Assessing the Past and Promise of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey for Public Management Research: A Research Synthesis

Since 2002, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has used the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) to monitor efforts by federal executive agencies to manage human capital. Public management researchers have used FEVS data to produce dozens of peer‐reviewed publications on a range of topics of interest to policy makers, practitioners, and academics. Despite the proliferation of these empirical studies, the field of public management until now has lacked a critical assessment of the FEVS and of how researchers have used the data. In this article, the authors discuss the strengths of the FEVS and the opportunities this survey has created for public management researchers. Despite important contributions made to the literature using the data, there are weaknesses in the content, design, and implementation of the FEVS. The authors offer a set of recommendations for refining the survey and its implementation with the aim of improving the quality and value of the data. In doing so, they hope to foster a dialogue between public management researchers and the Office of Personnel Management on the future of the FEVS and to forge a stronger link between these two communities.     

Desire for Smart Growth: A Survey of Residential Preferences in the Salt Lake Region of Utah

As an alternative to sprawling development, smart growth combines proximity to work, proximity to shopping and other destinations, neighborhood housing mix, shared and paid parking, complete street designs, and proximity to public transit. This article uses a stated-choice experiment to determine residents' attitudes toward these various aspects of smart growth in the Salt Lake region of Utah. Utah is a conservative state, where attitudes toward auto-oriented suburbia may be more positive than in other parts of the United States. So, one might wonder whether changing national attitudes toward smart growth, documented in several surveys, apply to residents of the Salt Lake region. In this stated-choice experiment, respondents were asked to choose between pairs of housing scenarios with different attributes and different prices. Mixed logit (random parameters logit) was used to relate individuals' choices to attributes, prices, and sociodemographic characteristics of respondents. The results show that, generally, respondents have positive attitudes toward most aspects of smart growth but still express preferences for single-family neighborhoods with free parking in their own driveways or garages. Different life cycle cohorts have different preferences. Proximity to work is more important for childless young adults. Young families with children place higher value on living in a neighborhood with only single-family homes and transit access. Retired empty nesters favor a mix of housing types over single-family housing on one-acre-plus lots. The results suggest that while residents of the Salt Lake region like suburban neighborhoods with primarily single-family houses, they would also like to have improved accessibility to amenities in the suburbs.     

Affordability After Subsidies: Understanding the Trajectories of Former Assisted Housing in Florida

Each year, thousands of units are lost from the assisted rental housing inventory through deterioration and default, subsidy expiration, and market-rate conversion. While a good deal of research and data collection has focused on identifying at-risk developments, less is known about what happens to former assisted developments after they exit income and rent restrictions. This article uses a survey of former assisted properties in Florida to identify their postsubsidy trajectories—that is, as to whether developments continue as rental housing, are converted to condominiums, or leave the housing stock through vacancy and demolition; and for those that continue as rental housing, whether they continue to offer affordable rents. Using logistic regression models, the article examines the property, housing market, and neighborhood characteristics that determine these trajectories. The results show that smaller properties, those that have been out of subsidy programs longer, and those in stronger neighborhood housing markets are more likely to be converted to condominiums. Among developments that continue as rental housing, those that previously had more stringent rent restrictions, those in strong rental submarkets, and those with better transit access tend to become unaffordable compared with previous rent limits.     

Housing Programs Fail to Deliver on Neighborhood Quality,Reexamined

This article revisits the relative performance of housing programs in terms of delivering on neighborhood quality. Newman and Schnare examined this issue in 1997, and this article updates their work more than a decade later. Both efforts examine the neighborhood characteristics surrounding assisted rental housing and assess the direction of assisted-housing policy. The analysis is performed by exploring census data at the tract level for the tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher program plus a set of project-based programs, including public housing, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, and other HUD multifamily programs. We conclude that Newman and Schnare remain correct that rental housing assistance does little to improve the quality of the recipients' neighborhoods relative to those of welfare households and can make things worse. However, things have improved. The Housing Choice Voucher and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit programs have grown in importance over the intervening years and have improved their performance by moving more households into low-poverty, less distressed areas. Importantly, these active programs for assisted housing are beginning to find ways to overcome the barriers preventing entry into the suburbs, although more needs to be done.     

The correctional staff burnout literature

Correctional staff job burnout is costly to all involved. As such, it has generated a growing body of research. This study reviewed 53 empirical studies of correctional staff burnout and two review articles published between 1981 and 2014. The majority of studies focused on staff working in a variety of institutional positions, fewer studies focused exclusively on the subgroup of correctional officers, and even fewer focused on a different subgroup. The majority of studies also involved staff at US government-run adult prisons. Most but not all studies utilized Maslach’s Burnout Inventory. Research on the antecedents of job burnout among correctional staff is more common than research on the possible consequences or outcomes of job burnout. Interestingly, despite the empirical emphasis on antecedents of burnout, there has been almost no research on effective interventions designed to deal with correctional staff burnout. Based on this narrative review, significant gaps remain in the research on correctional staff burnout.     

The Troika: The Interlocking Roles of Commission v. Luxembourg and Belgium,Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL in the Creation of the European Legal Order

Through comparisons with dispute resolution procedures in the North American Free Trade Area's Side Agreements, and with the debate over the direct effect of World Trade Organization obligations in the European legal order, this paper demonstrates that three of the European Court of Justice's most important decisions—Commission v. Luxembourg and Belgium, Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL—should be understood as combining to reorganise general international law's relationship between the EU Member States by substituting national court application of European obligations for the use of interstate retaliation as an enforcement mechanism, and thus providing the foundations for the EU's distinctive legal order.     

‘Hermann Heller and the European Crisis: Authoritarian Liberalism Redux?’

This essay tentatively buttresses Alexander Somek's view that Hermann Heller's 1933 essay, ‘Authoritarian Liberalism’, provides a useful starting point for thinking about the ongoing European crisis, in which European authorities are favouring rigid austerity and pro‐business policies while undermining basic liberal and democratic rights. Heller's unfortunate neglect, especially in Anglophone scholarship, is discussed. Nonetheless, Somek and other recent scholars who have turned to Heller to make sense of the European crisis downplay some of the tough questions raised by any attempt to apply Heller's analysis of the Weimar crisis to the contemporary setting. In particular, Heller's theory relied on a robust social democratic statism which has become increasingly unpopular even among theorists on the political left.     

Female serial killers in the United States: means,motives, and makings

Most studies that have focused on female serial killers (FSKs), although informative, have examined limited sample sizes. We consulted mass media reports of demographics, motives, methods, mental health, and victim characteristics of 64 FSKs who committed their crimes in the US from 1821 to 2008. Consistent with other studies, our data showed that FSKs were typically White, educated, have been married, and held a caregiving role (e.g. mother, health care worker). Nearly 40% of FSKs in this sample experienced some form of mental illness. Their most common motive for murder was financial gain, and their most common method of killing was poisoning. FSKs knew all or most of their victims, and most were related to their victims. In all cases, FSKs targeted at least one victim who was a child, elderly, or infirm – those who had little chance of fighting back. We interpret these killers’ behaviors from clinical and evolutionary angles.     

Redesigning the Family Law System to Promote Healthy Families

Family law professionals should be proactive in seeking and implementing constructive reforms. We identify some successful cutting‐edge reforms: (1) family resource centers, where all kinds of needs can be met; (2) informal family law trials, which streamline clogged calendars and provide an empowering and efficient forum; (3) licensed legal technicians, who increase public access to legal services; and (4) unbundled family law services. Second, we outline a protocol for implementation of reform developed by the Oregon Task Force on Family Law which is effective and replicable. Thoughtful reform of dispute resolution processes will serve family health and promote peace.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• Evolving family constellations, private ordering through pre‐ and postmarital agreements, an increase in self‐represented litigants, and shrinking judicial resources are changing family law dramatically.
• Thoughtful, practical process reforms are needed in order to accommodate these changes.
• Practitioners should be proactive about seeking out and implementing such reforms.
• Some reforms already finding success include family relationship resource centers, informal domestic relations trials, licensed legal technicians, and unbundled legal services.
• We outline a protocol with a proven track record of success for implementing cutting‐edge family law reform.