Exploring the Link between Mentoring Program Structure & Success Rates: Results from a National Survey

Though mentoring has emerged as a promising and low-cost intervention for at-risk youth in recent years, the scientific knowledge base on the topic remains under-developed. The current study augments the knowledge base on youth mentoring by analyzing programmatic elements of mentoring programs situated in or adjacent to the juvenile justice system that are predictive of participant success. Poisson regression was utilized to analyze data collected through a national mentoring community saturation survey. Findings indicated that mentoring programs that require more frequent interaction and sustain relationships for longer timeframes realize higher success rates. Similarly, the use of formal mentor training was also observed as indicative of the use of evidence based practices and higher success rates, though likely beyond the logistical and fiscal reach of some local mentoring initiatives. The implications for further research and the mentoring community are discussed.     

Homosexuality as Defamation: A Proposal for the Use of the “Right-Thinking Minds” Approach in the Development of Modern Jurisprudence

False imputations of homosexuality have long been considered by courts to be defamatory per se, but many jurisdictions are beginning to revisit the issues surrounding homosexuality and defamation in the wake of a national debate over gay rights. This article examines whether courts should abandon false imputations of homosexuality as per se defamation and concludes that, at a minimum such statements should no longer be defamatory per se and further provides courts with a framework to go a step further and hold that such statements hold no defamatory meaning.     

THE IMPLICATIONS OF ASPIRATIONS

Numerous scholarly publications and unpublished development reports have debated the merits of “resettlement” in Laos: the movement of predominantly rural people closer to government services or to new lowland fields. Advocates have argued that settlers benefit from closer incorporation with the state and markets; critics have countered that resettlement actually exacerbates poverty. Using two case studies of resettlement villages in Laos this study illustrates significantly differing experiences, but notes that the experiences also coalesce on key points. Resettlement taps into deeply held aspirations for poverty reduction and modernity among Lao rural residents. Settler's expectations were jarred, however, as they met with inadequate government services and lowered incomes. This tension between expectation and actualization cannot be encompassed simply in terms of the state's domination of the people. Rather, settlers employed an experimental and aspiration- oriented mode of engaging with the project and, through it, the state. Settlers judged the lack of government services and charity to be the causes of the horrific conditions of resettlement villages, rather than resettlement itself. By highlighting the role of local aspirations, notions of modernity, and the experimental ethic, this examination of resettlement in Laos casts new light on how rural residents and officials achieve the “experimental consensus” on which these projects run.     

Reforming war's administrative rubble in Lebanon

After 17 years of civil strife in Lebanon, an Office of Minister of State for Administrative Reform (OMSAR) was established in 1993 to plan for short‐term rehabilitation and long‐term institutional development within the public sector. Since external technical assistance to public administration was delivered through OMSAR, its role as a host agency for international aid donors' efforts in reform policy‐making and implementation is critical. The article discusses OMSAR's approach to channelling foreign aid for administrative development in post‐war Lebanon. Lessons from the Lebanese experience in post‐war institutional development may interest countries emerging from conflicts and trying to rebuild administrative infrastructure. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does all-payer rate setting work? The case of the New York Prospective Hospital Reimbursement Methodology

By 1983, four states had received waivers from the Health Care Financing Administration and adopted experimental reimbursement programs covering all third-party payers. In general, these programs were designed to moderate cost growth as well as to promote a number of broader distributive objectives. Among the concerns for equity were financing uncompensated care and spreading the costs across all payers, reducing the differential between hospital charges and costs, and rejuvenating fiscally distressed hospitals. These diverse goals represent a fundamental shift in the role of state rate setting; as a result, broader outcome measures are required to determine their overall impact. The New York Prospective Hospital Reimbursement Methodology (NYPHRM) is evaluated in this broader context. The NYPHRM successfully channeled revenues to fiscally blighted hospitals, increasing the volume of care to the uninsured while maintaining cost growth at national levels. According to this broader set of outcome measures, the NYPHRM would be viewed as a policy success.     

Before the window closed: internationalism,crossing borders,and reaching out to sisters across the seas

Abstract

This article puts into conversation existent and new scholarship regarding black radical women of the Left in the United States and South Africa during the twentieth century. It is primarily concerned with the evolution of women’s protest from localized issues of race-based discrimination to international, anti-colonial protests of the era. It is a timely response to contemporary historical analyses that emphasize the necessity of broadening historical concepts to include themes that cross traditional chronological, ideological, and geographical lines. This article posits four women whose ideological and organizational connections extended far beyond their own national borders and helped to change contemporary ideas regarding the supposed place of black women in national and international protests. The article illustrates the high level of awareness and commonality between communities in protest, and speaks directly to the conflicting intersections of gender, race, and protest that traversed both ideological and geographical divides.