Role of Culture and Context: Ethical Issues in Research with Asian Americans and Immigrants in Intimate Violence

Ethical principles are often presented as universal, immutable rules. However, when conducting research with ethnic minority groups, such as Asian Americans and immigrants, ethical issues need to be placed within a sociocultural context as ethical responses are filtered through the specific value orientations and belief systems of the ethnic group under study. Further, when the group is a marginalized population, power dynamics complicate ethical principles of autonomy. The complexities are further accentuated with sensitive topics such as intimate violence or domestic violence. Consequently, ethical questions about autonomy, informed consent, confidentiality, limits to confidentiality, and protecting participants’ safety and reducing distress need to be at the forefront when planning intimate violence research. An overview of sociocultural context of Western biomedical ethics is presented and specific ethical issues that emerge when conducting intimate violence are discussed.     

Norms versus Action: Why Voters Fail to Sanction Malfeasance in Brazil

We show that Brazilian voters strongly sanction malfeasant mayors when presented with hypothetical scenarios but take no action when given the same information about their own mayor. Partnering with the State Accounts Court of Pernambuco, we conducted a field experiment during the 2016 municipal elections in which the treatment group received information about official wrongdoing by their mayor. The treatment has no effect on self‐reported voting behavior after the election, yet when informing about malfeasance in the context of a vignette experiment, we are able to replicate the strong negative effect found in prior studies. We argue that voters' behavior in the abstract reflects the comparatively strong norm against corruption in Brazil. Yet on Election Day, their behavior is constrained by factors such as attitudes toward local political dynasties and the greater salience of more pressing concerns like employment and health services.     

Cost‐Effectiveness of Early Childhood Interventions to Enhance Preschool: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Head Start Centers Enrolling Historically Underserved Populations

We evaluate the cost‐effectiveness of two early childhood interventions that use instructional coaching and parent coaching as levers for improvement. The study design allows us to compare the individual effects of each intervention as well as their combined effect on student outcomes. We find that teachers receiving instructional coaching improve their use of evidence‐based instructional practices, while families receiving parent coaching show increases in numerous responsive parenting behaviors associated with positive child outcomes. Both interventions demonstrate positive impacts on students, but only parent coaching shows statistically significant effects across a range of student outcomes. Instructional coaching alone is substantially less costly and may therefore be the most cost‐effective of the three treatment conditions; however, small sample sizes limit our ability to reach definitive conclusions. Policy simulations suggest that implementing these interventions could raise the overall cost‐effectiveness of Head Start by at least 16 percent.     

Adolescents’ Frequency of Alcohol Use and Problems from Alcohol Abuse: Integrating Dating Partners with Parent and Peer Influences

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Despite the centrality of dating relationships for teens, it is unclear whether the influence of romantic partners’ alcohol use on adolescents’...     

Stability,Autonomy, and the Foundations of Political Liberalism

Law and Philosophy - An attractive form of social stability is realized when the members of a well-ordered society give that society’s organizing principles their free and reflective...     

Laura A. Henry and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom,eds., Bringing Global Governance Home: NGO Mediation in the BRICS States

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

The future of Fair Trade coffee: dilemmas facing Latin America's small-scale producers

Fair Trade has become a dynamic and successful dimension of an emerging counter-tendency to the neo-liberal globalisation regime. This study explores some of the dilemmas facing the Fair Trade movement as it seeks to broaden and deepen its impact among the rural poor of Latin America's coffee sector. We argue that the efforts to broaden Fair Trade's economic impact among poor, small-scale producers are creating challenges for deepening the political impact of a movement that is based on social justice and environmental sustainability. The study is based on two years' research and seven case studies of Mexican and Central American small-scale farmer cooperatives producing coffee for the Fair Trade market.     

Comment: Good-bye dependency theory,hello dependency theory

Studies in Comparative International Development -