Perceptions of Problem Behavior in Adolescents’ Families: Perceiver,Target, and Family Effects

Considerable research has focused on the reliability and validity of informant reports of family behavior, especially maternal reports of adolescent problem behavior. None of these studies, however, has based their orientation on a theoretical model of interpersonal perception. In this study we used the social relations model (SRM) to examine family members’ reports of each others’ externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Two parents and two adolescents in 69 families rated each others’ behavior within a round-robin design. SRM analysis showed that within-family perceptions of externalizing and internalizing behaviors are consistently due to three sources of variance; perceiver, target, and family effects. A family/contextual effect on informant reports of problem behavior has not been previously reported.     

The Role of Public Sociology in the Development of Cultural Policies in Chile: a Transformation of Cultural Expertise

This paper seeks to analyze the policies on the cultural field implemented in Chile in recent years, explaining how expertise became fundamental and, more specifically, how this expertise evolved from that of an expert intellectual to that of an expert professional. The paper is based on the general hypothesis that the cultural field needs to be viewed in the context of a growing differentiation and autonomization of Chilean society, but that there are some interesting nuances to its evolution, particularly with regard to the transformation of expertise. This article argues that the expert in culture has a twofold nature, which is illustrated through drawing a timeline from the 1980s to the present, marking certain milestones in Chile’s national and cultural history. This timeline incorporates the intellectual work of two of Chile’s most important contemporary sociologists and experts in culture and cultural policies, Manuel Antonio Garretón and José Joaquín Brunner. A sample of their publications is analyzed and then contrasted to documents on cultural policy since the approval of the country’s institutional framework for culture in 2003, when the National Council for Culture and the Arts was created, gauging the influence of the expert intellectual on this new institutional framework and the thrust of public policies on culture. The paper concludes that the figure of the expert in culture has shifted from the “expert intellectual” to the expert of a professional kind, although the theoretical work of the former has continued to influence the debate around cultural policies to this day.     

Relational Leadership,Storytelling, and Narratives: Practices of Local Government Chief Executives

This article examines the storytelling and narrative practices of an elite group of public administrators in the United Kingdom: local government chief executives. The authors do so through the lens of relationality, exploring the collective dimensions of leadership. The focus on leadership and stories embraces the narrative turn in public administration scholarship. It responds to calls for research examining the distinctive settings of everyday leadership action. The contribution to theory is a qualitative understanding of the relational ways in which stories and narratives are used in the practices of public administration leaders. The article analyzes four ways in which such leadership is accomplished: inviting an emotional connection and commitment to public service, making sense of organizational realities, provoking reflections on practices and assumptions, and managing relations with politicians. The authors offer an appreciation of how relational leadership influence can be generated by expressive narratives and storytelling rather than stemming from bureaucratic authority.     

Temporary Loan Limits as a Natural Experiment in Federal Housing Administration Insurance

The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 dramatically but temporarily increased the mortgage loan amount eligible for insurance through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). We use the implementation and expiration of these loan limits as a source of exogenous variation in the availability of FHA insurance to measure the impact on the overall mortgage market and conventional lending. We find that the introduction of higher loan limits increased the number of loan originations, but that the expiration of those loan limits roughly 6 years later did not significantly decrease affected loan originations. The substitution between loan products and small net impact on the overall mortgage market when the ESA loan limits expired may be explained by the return of a stronger conventional lending industry than existed during the housing crisis.     

Advocacy Coalitions in Ontario Land Use Policy Development

In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, both major changes in land use policy designed to preserve greenspaces and combat urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Canada's largest conurbation. This article examines the actors, actor beliefs, and inter‐actor alliances in the southern Ontario land use policy subsystem from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Specifically, this paper undertakes an empirical examination of the ACF's Belief Homophily Hypothesis, which holds that inter‐actor alliances form on the basis of shared policy‐relevant beliefs, creating advocacy coalitions. The analysis finds strong evidence of three advocacy coalitions in the policy subsystem—an agricultural coalition, an environmentalist coalition, and a developers' coalition—as predicted by the hypothesis. However, it also finds equally strong evidence of a cross‐coalition coordination network of peak organizations, something not predicted by the Belief Homophily Hypothesis, and in need of explanation within the ACF.     

The Effects of Neighborhood Context on Exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Among Adolescents Involved in the Juvenile Justice System: Latent Classes and Contextual Effects

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been identified as a key risk factor associated with a wide range of negative life outcomes, including juvenile delinquency. Much less work has explored whether certain combinations of ACEs, or typologies of trauma, exist, and whether or not these subgroups are differentially associated with certain youth-level and/or community-level characteristics. The current study uses latent class analysis to examine ACE typologies among a sample of over 92,000 juvenile offenders between the ages of 10 and 18 in the state of Florida (52% male, 37.3% White, 46.8% Black, 15.9% Hispanic). Multilevel multinomial logistic regression is used to assess the relationship between both individual- and community-level factors and class membership. The findings suggest that a total of five distinct ACE typologies exist among the sample of juvenile offenders, and age, race, and sex were significantly associated with class membership. Additionally, controlling for individual-level characteristics, community-level measures of immigrant concentration, residential instability, and two separate measures of concentrated disadvantage and affluence were significantly related to class membership. This study contributes to the understanding of adverse childhood experiences, and adds to existing knowledge regarding the relationship between contextual factors and childhood abuse, maltreatment, and trauma. The identification of ACE subgroups with distinct characteristics may help guide prevention strategies and tailor treatment provided by the juvenile justice system.     

Epidemiology of Suicide Attempts among Youth Transitioning to Adulthood

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for older adolescents and young adults. Although empirical literature has identified important risk factors of suicidal behavior, it is less understood if changes in risk factors correspond with changes in suicide risk. To address this knowledge gap, we assessed if there were different trajectories of suicidal behavior as youth transition into young adulthood and determined what time-varying risk factors predicted these trajectories. This study used four waves of data spanning approximately 13 years from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The sample included 9027 respondents who were 12–18 years old (M?=?15.26; SD?=?1.76) at Wave 1, 50% male, 17% Hispanic, and 58% White. The results indicated that 93.6% of the sample had a low likelihood for suicide attempts across time, 5.1% had an elevated likelihood of attempting suicide in adolescence but not young adulthood, and 1.3% had an elevated likelihood of attempting suicide during adolescence and adulthood. The likelihood of a suicide attempt corresponded with changes on depression, impulsivity, delinquency, alcohol problems, family and friend suicide history, and experience with partner violence. Determining how suicide risk changes as youth transition into young adulthood and what factors predict these changes can help prevent suicide. Interventions targeting these risk factors could lead to reductions in suicide attempts.     

Walk the Talk: Private Sustainability Standards in the Ugandan Coffee Sector

We investigate the welfare and productivity implications of private sustainability standards in the coffee sector in Uganda. We use cross-sectional household survey data and an instrumental variable method with instruments that pass weak identification and over-identification restrictions. We find that triple Utz-Rainforest Alliance-4C certification increases income, and land and labour productivity, and reduces poverty. Double Fairtrade-Organic certification is found to be associated with higher producer prices but results in lower land and labour productivity, and thereby fails to increase producer income and contribute to poverty reduction. We conclude that private sustainability standards do not always live up the expectations they create towards consumers.