The Forgotten Educator: Experiential Learning’s Internship Supervisor

Past studies have addressed the role of the university, student interns and, the faculty advisor; here, we attempt to fill in a missing piece of the experiential-learning process by examining the role and importance of the often overlooked internship supervisor. A survey was developed and distributed to 343 recent internship supervisors. Their responses show that many of these supervisors view internships as an important professional and educational experience. We argue here that the internship supervisor can maximize one’s effectiveness when operating within a strong college or university educational infrastructure facilitated by an engaged and competent faculty advisor. Our recommendations were discussed and confirmed by a focus group of experienced faculty advisors.     

Promotion of contentious agency as a rewarding movement strategy: evidence from the MST-paper industry conflicts in Brazil

The recent scholarship on social movement outcomes has called for explanations about how movements influence economic outcomes. This article demonstrates in practice how a dynamic and relational approach, coupled with a Bourdieuian analysis of social, symbolic, and territorial space, can be utilized in explaining the influence of movements in contentious politics around investment projects. Based on participant observation and comparison across the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) groups in areas of paper industry expansion, I assess the different movement strategies and their influence on pulp project outcomes. I reinterpret the ideal ‘MST model’ as constructed by specific strategies promoting contentious agency: organizing and politicizing, campaigning by heterodox framing, protesting, networking, and embedded autonomy vis-à-vis the state. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis comparing the expansion of 13 pulp holdings between 2004–2008 shows how these strategies influence investment pace. When both contentious and conventional strategies were used, movements managed to slow pulpwood plantation expansion.     

Adolescent Obesity and Young Adult Psychosocial Outcomes: Gender and Racial Differences

Using a sample of 7,881 African American (915 males and 1,073 females) and White (2,864 males and 3,029 females) adolescents from Waves 1 and 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examined the psychosocial consequences that obese adolescents encounter as they reach young adulthood. Results indicate that obesity among adolescent females is associated with a lower status attainment in young adulthood than normal weight adolescent females. In addition, obese adolescent females have more depressive symptoms in young adulthood than normal weight females, even after controlling for prior depressive symptoms in adolescence. Obesity status among adolescent males is not associated with poorer psychosocial outcomes in young adulthood. We did not find evidence of an interaction between obesity status and race, indicating no significant differences in psychosocial outcomes for obese White compared to obese African American adolescents.

The organizational justice effect among criminal justice employees: A meta-analysis*

Organizational justice has been shown to be an important predictor of criminal justice employees’ work-related perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. In this study, we take stock of the organizational justice effect on criminal justice employees’ work outcomes by subjecting the literature to a meta-analysis. Multilevel modeling based on 1,924 effect size estimates drawn from 143 studies (95 independent data sets) was used to establish the empirical status of the organizational justice effect. The results indicate a sizeable relationship between organizational justice and justice system employee work outcomes (Mz = .256, CI = [.230, .283]). The findings also demonstrate that the organizational justice effect size varies slightly across several methodological variations. Specifically, the organizational justice effect size is larger when the concept is measured with scales that contain survey items tapping into all four dimensions of justice. Also, we found that outcome type, presence of confounding mechanisms, research design, and sample characteristics moderate the justice effect. We conclude that organizational justice theory is a useful framework for developing a more theoretically informed understanding of justice system employees’ work outcomes. We discuss the theoretical implications of the meta-analytic findings and avenues for future research based on the results.     

Managing the Goal-Setting Paradox: How to Get Better Results from High Goals and Be Happy

Many negotiation teachers share the same tip early on: negotiators who set higher goals "do better." It turns out that one of the most empirically supported "truths" about negotiation comes with a big "but." Negotiators who set higher goals are likely to feel worse. In other words, negotiators who set optimistic goals are likely to obtain better objective outcomes but worse subjective outcomes.
We call this empirical finding the "goal-setting paradox." This article considers sources of and explanations for the goal-setting paradox and suggests how negotiators and negotiation teachers may better manage this paradox through mindfulness and other techniques.     

Assessing the Effect of Batterer Program Completion on Reassault: An Instrumental Variables Analysis

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the utility of using the instrumental variables (IV) method to estimate batterer program efficacy, i.e., the program effect among batterers who complete batterer programs. This method takes account of possible confounding due to unmeasured traits of compliers and non-compliers. A structural model is used to estimate the impact of program completion on reassault using instrumental variables (IV) regression. Data on 640 batterers enrolled at three batterer programs are used. Results obtained from IV regression are compared with those obtained from a more traditional regression analysis. The results indicate that usual regression methods yield estimates of program effect that may be biased due to confounding by unmeasured batterer characteristics. Unfortunately, IV estimates may be unreliable due to failure of some of the assumptions on which they are based. If equations are adequately identified by the non-linear functional form used to estimate them, then IV results indicate that among a very select group of batterers, program completion significantly reduces the probability of reassault. The implications of confounding due to program non-compliance, program non-enrollment and attrition for future evaluations of batterer programs are discussed.     

Community participation and local government capacity in Vietnam: Conditions for coproduction

With Public Administration Reform in Vietnam comes more local government responsibility for policy making. Building on the results of a multiple case study research on housing and infrastructure upgrading projects in four cities of Vietnam, it has been confirmed that the community participation and local government capacity in urban housing and infrastructure upgrading projects are positively related. The level of community participation in urban housing and infrastructure upgrading projects is influenced by local government capacity, and in turn, it has effects on the outcomes. There are some important aspects for the enhancement of the level of community participation. These are effective leadership, the financial resources aspect, and communication/information exchange. Moreover, based on the patterns of community participation in urban upgrading projects, it has been found that participation is strongly supported by government actors in these four cases, and a process of coproduction between the local government and the affected communities has taken place.     

Measuring the Effectiveness of Routine Child Protection Services: The Results From an Evidence Based Strategy

Most of what is known about the effectiveness of child welfare is found in studies of specific programs. Little is known about the effectiveness of the routine services provided in child protection systems. Family and Children's Services of Renfrew County is a Canadian child welfare agency that decided to expand its mission beyond protecting children to include enabling child development. This article discusses its effort to improve outcomes for children receiving a child protection service at home: the key elements examined are the selection of outcomes, the implementation of a child development strategy, and the collection and analysis of outcome data. Many of the findings are encouraging. The outcomes described rely on parents, social workers, and children and youth as sources of information. The triangulation resulting from combining a number of sources and instruments for the collection of the outcome data supports the credibility of the findings. Through the evidence based strategy that was adopted knowledge was acquired about what is possible in attaining better developmental outcomes in the course of child protection intervention.     

THE COLLABORATIVE DIVORCE PROJECT: A Court-Based Intervention for Separating Parents with Young Children

The role the legal process of separation and divorce plays in affecting outcomes for young children and their families was examined in the Collaborative Divorce Project (CDP), an intervention designed to assist the parents of children six years old or younger as they begin the separation/divorce process (married and unmarried couples). Evaluation and outcome data were collected from 161 couples, their attorneys, teachers, and court records. In addition to positive evaluations from both parents, intervention families benefited through lower conflict, greater father involvement, and better outcomes for children than the control group. Attorneys and court records indicate that intervention families were more cooperative and were less likely to need custody evaluations and other costly services. The CDP illustrates how prevention programs can be located within the courts, can be systematically evaluated, and can aid in helping the legal system function optimally for families with young children.     

Schizophrenia in a high-security hospital: long-term forensic,clinical, administrative & social outcomes

Objective: To determine forensic, clinical, social and administrative outcomes of high-security patients. Method: Prospective year follow-up study of 169 patients with schizophrenia, 1992–1993. Results: By the end of the study, 46 (27.2%) patients were in high security, 43 (25.5%) in medium- or low-secure units, 35 (20.7%) in an open ward, 3 (1.8%) in prison and 40 (23.7%) in the community. Violence occurred in 75% of patients over the 10-year follow-up period, and this was serious in 25%. Continuous positive symptoms of psychosis were present in over one-third. One-third had self-harmed during this period but there was only one known suicide and 11 (6.5%) deaths in total. At the end of the study, there was only one person in voluntary employment, 18 (12.7%) living independently and 10 (7.1%) in a relationship. Models were developed to determine factors relevant to these major outcomes. Conclusions: This is the first study providing comprehensive outcome data over a 10-year period. Forensic services appear good at managing the risk to the community but poor at promoting better social outcomes. The levels of violence within inpatient units are high.