A closer look at adolescent sexual activity

This study of 1228 parochial students in the eastern United States answered questions about adolescent sexuality. Few of the students surveyed claimed that sex was forced or even pressured. Over half of the students reported going steady as their relationship status when experiencing their first intercourse. Another fourth reported that they were dating or knew each other well. Approximately one-fifth of the students reported that drugs or alcohol was used at the time of first sex and three-fourths of them had first sex at either their own home or a friend's home. Nearly half of the students wished they had waited longer before having sex, especially the females and the more religious students. One-half of the nonvirgin students in the sample reported having had only one sexual partner. The implications of this information for setting social policy, designing and implementing effective sex education programs are discussed.Received Ph.D. in family studies/family science, Brigham Young University in 1994. Research and writing interests include adolescent sexuality and related problems, character education, and parenting.serving a sabbatical at BUY—Hawaii currently. Received Ph.D. in psychology at Michigan State in 1966. Research interests concern gender issues, parenting, and adolescent problems.In 1978 received Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Washington. Research interests include adolescent problems and social policy.     

Only When We Agree! How Value Congruence Moderates the Impact of Goal‐Oriented Leadership on Public Service Motivation

Questions of how and when managers can motivate the workforce of public organizations are fundamental for scholars and practitioners alike. A dominant assertion is that goal‐oriented leadership strategies, such as transformational leadership, foster public service motivation (PSM). However, existing studies rely on designs that are vulnerable to endogeneity and rarely investigate the scope conditions of the leadership‐PSM relationship. Combining a field experiment with 364 managers and surveys of their 3,470 employees, the authors show that transformational leadership and transactional leadership, when induced experimentally, do not have the claimed positive effect on PSM. In fact, the results indicate that goal‐oriented leadership can have demotivating effects when employee and organizational values are incongruent. Public managers should therefore carefully assess existing levels of value (in)congruence before implementing goal‐oriented leadership strategies, and—in case of value conflicts—seek to align perceptions of the desirable among members of the organization.     

Examining the EU-China Relationship in the Aftermath of the Economic Crisis

ABSTRACT

This article examines how, if at all, the changed economic order in the aftermath of the economic crisis in 2008 has shaped the relationship between the EU and China. Theoretically, two prevalent opposing narratives in the public discourse are presented and linked to two crude versions of mercantilism and economic liberalism in the scholarly literature. The mercantilist line of reasoning posits that China will gain more political weight with its increasing economic strength. The economic liberal line of reasoning suggests that China’s economic weight does not translate into political power. These two opposing theoretical claims are examined by process tracing two most likely cases. This article concludes that despite its increased economic strength, China has enjoyed limited success in persuading the EU and its member states to change their position(s) on policy areas involving strategic interests.     

Sozialstaatliche Kürzungspolitik in Deutschland: Nur eine Mär? Eine quantitative Gesetzgebungsanalyse 1974–2014

Quantitative analyses on welfare state dynamics have to cope with the “dependent variable problem”, as studies on social spending reach different conclusions than analyses of replacement rate data. This article suggests a way around this problem by presenting results from a fine-grained analysis of welfare state legislation in Germany between 1974 and 2014. We show that the German welfare state has seen both cuts and expansions occur in all decades. Moreover, we show by means of a regression analysis that partisan politics play a role. Supporting the “Nixon-in-China”-thesis, social democratic governments are associated with a higher probability of cutbacks—especially in times of budgetary pressure—whereas expansions are more likely under Christian democratic governments.     

Nationhood and Scandinavian naturalization politics: varieties of the civic turn

The neighboring countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway represent three very similar societies that differ markedly with respect to naturalization policy. While the general trend of a civic turn has brought about some of Europe’s strictest residence and citizenship requirements in Denmark, it has left the liberal Swedish policy largely untouched and the Norwegian somewhere in between the other two. How might such divergence in otherwise very similar societies be explained? This article investigates the role different conceptions of nationhood have played. It is argued that different conceptions of nationhood have mattered, but that the national differences have less to do with the normative content of nationhood than with how politicians tend to conceive of the integration process that newcomers must commit to in order to develop a strong sense of national belonging.     

Doing Intersectional Analysis: Methodological Implications for Qualitative Research

This article is about doing intersectional analysis and how to practise intersectionality in qualitative research. The overall objective is to contribute to the development of concrete intersectionality methodologies. The first part of the article discusses important aspects of intersectionality, bringing methodological implications into focus, e.g. the number of social categories to include and the status and differences between categories. The second part of the article argues that taking life-story narratives and the analysis of everyday life as a point of departure has potential for empirical analyses of intersectionality. This argument is illustrated by two empirical analyses. The first is about roots and routes in life-story narratives; the second is about the constructions of respectability in everyday life in relation to the intersection between gender, class, and ethnicity.     

Vote-seeking incentives and investment environments: The need for credit claiming and the provision of protectionism

Incentives to cultivate a personal reputation encourage legislators to generate policy outcomes for which they can claim credit. We show that these incentives make themselves felt in international agreements – a domain that might typically be considered within the purview of the executive branch. Through a cross-national analysis and brief case studies, we show that countries with electoral systems that encourage personal vote seeking are more likely to negotiate exceptions to treaties meant to liberalize their investment environments. Legislators benefit by being able to claim credit for having protected their constituents from the competition an unrestricted agreement would entail.     

Exploring the foundational origins of public service motivation through the lens of behavioral genetics

Despite the proliferation of research on public service motivation (PSM), fundamental questions about its origins continue to evade scholars: Is PSM driven by genetics, socialized through experiences, or both? If PSM is socialized, when does socialization occur? Answering these questions is critical for reconciling the state versus trait debate, and for assessing the validity of practical implications prescribed by PSM studies. Utilizing “nature's own experiment,” we adopt a classical twin design with 1035 twin pairs to identify how genetic heritability, a common environment, or unique environment and experiences can explain variation in PSM. Results show that PSM is heavily influenced by individuals' unique environments and experiences; not by genetics. This lends strong evidence to PSM's uniqueness as a motivational construct as related “other-regarding” concepts show sizeable genetic components. Finally, our results corroborate that PSM is a human resource with dynamic properties organizations can cultivate to enhance productivity in public service workforces.