How Capital Budgeting Helped a Sick City: Thirty Years of Capital Improvement Planning in Cleveland

During the 1970s, Cleveland's capital improvement plan (CIP) was scorned as a bad joke, and the city's roads, bridges, and public buildings fell into disrepair. The city's default on its fiscal obligation in 1978 seemed to cap the city's infrastructure problem; there was no comprehensive strategy for capital spending and in a bankrupt city, no money to spend in any event. Yet, during the 1980s, with support from the administration, the business community, and the innovations of a small group of dedicated urban planners, the CIP was restructured and hundreds of millions were systematically invested in public infrastructure. By the 1990s, most of the innovative changes of the 1980s seemed to be institutionalized, but there were ominous clouds on the horizon.     

The effect of school classroom characteristics on low self-control: A multilevel analysis

Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory has reaped a substantial amount of empirical support. Recently, attention has focused on the factors associated with the development of self-control. With few and isolated exceptions, most research has examined the ways in which parents contribute to the development of self-control in children. Gottfredson and Hirschi hypothesized, however, that other social institutions, especially schools, may play at least some role in inculcating self-control. The current study addressed this possibility by conducting a series of multilevel models that examined whether the characteristics of schools, and classrooms within schools, were salient to the development of self-control. Using a longitudinal sample of kindergarten and first-grade students, the results revealed that classroom characteristics influenced self-control.     

Definitions and terminology regarding child alignments,estrangement, and alienation: A survey of custody evaluators

Parental alienation (PA) is a highly consequential family dynamic that causes harm to children and parents. While many mental health and legal professionals agree that PA is common and potentially very harmful to children, there is still the appearance that there is controversy and discord in the field. The purpose of this study was to test the extent of consensus in the field regarding the basic tenets of PA theory. Specifically, 11 key terms related to PA were identified through expert input and preliminary field-testing. An on-line survey was created specifically for the study to assess level of agreement with these key terms among custody evaluators. This profession was selected because of their high degree of training and experience with a variety of family conflict situations; 119 child custody evaluators selected as members of a professional custody evaluator listing (88% response rate) rated their endorsement of these 11 key definitions with response options including: strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, and strongly disagree. Results revealed that roughly 80% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with each of the 11 definitions. These results demonstrate a high degree of consensus and should guide future trainings of legal and mental health professionals to ensure a common language and understanding of this phenomenon.     

Marginal Pricing and Student Investment in Higher Education

This paper examines the effect of marginal price on students’ educational investments using rich administrative data on students at Michigan public universities. Marginal price refers to the amount colleges charge for each additional credit taken in a semester. Institutions differ in how they price credits above the full‐time minimum (of 12 credits), with many institutions reducing the marginal price of such credits to zero. We find that a zero marginal price induces a modest share of students (i.e., 7 percent) to attempt up to one additional class (i.e., three credits) but also increases withdrawals and lowers course performance. The analysis generally suggests minimal impacts on credits earned and the likelihood of meeting “on‐time” benchmarks toward college completion, though estimates for these outcomes are less precise and more variable across specifications. Consistent with theory, the effect on attempted credits is largest among students who would otherwise locate at the full‐time minimum, which includes lower‐achieving and socioeconomically disadvantaged students.     

Toward a Conceptual Model of Motive and Self-Control in Cyber-Aggression: Rage, Revenge, Reward, and Recreation

Despite widespread public attention to cyberbullying, online aggression and victimization have received scant conceptual development. This article focuses on how opportunities for aggression are distinct online from those of offline social contexts. The model developed here is informed by a recent aggression typology, which extends the reactive–proactive distinction by distinguishing aggression based on the affective motive (appetitive vs. reactive) and the recruitment of self-control. This typology informs an analysis of psychological processes linked to individual differences that are relevant to adolescents’ aggressive activities. Processes implicated include hostile schema activation, anger and fatigue effects on self-control, anger rumination, empathic failure, excitation transfer, and thrill-seeking. With these processes established, the proposed model focuses on how features of online social platforms may afford opportunities for distinct types of aggression by engaging these processes in adolescent users. Features of online settings that present distinct opportunities for activation of these processes are reviewed for each process, including social cue ambiguity, temporal lag, cue permanence, anonymity, the continual perception of audience, and the availability of online gaming and online pornography. For each of the conceptually grounded cyber-aggression-relevant processes, implications for innovative research directions on adolescent cyber-aggression are presented.