International aid,trade and investment and access and allocation

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - The access to goods and their allocation (who gets what, when, where and how) is one of the analytical problems of the 2009...     

Parental Authoritativeness,Social Support and Help-seeking for Mental Health Problems in Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescents experience high rates of mental health problems but are reluctant to seek professional help. Parents play an integral role in the help seeking process...     

Gendertyping sports: social representations of masculine,feminine, and neither-gendered sports among US university students

Sport is shifting from being hegemonically masculine but it is unclear how sports are viewed as gender segregated or gender integrated. Previous quantitative studies of gendertyping sports have reported mixed findings. Gendertyping constructs social representations that shape institutional and individual sport activities. This study examined how particular sports are represented as masculine, feminine and/or neither-gendered in one sample of 310 students at a US university. Qualitative open-ended recall questions asked students to name three masculine, feminine and neither masculine nor feminine sports. Results revealed that most students were aware of and used hegemonic gendertyped terms to describe sports. Recall questions elicited 2515 namings of 80 different sports that were arrayed as a spectrum of social representations of gendertyped sports ranging from masculine to neither-gendered to feminine. Some representations were hegemonic segregated masculine sports, many were integrated neither-gendered sports, and fewer were segregated feminine sports. Gendertyped social representations of sports offer cultural toolkits for calibrating the practices of doing and redoing gender in sport.     

Constitutionalism and federalism in the ‘future of Europe’ debate: the German dimension

This paper examines some of the constitutional aspects of the ‘Future of Europe’ reform process in the light of interactions between German and ‘European’ federalism. Many aspects of the traditions of German federalism and German post-war constitutionalism have been influential, if not to say formative, for the evolution of the EU. These aspects are set out as a frame for the paper, before more detailed analysis of the constitutional process and a particular focus on the division of competences. The constitutional outcome reveals clear German ‘fingerprints’, though that finding needs to be balanced by a recognition of the constitutional debate as multi-perspectival, involving all member states both separately and collectively.     

Models of school-age child care: A review of current research on implications for women and their children

This article discusses various models of children's out-of-school care arrangements, mainly in the United States of America. Forms of care include programs or centers, family day care homes, and self-care. The implications of each of these different systems of care and outcomes for both children and their parents are reviewed through the lens of existing research. While there is no consensus in the research literature, so-called “latch-key” children appear to experience more negative effects than supervised peers, although these negative effects may be mitigated by variables, such as the amount of time spent alone and the parent-child relationship. A small group of studies finds positive outcomes for children who participate in recreational after-school programs, although age-inappropriate care arrangements and age of participating child may be associated with negative outcomes. No research has been conducted across program types. Many mothers of school-age children without regular after-school care or alternative care on school holidays, appear to accomodate their career and work choices to their children's schedules, possibly in order to avoid the “latch-key” alternative.     

The effects of delayed menarche in different contexts: Dance and nondance students

The premise that effects of maturational timing are mediated by social context is explored by comparing adolescent girls in dance and nondance schools. Because the dance student must maintain a relatively low body weight, being a late maturer (who is often leaner than an on-time maturer) is expected to be more advantageous to the dancer than to the student not required to meet a weight standard. Girls aged 14 to 18 were seen; 276 attended private schools and 69 attended national ballet company schools. AllSs were weighed and measured and asked questions about their secondary sexual development, weight-related concerns, eating concerns, adult sex-role expectancies, body image, emotional functioning, and family relationships. Menarcheal age was used to classify girls as early (before 11.5 years of age), on time (between 11.5 and 14 years), and late maturers (after 14 years). More dance than non-dance school students were late maturers (55% versus 29%). The dance students weighed less and were leaner, had higher eating scores, and had lower family relationship and impulse control scores than the comparison sample. Across groups, late maturing students weighed less, were leaner, and had lower diet and higher oral control scores than on-time maturers, with the differences more pronounced in the dance than nondance students. In addition, the on-time dancers had higher psychopathology, perfection, and bulimia scores and lower body image scores than the late maturing dancers. The findings are discussed in terms of a goodness of fit between the requirements of a social context and a person's physical and behavioral characteristics.This paper was prepared with the support of grants from the W. T. Grant Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Research Interests: Girls' psychological adaptation to pubertal change, biosocial aspects of female reproductive events, development in at-risk children and adolescents.