After-School Programs as a Prosocial Setting for Bonding Between Peers

This study reports on the longitudinal analysis of a structured after-school arts program for Canadian youth, ages 9 to 15 years, from low-income communities where the relationship of peer social support, family interactions, and psychosocial outcomes is evaluated. Multi-level growth curve analyses suggest an increase in prosocial development with peer social support and a decrease in prosocial development when negative family interactions are present. Comparisons between matched controls, using estimated linear propensity scores, revealed significant improvement in prosocial behaviors for the intervention group. The structured after-school arts program was found to increase prosocial behaviors and bonding with peers for youth from low-income communities.     

Electoral and structural losers and support for a national referendum in the U.S.

The U.S. is one of only a few democracies in the world never to hold a national referendum. Recent national surveys reveal that a majority of respondents approve of a national referendum both cross-nationally and in America is relatively stable. Building on previous work (Bowler and Donovan, 2007), we find public opinion on a reform proposal is fluid and responsive to electoral politics, rather than stable as reported in earlier work. In this paper, we argue that contemporary support for a national referendum in the U.S. is contingent on whether a citizen is a short- or long-term “winner” or a “loser” when it comes to electoral politics. We expect that public support for a national referendum in the U.S., where legislation referred by Congress would be subject to a popular vote, may vary at the individual level because of short-term electoral fortunes as well as long-term structural conditions. Strategic voting as well as losing in candidate races and policy issues may be important, but so might be partisanship, with non-partisans the most likely to benefit from citizen law-making at the national level. Support for a national referendum might also be contingent upon state context, that is, upon use of direct democracy in the state where a person lives, as well as the population of a state. The results based on a natural experiment and 2008 panel survey data provide an important window into understanding public opinion on institutional change more broadly.     

What Makes Students Engaged in Learning? A Time-Use Study of Within- and Between-Individual Predictors of Emotional Engagement in Low-Performing High Schools

Adolescents’ emotional engagement plays a critical role in promoting their academic performance as well as overall psychological wellbeing. As a part of a 3-year longitudinal study, this study drew upon self-determination theory to examine three psychological predictors of emotional engagement within specific learning contexts. Ninety-four, low socioeconomic status (SES), ninth grade students (49% male; 32 Blacks, 30 Whites, and 32 Latinos) rated the perceived fulfillment of their autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs and their emotional engagement in learning settings at multiple time points over a 1-week period. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that the students’ ratings of their psychological-need fulfillment and of their emotional engagement fluctuated over time and across contexts. After accounting for student gender, race/ethnicity, and prior achievement, we found that the fulfillment of each type of psychological need in a particular learning context was related to emotional engagement in that context (i.e., within-student level). The fulfillment of students’ need for autonomy also was related to their emotional engagement at the aggregated level (i.e., between-student level). These findings illustrate how the psychological affordances of particular learning settings are associated with emotional engagement within and between students from low SES backgrounds.     

Does the Motivation for Market‐Based Reform Matter? The Case of Responsibility‐Centered Management

Organizational theorists have long examined the implications of market‐oriented policies for public agencies. Current research often aims to understand the effects of policies imposed on organizations by external stakeholder groups, but few studies have attempted to gain a better understanding of what mechanisms cause agencies to select into these strategies. The purpose of this article is to understand, first, which factors make an organization more likely to adopt a decentralized, market‐based budgeting system—termed “responsibility‐centered management (RCM)—and, second, whether this type of system has implications for organizational performance. Using data on doctorate‐granting public and private nonprofit four‐year universities in the United States, the authors find that mission, resource dependence, and state party control influence the take‐up of RCM. In terms of effects, RCM creates winners for graduation rates (white students) and degree production (science, technology, engineering, and math departments), which raises questions of equity across groups.     

Top Management Turnover: The Role of Governing Board Structures

The convergence of performance accountability policies, a graying bureaucracy, and shorter executive tenures highlights the timeliness of investigating executive turnover. Prior public administration research has examined pull and push factors linked to these departures, but it has yet to fully explore the influence of governing board structures and political pressures that stem from such structures. Using data on 123 public four‐year research universities in the United States from 1993 to 2012, this article finds that governing board structures play a pivotal role in predicting the departure decisions of university presidents. While the size of the board increases the risk of departure, boards overseeing multiple institutions and boards with a faculty or student representative lower the risk of departure. Additional evidence suggests that both the share of gubernatorial and legislative appointees on the board and the party division of the legislature have a direct influence on departure.     

Friends and Education: Identity Patterns across Domains and Associations with Emotion Dysregulation and Identity Disturbance

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - The task of identity development, which involves distinguishing who one is, and defining and articulating this to others, is a challenging developmental task for...