How welfare reform affects young children: Experimental findings from Connecticut—A research note

As welfare‐to‐work reforms increase women's labor market attachment, the lives of their young children are likely to change. This note draws on a random‐assignment experiment in Connecticut to ask whether mothers' rising employment levels and program participation are associated with changes in young children's early learning and cognitive growth. Children of mothers who entered Connecticut's Jobs First program, an initiative with strict 21‐month time limits and work incentives, displayed moderate advantages in their early learning, compared with those in a control group. A number of potential mechanisms for this effect are explored, including maternal employment and income, home environment, and child care. Mothers in the new welfare program are more likely to be employed, have higher income, are less likely to be married, have more children's books in their home, and take their children to libraries and museums more frequently. However, these effects explain little of the observed gain in child outcomes. Other parenting practices and the home's social environment do explain early learning, but these remained unaffected by welfare reform. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

The Ground Game in the 2012 Presidential Election

Relatively little research has examined the effects of campaign-led field activity in a competitive election. In this article, we leverage a unique data set containing the location of every Barack Obama and Mitt Romney field office and county-level data on the presidential vote to understand how communication with voters in the field may have affected the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. We find that the presence of Obama field offices was associated with greater Obama vote share at the county level, although we cannot detect a similar relationship for Romney field offices. We conduct additional robustness tests to address the potential limitations of these observational data. Ultimately, we conclude that even if Obama’s field organization out-performed Romney’s, the aggregate impact of Obama’s field organization was not large enough to determine the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.     

Refederalizing Russia: Debates on the Idea of Federalism in Russia

Russia has been struggling to come to terms with the ethno-federalstructure it inherited from the USSR. Central and regional politicalactors have sought to restructure federal relations in a waythat marks a break from the pseudo-federalism of the past, andboth the 1992 Federation Treaty and the 1993 Constitution ofthe Russian Federation declared the establishment of a "federaldemocracy" This article investigates the process of refederalizationby examining debates over the idea of federalism in Russia.Despite an initial wide-ranging discussion, federalism is increasinglyseen in strategic terms by political elites. The federal systemis asymmetrical and bureaucratic, and it is based on a seriesof treaties between the center and constituent units, ratherthan on an effective constitution that binds the center andregions together.     

Rape Co-occurrence: Do Additional Crimes Affect Victim Reporting and Police Clearance of Rape?

Despite the increased research attention given to rape and violence against women, little is known about rape co-occurrence, or rape incidents that involve another crime. Although previous research has found certain incident characteristics increase the likelihood that a victim reports her rape to police and that the offender is arrested and prosecuted, the relationship between co-occurrence and these responses is unknown. Given this gap in the literature, the main goal of the present research is to provide an initial understanding of rape co-occurrence and its effect on victim reporting and police clearance. To explore these issues, this study uses two national data sources that collect the requisite incident-level information: the National Crime Victimization Survey and the Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s National Incident-Based Reporting System. Few rapes are found to co-occur with other crimes. When rapes do occur with other crimes, though, they are more likely than solo-occurring rapes to involve weapons, strangers, additional injury to the victim, and multiple offenders. Rapes that co-occur also are more likely to be reported to police and cleared by police than rapes that occur with no other crimes.

Understanding participant perspectives: Q‐methodology in national forest management

Many policy practitioners and theorists have argued that value‐free, objective solutions to policy problems do not exist. While participant values and subjective viewpoints influence policy problems, empirically determining participant perspectives and preferences has been a daunting task. This paper demonstrates how Q‐methodology, a technique for systematically revealing subjective perspectives, can contribute to better problem identification and definition; estimation and specification of policy option; and selection, implementation, and evaluation of policies. Two case studies in national forest management are reviewed and demonstrate how Q‐methodology can (1) identify important internal and external constituencies, (2) define participant viewpoints and perceptions, (3) provide sharper insight into participant‐preferred management directions, (4) identify criteria that are important to participants, (5) explicitly outline areas of consensus and conflict, and (6) develop a common view toward the policy. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.