Evaluating partnerships for community health improvement: tracking the footprints

Private-public partnerships are increasingly seen as an important mechanism for improving community health. Despite their popularity, traditional evaluations of these efforts have produced negative or mixed results. This is often attributed to weak interventions or an insufficient period of time to observe an impact. This study examines two additional possibilities--the need for a well-articulated shared vision and the governance and management capabilities of the partnership itself. We conducted a midstream process evaluation of twenty-five community partnerships associated with the Community Care Network (CCN) Demonstration Program. We examined how the roles of a common shared vision, strong governance, and effective management influence a partnership's ability to achieve its objectives. The findings, based on both qualitative and quantitative analyses, underscore the importance of membership organizations' perceived benefits and costs of participation and management capabilities to the partnership's progress toward a vision. Based on the qualitative data, six key governance and management characteristics are identified that separate the top performing partnerships from the lowest performing ones. We explore the implications of this research for future evaluations of public-private community health partnerships.     

The Contribution of Organized Youth Sport to Antisocial and Prosocial Behavior in Adolescent Athletes

In this study, we investigated the contribution of organized youth sport to antisocial and prosocial behavior in adolescent athletes. The sample consisted of N=260 male and female soccer players and competitive swimmers, 12 to 18 years of age. Multilevel regression analysis revealed that 8% of the variance in antisocial behavior and 7% of the variance in prosocial behavior could be attributed to characteristics of the sporting environment. Results suggested that coaches who maintain good relationships with their athletes reduce antisocial behavior, and that exposure to relatively high levels of sociomoral reasoning within the immediate context of sporting activities promotes prosocial behavior. These results point to specific aspects of adolescents’ participation in sport that can be used to realize the educational potential of organized youth sport. She is currently writing her Ph.D. thesis on sports and education. Interests include moral development, behavioral adaptation, and delinquency. Associate Professor of Special Education at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research interests include socio-emotional development and moral education. Professor of Educational Theory in the School of Education and life long learning, University of Exeter, UK. His research focuses on the role of communication in education. Professor of Special Education at the Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research interests concern socio-emotional development and developmental psychopathology, especially within the framework of attachment theory. She is working on a Ph.D. thesis on dyslexia. Her interests include socio-emotional development and learning problems. Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Assistant Professor at the Department of Developmental Psychology of Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Interests include methods of developmental research and multilevel modeling. University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Department of Education     

Implications of Out-of-School Activities for School Engagement in African American Adolescents

The connection between out-of-school activities and school engagement was examined in 140, 6th through 9th grade African American adolescents. Youth’s out-of-school activities were measured with a series of 7 nightly phone calls and focused on time in structured (homework, academically-oriented, extracurricular/sports) and unstructured (watching television, hanging out with peers) activities. School engagement was assessed during a home interview in terms of affective (school bonding), behavioral (school grades), and cognitive (school self-esteem) dimensions. Regression analyses controlling for parents’ education and youth grade in school showed that more time in extracurricular activities was associated with greater school self-esteem and school bonding. In addition, more time spent on homework was associated with greater school bonding for boys. Conversely, more time watching television was associated with lower school self-esteem and school bonding. Aryn M. Dotterer is a postdoctoral scholar at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from The Pennsylvania State University. Her major research interests include the development of and changes in school engagement and academic achievement among ethnic minority and low income youth from childhood through adolescence with an emphasis on parenting and family-school linkages. Susan M. McHale is a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her major research interests focus on children’s and adolescents’ family roles, relationships and activities with a particular emphasis on gendered family dynamics and youth’s sibling relationship experiences. Ann C. Crouter is a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Cornell University. Her major research interests focus on the implications of parents’ work situations for parents’ and children’s health, psychological development, and family relationships.     

Book Reviews

Throughout the twentieth century, the city of Khartoum was the subject of analyses and knowledge produced by diverse actors, such as scholars, urban planners, government agents and institutions, urban dwellers and, more recently, actors from the humanitarian and private sectors. The aim of this article is to offer a critical analysis of Sudan urban studies from the 1970s onwards, and to illustrate their strengths and shortcomings. A revisitation of the work of anthropologist Richard Lobban on Tuti Island, where I recently conducted ethnographic fieldwork, will allow me to comment on Marxist anthropology as the theoretical framework used by Sudanist scholars in the early decades of urban studies, to focus on methodological strategies for data collection, and to analyse the use of concepts such as “urbanisation” and “community”. These reflections will be used to suggest a research agenda for urban studies in Sudan, as well as recent academic approaches to the treatment of the urban question.     

Competitiveness concerns in Hong Kong: business fears and government incomprehension

Much of the analysis of the anti-globalization movement that has emerged in the last five years has focused on the degree to which the Internet has played a crucial role in contemporary social movements. It is commonly argued that the Internet helps create ‘virtual communities’ that use the medium to exchange information, coordinate activities, and build and extend political support. Much of the commentary on the web as a means of political mobilization for social movements stresses the degree to which the Internet compresses both space and time, accelerating the exchange of information among whomever has access to this technology. Equally important in this view is the deterritorialized nature of on-line protest and the diminution in importance of ‘place’ in current anti-globalization campaigns. Certainly this argument features prominently in analyses of the campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1997-98 and the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Seattle in November and December 1999. Our examination of the antiglobalization movement in Australia however leads us to a different conclusion: that while the Internet does indeed compress time, it compresses space in a different, and indeed quite variable, way. We examine the way in which Australians protested against the MAI and against the WTO meetings in Seattle, and show the differences in the nature of protest in each case. In the MAI case, the protests were well-organized and national in scope, with the Internet playing an important role in organizing the movement. By contrast, in the case of the WTO, the movement was minor and relatively marginal, with the Internet playing little discernible role in galvanizing protest. We conclude that crucial to an understanding of the differences was the considerable difference in the importance of ‘place’ in each case.     

Multilateralising regionalism: what role for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement?

Abstract

The Asia-Pacific region is home to a large and rapidly growing number of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). These agreements differ widely in design, scope and purpose. The “noodle bowl” that has resulted runs the risk of distorting investment and trade. Neither global institutions (the WTO) nor regional institutions such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping have successfully addressed these issues. Amidst this increasingly messy situation, the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement stands out for a range of important economic and political reasons, not least of which is its potential to take existing PTAs in the Asia-Pacific region in a new direction. The aim of the TPP negotiators is to produce a comprehensive, high quality, multi-party agreement to tame the tangle of PTAs and be a potential stepping stone to achieving the goal of liberalizing regional trade on a non-discriminatory basis. The economic gains from removing border barriers among the countries involved in the initial TPP negotiations are likely to be limited, however, given the small size of many of the economies and the existing PTAs among them. To date, the US has been unwilling to offer a single set of arrangements for all TPP partners, preferring to build on existing bilateral agreements. Pessimism about the immediate results from the TPP should be tempered, however, by considerations of the dynamics that it might set in train; on the other hand, it has the potential to divide the region and exacerbate China's concerns about “containment”.     

Learning from the news: Experiments in media,modality, and reporting about star wars

This study explores what ordinary American adults learn from news reported in different communications modalities and media. In the first experiment, the text of news items about Star Wars is held constant but the communications modality varies. In the second experiment, news reports reflect the journalistic style of television, newspaper, and magazine reporting. In the modality experiment, subjects learned equally well from the audiovisual, audio, or print versions of the stories. In the media experiment, subjects in the magazine and television conditions gained substantially more information than those in the newspaper condition; but when subjects were asked to apply information to policy judgments about Star Wars, magazine readers were more dovish than television viewers. For Star Wars news, it appears that the content and characteristic style of a news medium have important effects on news comprehension, particularly for the least informed and least interested members of the public.     

Gender relations,authoritarianism and democratization in Chile

This article takes Chile as a case study to examine how the women's movement, the non‐governmental sector and the state have worked together to design policies for the prevention of domestic violence, and to transform the culture of authoritarianism which remains an integral part of gender relations within the state and in society. It conceptualizes the linkages between gender relations, authoritarianism and violence, examines how violence against women became a prominent issue during the transition to democracy, and shows that women's organizations have made significant advances in Chile as elsewhere in Latin America, by framing legislation on violence against women within the context of women's human rights. The study indicates that collaboration between the state, women's organizations and the police force can provide a window of opportunity to promote a democratic culture within the state and society.