect on internalizing symptoms in young adulthood was mediated through growth factors of adolescents' internalizing symptoms; risk moderation, however, was only marginally significant in young adulthood. The relative reduction rate on clinical or subclinical levels of young adult internalizing symptoms was 28%, indicating that for every 100 young adults displaying clinical or subclinical levels of internalizing symptoms from school districts not offering an intervention, there could be as few as 72 displaying those levels of symptoms in school districts that offered middle school prevention programming. These findings highlight how the positive effects of family-focused universal interventions can extend to non-targeted outcomes and the related potential public-health impact of scaling up these interventions.     

Negotiated compliance at the street level: Personalizing immunization in England,Israel and Sweden

Often portrayed as behaviour that is inconsistent with policy goals, public noncompliance poses a significant challenge for government. To explore what compliance efforts entail on the ground, this study focuses on childhood immunization as a paradigmatic case where a failure to ensure compliance poses a public health risk. The analysis draws on 48 semi‐structured interviews with frontline nurses and regional/national public health officials in England (N = 15), Sweden (N = 17) and Israel (N = 16), all of which have experienced periodic noncompliance spikes, but differ in direct delivery of vaccination provision. Compliance efforts emerged as a joint decision‐making process in which improvisatory practices of personalized appeals are deployed to accommodate parents’ concerns, termed here ‘street‐level negotiation’. Whereas compliance is suggestive of compelling citizens’ adherence to standardized rules, compliance negotiation draws attention to the limited resources street‐level workers have when encountering noncompliance and to policy‐clients’ influence on delivery arrangements when holding discretionary power over whether or not to comply.     

Relational Leadership,Storytelling, and Narratives: Practices of Local Government Chief Executives

This article examines the storytelling and narrative practices of an elite group of public administrators in the United Kingdom: local government chief executives. The authors do so through the lens of relationality, exploring the collective dimensions of leadership. The focus on leadership and stories embraces the narrative turn in public administration scholarship. It responds to calls for research examining the distinctive settings of everyday leadership action. The contribution to theory is a qualitative understanding of the relational ways in which stories and narratives are used in the practices of public administration leaders. The article analyzes four ways in which such leadership is accomplished: inviting an emotional connection and commitment to public service, making sense of organizational realities, provoking reflections on practices and assumptions, and managing relations with politicians. The authors offer an appreciation of how relational leadership influence can be generated by expressive narratives and storytelling rather than stemming from bureaucratic authority.     

Temporary Loan Limits as a Natural Experiment in Federal Housing Administration Insurance

The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 dramatically but temporarily increased the mortgage loan amount eligible for insurance through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). We use the implementation and expiration of these loan limits as a source of exogenous variation in the availability of FHA insurance to measure the impact on the overall mortgage market and conventional lending. We find that the introduction of higher loan limits increased the number of loan originations, but that the expiration of those loan limits roughly 6 years later did not significantly decrease affected loan originations. The substitution between loan products and small net impact on the overall mortgage market when the ESA loan limits expired may be explained by the return of a stronger conventional lending industry than existed during the housing crisis.     

Advocacy Coalitions in Ontario Land Use Policy Development

In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, both major changes in land use policy designed to preserve greenspaces and combat urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Canada's largest conurbation. This article examines the actors, actor beliefs, and inter‐actor alliances in the southern Ontario land use policy subsystem from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Specifically, this paper undertakes an empirical examination of the ACF's Belief Homophily Hypothesis, which holds that inter‐actor alliances form on the basis of shared policy‐relevant beliefs, creating advocacy coalitions. The analysis finds strong evidence of three advocacy coalitions in the policy subsystem—an agricultural coalition, an environmentalist coalition, and a developers' coalition—as predicted by the hypothesis. However, it also finds equally strong evidence of a cross‐coalition coordination network of peak organizations, something not predicted by the Belief Homophily Hypothesis, and in need of explanation within the ACF.     

Cortisol Stress Response Variability in Early Adolescence: Attachment,Affect and Sex

Attachment, affect, and sex shape responsivity to psychosocial stress. Concurrent social contexts influence cortisol secretion, a stress hormone and biological marker of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity. Patterns of attachment, emotion status, and sex were hypothesized to relate to bifurcated, that is, accentuated and attenuated, cortisol reactivity. The theoretical framework for this study posits that multiple individual differences mediate a cortisol stress response. The effects of two psychosocial stress interventions, a modified Trier Social Stress Test for Teens and the Frustration Social Stressor for Adolescents were developed and investigated with early adolescents. Both of these protocols induced a significant stress reaction and evoked predicted bifurcation in cortisol responses; an increase or decrease from baseline to reactivity. In Study I, 120 predominantly middle-class, Euro-Canadian early adolescents with a mean age of 13.43 years were studied. The girls’ attenuated cortisol reactivity to the public performance stressor related significantly to their self-reported lower maternal-attachment and higher trait-anger. In Study II, a community sample of 146 predominantly Euro-Canadian middle-class youth, with an average age of 14.5 years participated. Their self-reports of higher trait-anger and trait-anxiety, and lower parental attachment by both sexes related differentially to accentuated and attenuated cortisol reactivity to the frustration stressor. Thus, attachment, affect, sex, and the stressor contextual factors were associated with the adrenal-cortical responses of these adolescents through complex interactions. Further studies of individual differences in physiological responses to stress are called for in order to clarify the identities of concurrent protective and risk factors in the psychosocial stress and physiological stress responses of early adolescents.     

The Burden of Caste on Social Identity in India

Abstract

This paper uses the World Values Survey to investigate the determinants of perceived social status in India. Caste is still the largest determinant, yet not the only one, as income, education and occupation are all relevant factors. However, only unlikely improvements in those economic attributes could offset the burden of being from a low caste or tribe on perceived social rank. This study is part of the literature that shows how the internalisation of prejudice and long-lasting discrimination may have impaired individuals’ self-esteem. The results stress the need to account for self-depreciation when assessing the efficiency of affirmative action policies.