Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures: A Text Reuse Approach

This article proposes a new approach to investigating the substance of lawmaking. Only a very small proportion of bills become law in the U.S. Congress. However, the bills that do become law often serve as vehicles for language originating in other bills. We investigate “text reuse” methods as a means for tracing the progress of policy ideas in legislation. We then show how a focus on policy ideas leads to new insights into the lawmaking process. Although our focus is on relating content found within bills, the same methods can be used to study policy substance across many research domains.     

Parenting Style and Bullying and Victimization: Comparing Foreign-Born Asian,U.S.-Born Asian,and White American Adolescents

Journal of Family Violence - The purpose of the study is to explore whether the association between types of parenting styles and bullying and victimization are similar across White American,...     

Perceptions of Racism and Depressive Symptoms in African American Adolescents: The Role of Perceived Academic and Social Control

Experiences with racism are a common occurrence for African American youth and may result in negative self perceptions relevant for the experience of depressive symptoms. This study examined the longitudinal association between perceptions of racism and depressive symptoms, and whether perceived academic or social control mediated this association, in a community epidemiologically-defined sample of urban African American adolescents (N = 500; 46.4% female). Structural equation modeling revealed that experiences with racism were associated with low perceived academic control, which in turn was associated with increased depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that experiences with racism can have long lasting effects for African American youth’s depressive symptoms, and highlight the detrimental effects of experiences with racism for perceptions of control in the academic domain. Implications for intervention are discussed.

Public servants’ appreciation for themes in public administration scholarship

One of the defining characteristics of Canadian Public Administration is its singular coverage of topics. In this research, we extend Wake Carroll and Kpessa’s (2007) work to see if the themes found in Canadian Public Administration (CPA) for the 2008‐2016 period are in line with the topics published for the 2000‐2006 period. We also compare the contemporary topics published in CPA to the Australian Journal of Public Administration (AJPA). We then surveyed Canadian public servants about their interests. Our results show that they express more interest towards the themes published in CPA in the last decade than during 2001‐2006, and more interest than the ones published in AJPA in the last decade.