Associations Between Shyness and Internalizing Behaviors,Externalizing Behaviors,and Relationships during Emerging Adulthood

Many studies have documented the ways in which shyness can be a barrier to personal well-being and social adjustment throughout childhood and adolescence; however, less is known regarding shyness in emerging adulthood. Shyness as experienced during emerging adulthood may continue to be a risk factor for successful development. The purpose of this study was to compare shy emerging adults with their non-shy peers in (a) internalizing behaviors, (b) externalizing behaviors, and (c) close relationships. Participants included 813 undergraduate students (500 women, 313 men) from a number of locations across the United States. Results showed that relatively shy emerging adults, both men and women, had more internalizing problems (e.g., anxious, depressed, low self-perceptions in multiple domains), engaged in fewer externalizing behaviors (e.g., less frequent drinking), and experienced poorer relationship quality with parents, best friends, and romantic partners than did their non-shy peers.

Ethics by Design: The Impact of Form of Government on Municipal Corruption

While trust in government at all levels is at an all‐time low, actual corruption at the municipal level has been declining. One factor often credited with this decline is the introduction of the council‐manager form of government. One of the key reasons the council‐manager form was created in the early 1900s was to act as an antidote to the corruption prevalent in the big‐city machine politics of the era. Despite this, no one has tested whether the council‐manager form has in fact influenced the decline in corruption rates. This article uses a rare events logit model to analyze corruption convictions in municipalities between 1990 and 2010 to determine which factors, including form of government, affect the probability that a corrupt act will occur. The findings indicate that municipalities with the council‐manager form are 57 percent less likely to have corruption convictions than municipalities with the mayor‐council form.     

Rocks and Hard Places: Managing Two Tensions in Negotiation

Theorists posit two fundamental tensions in negotiation. One is strategic: the tug-and-pull between creating value and claiming one's share of it. The other is interpersonal: the tension between asserting one's own interests and, at the same time, empathizing with the feelings and needs of other parties. ¹ This research report analyzes how negotiators experience these tensions in practice. Specifically, their self-perceptions about their relative competence in several key areas allow us to see how strength along one dimension (like getting the maximum) is correlated with other important skills. Some of the authors' findings confirm familiar models. For example, people implicitly feel that being successful at asserting their own interests imposes a cost with respect to understanding others. There were some surprises, however: most notably, people who rated themselves as strong value claimers also saw themselves as good value creators. The authors explore some of the implications of their findings for both practice and teaching, and foreshadow a follow-up report they plan. They also note how other researchers can access their data for their own studies.     

Building the Evidence Base for Intensive Family Preservation Services

This article examines the state of intensive family preservation services (IFPS) research. Using studies of IFPS in five states, this article seeks to establish whether IFPS can be regarded as an evidence-based practice, an increasingly important standard for publicly funded services. While reporting rates of repeat child maltreatment, the analysis uses placement rates as the main outcome measure and compares effect sizes using Cohen's arcsine transformation for data reported as proportions. Significant differences in rates of child out-of-home placement and repeat maltreatment were found in some studies, particularly for higher risk families. The findings also underscore the difficulty of identifying which families to serve (targeting), ensuring treatment fidelity, and employing rigorous and appropriate evaluation methods. Overall, additional research is needed to move IFPS from a promising practice to an evidence-based practice.     

Local Government Responses to Fiscal Stress: Evidence from the Public Education Sector

This article investigates local government responses to fiscal stress through the lens of the K–12 public education sector, examining two major policy options available to school districts for managing fiscal hardship: (1) cutting costs, especially through layoffs, and (2) raising revenues locally through voter referenda. The article employs district‐level administrative and survey data from California and Indiana to examine whether school districts exhibit features of a rational or natural system—in which their behaviors largely reflect fiscal pressures only—or whether they exhibit features of an open system in which nonfinancial factors also shape responses. In Indiana, district fiscal characteristics explain differences in cost‐cutting and revenue‐raising behaviors; there is little empirical evidence that school districts exhibit features of an open system. In California, both fiscal and environmental attributes, including poverty characteristics, average student achievement levels, and the enrollment of English learner students, explain school district behaviors.