Adolescents' Achievement Strategies, School Adjustment, and Externalizing and Internalizing Problem Behaviors

The present study investigated the relationships between the achievement strategies adolescents deploy in a school context, and their self-esteem, school adjustment, and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors. A total of 1185 14-to-15-year-old adolescents filled in the Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire (SAQ), Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale, and scales measuring school adjustment, depression and externalizing problem behavior. The adolescents' parents were also asked to evaluate their children's achievement strategies, school adjustment and, externalizing problem behavior. The results revealed that low self-esteem was associated with adolescents' use of maladaptive achievement strategies which, in turn, was associated with their maladjustment at school, and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors. Moreover, the association between adolescents' maladaptive strategies and their externalizing problem behavior was partly mediated via their school adjustment. The results suggest that the achievement strategies adolescents deploy are reflected not only in their school adjustment but also in their overall problem behavior.     

A method for collection of gunshot residues from skin and other surfaces

A method of collecting gunshot residues from the skin of persons who have been injured by firearms has been developed. The method uses a commercially available, adhesive, transparent plastic film. This method is also useful for collecting gunshot residues from other objects, such as leather. The shooting distance is later estimated by ocular, microscopic or IR examination in combination with various chemographic tests.     

A wall of treatments: An integrative problem-solving approach to the prevention of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem

Research summary

There is growing evidence that some proactive policing strategies have shown promising results in reducing crime. Most of these strategies are generally applied separately to address specific components of criminal behavior, while the involvement in the crime itself may be caused by different factors. This raises the question of whether an integrative approach that addresses these factors could be an appropriate approach to reduce involvement in the crime. Furthermore, most of these policing strategies have been applied toward regular crime; this leaves us with the question of whether these strategies would show similar results when political offenses are involved as well. Our study focuses on the political offense of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem, usually by Palestinian teenage boys. We applied an integrative approach in one of the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which included strategies such as focused deterrence, place-based policing, cognitive behavioral therapy, diversion to nonenforcement tracks, and interventions at the community level. We found a large and significant reduction in the targeted neighborhood compared to similar Palestinian neighborhoods. We have not found evidence of displacement, but rather evidence of significant diffusion of crime-control benefits.

Policy implications

The results of the study suggest that an integrative approach that addresses the risks and needs of minority youth can help reduce their future involvement in political offenses. Furthermore, the implementation of promising strategies in the wider context of policing regular crimes may also be effective in responding to political offenses.     

Protests Against Energy Projects in Turkey: Environmental Activism Above Politics?

The surge of environmental protest in Turkey has been interpreted as ‘above politics’ activism that strengthens civil society, fosters alternative expressions of identity, and creates new forms of agency outside the state. This article contends that any analysis of the way environmentalism unfolds in Turkey must take into account identity dynamics and the power the state has over these dynamics. Environmental activism seldom remains purely ‘issue-based’, despite the claims and desires of many activists themselves that their protests be ‘above politics’ as a ‘people’s movement’. Drawing on ethnographic and other methods in the study of environmental protest against a gas power plant on the Black Sea coast, this article shows how activists are caught in a dilemma which forces them to tread very carefully if they are to avoid accusations of being separatists or betrayers of the fatherland. Thus, environmental conflicts in Turkey can only be understood within the context of national identity- and party-politics.     

Side-payments: an effective instrument for building climate clubs?

Climate clubs have been suggested as a gateway to substantial reductions in global emissions. The club approach begins with a small number of enthusiastic countries. This paper asks under what conditions such clubs are likely to evolve into effective cooperation through side-payments to new members. The question is addressed through a range of formal thought experiments using numerical simulations. The model is calibrated using empirical data on countries’ emissions, GDP, populations, and vulnerabilities. It is simple and stylized, but allows for complex and dynamic interactions between actors. Basic equity considerations can be accommodated. The results indicate that side-payments’ theoretical potential for facilitating effective clubs is large. One or two large emitters can initiate a club that grows to cover a substantial share of global emissions if the global benefit–cost ratio for mitigation is around 3 or larger. The size of stable clubs is larger if new members contribute to making side-payments, and somewhat lower if equity considerations constrain the set of possible transfers. Side-payments’ effect is enabled by the large asymmetries between countries. Total side-payment flows range from tens to hundreds of billions of US dollars annually.     

Explaining the European commission’s strategies in times of crisis

Despite the growing debate over the European Commission’s (hereafter, Commission) role in crises, there are few systematic explanations for the variety of actions undertaken by the Commission in times of crisis. This article outlines a heuristic device to explain the Commission’s actions during crises, based on the variables ‘Commission mandate’ and ‘member state engagement’. To this end, it examines two crisis events that affected two strategically important policy areas for European Union integration: the early stages of the financial crisis that began in 2008 and the migration following the 2011 Arab Spring. Based on analysis of these cases, this study identifies four strategies applied by the Commission: doer, follower, cooperator and recycler. Our study concludes that member state engagement and Commission mandate are important variables in explaining under which circumstances these strategies are used by the Commission.     

Networks and labor market entry – a historical perspective

This paper discusses how recruitment practices have changed over time. Networks and contacts are more important today for labor market entry than was the case in the latter half of the twentieth century. There may be two explanations for this: the short-run explanation and the long-run explanation. The short-run explanation derives from fluctuations in unemployment. When unemployment is high, competition for every vacancy is tougher and networks become more important for the job seeker. This has been the case in Sweden since 1991, when unemployment increased to new levels not experienced since the 1930s. In the long run, there has been a change in recruitment practices due to institutional change. A clear pattern is that the importance of social networks has increased, while the significance of public institutions (i.e. the Public Employment Service) has decreased.     

Pacific men: how the feminist gap explains hostility

The gender gap in attitudes to foreign policy is well established in public opinion literature. Studies have repeatedly reported that women tend to be more peaceful and less militaristic than men. This article reexamines attitudes of individuals in relation to foreign policy and pits the gender gap against the largely forgotten feminist gap. We argue that the individual-level relationship between gender equality attitudes on the one hand, and tolerance and benevolence on the other, is under-researched, but also that key contributions about the effects of feminism have been mostly ignored in research on the gender gap in public opinion. We return to the notion of a causal relationship between gender equality attitudes, and peaceful attitudes, and of a feminist gap that also exists among men. In a series of novel empirical tests, we demonstrate that attitudes to gender equality, not biological sex, explain attitudes towards other nationalities and religious groups. Using individual-level survey data from five countries around the Pacific: China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States of America, we show that both men and women who reject gender equality are much more hostile both to other nations and to minorities in their own country.