Body Of Social Science Literature Research Articles

What do we know about LGBQ+ college student academic experiences and outcomes?

AbstractIn spite of recognition that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer+ (LGBQ+) young adults face challenges associated with their sexual identities, research on inequality in education has only recently begun examining their academic experiences and outcomes in college. Prior work has mainly focused on social and extracurricular experiences during college or academic outcomes among LGBQ+ students in K‐12 settings. In this article, we review the growing body of social science literature on LGBQ+ college students' academic outcomes. A strength of our review is our integration of research on individual, interpersonal, and institutional characteristics and experiences that influence LGBQ+ student outcomes. In reviewing the literature, we identify a number of methodological and theoretical limitations, such as a lack of precision and consistency in defining and conceptualizing LGBQ+ identities and experiences and limited attention to intersections with race, class, and gender. We offer some solutions to these limitations and present a theoretical framework that promises to add clarity and further reliability to future research on LGBQ+ college student outcomes. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research.

The contribution of healthcare smart homes to older peoples' wellbeing: A new conceptual framework

Healthcare smart homes (HSH) are promoted as a possible solution in response to demographic ageing. They encourage ageing-in-place by enabling residents to remain in their own homes by utilising smart technologies to allow safe and independent living. However, the degree to which they currently encourage relational wellbeing of residents and their wider networks is novel. This critical narrative review provides a theoretical contribution to the growing body of social science literature around the impacts of HSH living. It highlights the potential links between HSH living and impacts on relational wellbeing of residents and wider networks. Arguing that existing HSH literature has often focused on single technology devices and the perceived benefits of HSH living by technology and home developers, rather than lived experiences of HSH residents, it presents a new conceptual framework, around which HSH should be promoted, focussing on individual residents and their caring networks, rather than technological possibilities. Specifically, the new framework highlights the importance of HSH resident wellbeing which we suggest may be maintained and enhanced through ensuring a sense of home, relational rather than independent living, accounting for potential spatial inequalities and the importance of an appropriate use of language. This paper aims to generate discussion around better understandings of what it means to live with healthcare technologies at home, and how these may act to (dis)empower those wishing to age-in-place or otherwise.

Tangible co-production? Engaging and creating with fathers.

This paper adds to an increasing body of social science literature, which engages with the research practice of "co-production." It aims to make a distinctive contribution by suggesting that what is produced under this process should be given greater attention. Previous literature has focused on the "co" (cooperative) element: debating whether and under what conditions wider participation between academic and non-academic actors can be genuinely emancipatory, and the degree to which more radical research approaches centred on empowering marginalised groups have been usurped through management discourses of participatory governance. Drawing on a case study of a pilot project that developed support resources for new fathers under the auspices of a co-production research design, the paper highlights the dynamics and limitations of the process, but additionally and distinctively suggests an important way in which the success of co-production can be judged that includes practical and tangible outputs beyond academic knowledge and takes objects and materiality seriously as a dimension of co-production in an academic setting.

Interactions between Resident Risk Perceptions and Wildfire Risk Mitigation: Evidence from Simultaneous Equations Modeling

Fire science emphasizes that mitigation actions on residential property, including structural hardening and maintaining defensible space, can reduce the risk of wildfire at a home. Accordingly, a rich body of social science literature investigates the determinants of wildfire risk mitigation behaviors of residents living in fire-prone areas. Here, we investigate relationships among wildfire hazards, residents’ risk perceptions, and conditions associated with mitigation actions using a combination of simulated wildfire conditions, household survey responses, and professionally assessed parcel characteristic data. We estimate a simultaneous model of these data that accounts for potential direct feedbacks between risk perceptions and parcel-level conditions. We also compare the use of self-reported versus assessed parcel-level data for estimating these relationships. Our analysis relies on paired survey and assessment data for approximately 2000 homes in western Colorado. Our simultaneous model demonstrates dual-directional interactions between risk perceptions and conditions associated with mitigation actions, with important implications for inference from simpler approaches. In addition to improving general understanding of decision-making about risk and natural hazards, our findings can support the effectiveness of publicly supported programs intended to encourage mitigation to reduce society’s overall wildfire risk.

Understanding backers’ interactions with crowdfunding campaigns

PurposeCrowdfunding has become a popular method to acquire capital for entrepreneurial ventures. To successfully achieve funding goals, it is critical for crowdfunding campaigns to attain support of individuals (backers). This paper aims to presents a conceptual model that links a reward-based crowdfunding campaign’s product, pitch and promoter characteristics to expert and casual backers’ evaluation and behavior.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws from literature from consumer behavior, network, signaling and informational social influence theories to design a conceptual framework that highlights factors that influence potential backers’ participation in crowdfunding campaigns.FindingsIt is demonstrated that the conceptual framework presented in the manuscript usefully organizes the real-world tactical marketing decisions of a crowdfunding backer while also being readily amendable to integrating theoretical accounts of human behavior from a diverse body of social science literature. Empirically testable propositions are derived from this social science literature and recast into a manner that could be investigated in the crowdfunding context to expand the body of knowledge on this topic.Practical implicationsThis manuscript provides a framework that can be useful to crowdfunders who wish to strategically plan how their marketing communication plan features may be tailored to attract both early- and late-stage crowdfunding backers.Originality/valueThis paper is novel in the crowdfunding literature because it integrates a diverse body of literature to explicitly identify how the strategic and tactical marketing communication characteristics of a crowdfunding campaign are likely to differently influence different types of potential crowdfunding backers.

Docility as a Primary Virtue in Scientific Research

Scientific epistemology is a topic that has sparked centuries of philosophical discourse. In particular, understanding the role that scientists play in the creation and perpetuation of scientific knowledge is a subject that continues to be hotly debated. A relative new-comer to scientific epistemology is the field of virtue epistemology, which positions knowledge creation as integrally linked to specific character traits held by the scientist. Positioning scientific research as a distinct practice, virtue epistemologists strive to understand what virtues foster robust knowledge creation. Examinations of current scientific virtue epistemology, however, reveal how framings of “the scientist” tend to be highly individualistic and position the individual scientist as an actor with a high level of agency and autonomy. Such approaches, while following more conventional scientific epistemology discourse, contrast significantly with a growing body of social science literature that emphasizes the group nature of scientific research and education. This paper makes use of this social science literature to critically examine current deficits in narratives of scientific virtue epistemology. It highlights the need for the prioritization of virtues that enable scientists to work and learn in social environments through social processes. In particular, it discusses how the virtue of docility, best understood as being “open to learning”, is a key virtue for training new scientists and for establishing robust processes of knowledge creation. By identifying current deficits in the manner in which science is taught, it demonstrates the considerable epistemic consequences of training scientists who do not embody docility in all aspects of their research activities. The paper concludes by discussing how docility may be considered a key factor in an alternate understanding of the current reproducibility crisis in modern science.

Political economy of hope as a cultural facet of biomedicalization: A qualitative examination of constraints to hospice utilization among U.S. end-stage cancer patients

A growing body of social science literature is devoted to describing processes of biomedicalization. The issue of biomedicalization is especially relevant for individuals suffering from end-stage cancer and hoping that aggressive end-of-life interventions, which are riddled with uncertainty around quantity or quality of life, will produce a ‘cure’. To examine hospice underutilization among end-stage cancer patients, we apply the anthropological concept ‘political economy of hope,’ which describes how personal and collective ‘hope’ is associated with the political and economic structures that produce biomedicalization processes. Previous studies have examined hospice underutilization among end-stage cancer patients and have identified barriers stemming from patient and physician characteristics or health insurance reimbursement policies. Yet, these studies do not provide an organized synthesis of how barriers articulate, how they are part of the longitudinal decision-making process, or describe the sociocultural context surrounding hospice care enrollment decisions. This paper focuses on US-specific mechanisms and is based on qualitative, in-depth, interviews with physicians at an academic hospital (N = 24). We find that hospice underutilization results from a web of interconnected constraints surrounding end-stage cancer patients. Our research reveals how hospice care contradicts the political and economic structures associated with end-stage cancer care and illustrates how end-stage cancer patients are transformed into a form of biovalue, a fundamental commodity sustaining the political economy of hope.

From Regulatory Knowledge to Regulatory Decisions: The European Evaluation of Medicines

Medicines regulators have generally adopted a scientistic view of medicines evaluation, which they present as an exercise that should—and indeed can—be purely “objective,” based only on knowledge produced through validated research protocols. The growing body of social science literature analyzing the regulation of medicines has questioned this pretense of objectivity and underlined the socio-political construction of evidence on the risks and benefits of medicines. But while the European Medicines Agency has become the dominant regulatory body in Europe and a key player at world level, very few studies have investigated its actual practices. Based on interviews with European regulators, but also on direct observations of several meetings of the European Medicines Agency’s main expert committee, this article aims to analyze how regulatory knowledge is defined and then transformed into regulatory decisions. First, it describes the main characteristics of European medicines regulation and the historical definition of what can count as “objective” evidence on the safety and efficacy of medicines. Second, it demonstrates that experts use many different types of knowledge in building their opinions: the results of studies, but also knowledge about firms’ past and present strategies, about patients’ needs and future behavior, about the state of research and clinical practices, and about legal and policy-making issues. Third, it explains why, in spite of the various forms of knowledge involved, experts manage to produce consensual opinions on medicines and why these opinions are considered genuine decisions in the sector.

Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina by Vincanne Adams (review)

Vincanne Adams, Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. 248 pp.Nine years later, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath are the subject of a sizeable body of social science literature arguing that this disaster was anything but natural. Vincanne Adams's ethnography, Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith, joins this literature with a much-needed examination of the horrors experienced by ordinary New Orleanians at the hands of a effort marred by embezzlement and dispossession on a staggering scale. Adams, a medical anthropologist, explores the devastated post-Katrina landscape with the sensibilities of her subfield, paying special attention to the affective phenomena produced by the hurricane and its aftermath. Though not particularly innovative theoretically, this brief ethnography is eloquent in its empathetic evocation of the spectrum of socially generated and mobilized emotion animating the New Orleanian landscape, ranging from mourning, depression, and anger to hope, faith, and solidarity. The book will be of interest to students of New Orleans and the American South, to those studying the effects of neoliberal policies on lived experience, and to investigators of the growing significance of philanthropy in public life. It is a swift, accessible read, at times moving and upsetting.The argument traces an approximately chronological arc from criminal neglect to its consequences. In Chapter 2, Adams paints a somber picture of the interactions between government, corporate, and non-profit organizations. Journalists and government officials warned that canals dug to expedite shipping in the region had rendered the New Orleans metropolitan area vulnerable to storm surges (22, see also Giroux 2006:185). The Army Corps of Engineers, Adams charges, shirked its responsibility for maintaining the city's levee system by subcontracting to companies such as Bechtel, the Shaw Group, and Blackwater, who in turn neglected their duties in pursuit of more profitable contracts in Iraq (24). In the storm's immediate aftermath, recounted in Chapter 3, many of these same military contractors were then put in charge of providing stranded New Orleanians with relief-newspeak for a regime of racialized, gendered violence often more concerned with protecting private property than preventing hunger and rape (29-30; see also Jones-Deweever 2011 ). Chapters 4 and 5 detail how recovery was then entrusted to the same corporations, who designed baroque bureaucratic procedures in order to give out as little as possible as slowly as possible, and maximize profits (31-36). When faith-based groups and other NGOs, as described in Chapters 6 and 7, stepped in to fill the gap created by government and corporate failure, corporations once more intercalated themselves into lucrative positions as middlemen and leeched off of the money and supplies mobilized by resourceful New Orleanians and their allies (172).The callous carnival of depravity visited upon New Orleans was not an isolated phenomenon, as Adams (193) recognizes, but a particularly extreme example of what David Harvey (2005) has called by dispossession. Since such accumulation does not create new sources of value, it is necessarily conflictual, turning the economy into a zero-sum game where the rich can only get richer at the expense of everyone else. If previously a rising tide raised all boats-albeit unevenly-now a lucky few soar upward on the storm surge while the rest wallow in the suffocating mud.In its pursuit of profit unmoored from production, neoliberal capitalism exhibits an exacerbated tendency to produce a surplus population of people for whom it has no use as workers (Neilson and Stubbs 2011). This process is often racialized as workers belonging to privileged ethnic groups monopolize the sectors in which steady work is the norm and people of color are relegated to chronic under-employment and carceral control (Wacquant 2001, Wilderson 2003). …

Autonomy-Mastery-Purpose: Structuring Clinical Courses To Enhance These Critical Educational Goals

<p>“There is a science to what we do”</p><p>This article takes its name from the keynote plenary that the authors presented at the 8th International Journal of Clinical Legal Education conference held at Northumbria University in July 2010 The presentation and this article link research on human motivation and well-being to the structure and methods of clinical legal education. The quote above is from a conference participant in response to a question that we posed to small groups at our plenary regarding how the concepts of autonomy support and mastery resonate with their experience in clinical education and legal education more generally.</p><p>Autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the “tripod of Type I behavior” formulated by Daniel H. Pink in his 2009 book, DRIVE: THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES US. Pink postulates “Type I” behavior as that driven by intrinsic, self-generated motivations as opposed to “Type X” behavior directed toward extrinsic factors outside the self such as imposed production quotas, bonuses, competitions to “best” others, or avoiding punishments.</p><p>Pink develops a computer-operating-system metaphor to advocate “Motivation 3.0” as an optimal organizing principle for 21st century business built on providing employees opportunities for autonomy, mastery, and purpose as opposed to an outmoded “Motivation 2.0,” which assumes a controlling work environment based on the premise that people respond best to carrots and sticks. Pink’s book cites examples of businesses structured to support autonomy, mastery, and purpose and describes their successes in enhanced creativity, innovation, retaining valued employees, and productivity. He contrasts such businesses with work places organized around specifically dictated job conditions and traditional structures where workers are subject to externally controlled rewards and punishments.</p><p>Pink provides an engaging, easily accessible entry to a body of social science literature on motivation, achievement, and feelings of well-being that also has been applied to legal education. This article seeks to provide user-friendly access to theory regarding the basic human needs for autonomy, mastery, and purpose as well as regarding intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. The article provides examples of choices clinical teachers can make to promote student learning and feelings of well-being through methods supporting satisfaction of those basic human needs and encouraging students to find their self-driven motivations.</p><p>Part I describes the difference in extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and reviews the negative effects of business and educational models assuming extrinsic motivation to be most effective rather than seeking to stimulate intrinsic motivation. Part II describes the Carnegie Foundation’s Preparation for the Professions project’s call for law schools to focus on law students’ sense of identity and purpose as part of their professional education, as well as noting the similar goal that students learn “how to be” as articulated by the Tuning Project of the Bologna process regarding higher education in Europe. Part III provides basics on the theory of human needs for a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose on which the rest of the article is based. Part IV applies work contrasting autonomy-supportive teacher behaviors with controlling instructional behaviors to the clinical context. Part V of the article draws on cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and learning theory to suggest four methods useful for assisting novice law students on the steep road to mastery of lawyering competence within the time constraints of clinical programs and the professional demands of client service. Methods identified also contribute to satisfaction of students’ need for relatedness, which too often is undermined in other parts of law school. Part VI extends the discussion of clinics’ potential contribution to the need for relatedness and focuses on clinical education’s capacity to support development of students’ sense of how a career in law can contribute to their sense of life purpose in being part of something larger than themselves.</p><p>Many of this article’s applications of theory to clinical teaching are from the clinics in which students provide client representation or are engaged in transactional legal problem solving under faculty supervision, the type of clinics in which Professors Klein and Blaustone teach. We think, however, that clinical teachers will be able to see applications of the theory presented to the various types of clinical programs that exist around the world, e.g, street law programs in which students teach community members and externship programs in which students work under the supervision of a lawyer in an organization external to the law school. We hope, like Pink’s book, to offer an accessible gateway to a body of theoretical and empirical work that can help clinical teachers think critically and creatively about both their clinical program’s structure and their teaching and supervision. We hope to inspire teachers to think about ways they might apply this theory toward nurturing the type of life-long self-direction that motivates people to continually seek greater mastery and provides a sense of well-being both now and in the students’ future careers.</p>

Integrating place-specific livelihood and equity outcomes into global assessments of bioenergy deployment

Integrated assessment models suggest that the large-scale deployment of bioenergy could contribute to ambitious climate change mitigation efforts. However, such a shift would intensify the global competition for land, with possible consequences for 1.5 billion smallholder livelihoods that these models do not consider. Maintaining and enhancing robust livelihoods upon bioenergy deployment is an equally important sustainability goal that warrants greater attention. The social implications of biofuel production are complex, varied and place-specific, difficult to model, operationalize and quantify. However, a rapidly developing body of social science literature is advancing the understanding of these interactions. In this letter we link human geography research on the interaction between biofuel crops and livelihoods in developing countries to integrated assessments on biofuels. We review case-study research focused on first-generation biofuel crops to demonstrate that food, income, land and other assets such as health are key livelihood dimensions that can be impacted by such crops and we highlight how place-specific and global dynamics influence both aggregate and distributional outcomes across these livelihood dimensions. We argue that place-specific production models and land tenure regimes mediate livelihood outcomes, which are also in turn affected by global and regional markets and their resulting equilibrium dynamics. The place-specific perspective suggests that distributional consequences are a crucial complement to aggregate outcomes; this has not been given enough weight in comprehensive assessments to date. By narrowing the gap between place-specific case studies and global models, our discussion offers a route towards integrating livelihood and equity considerations into scenarios of future bioenergy deployment, thus contributing to a key challenge in sustainability sciences.

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative? The variable value dynamics of non-suicidal self-hurting

Medical accounts mostly frame non-suicidal self-hurting as an adverse event, the frequency of which has supposedly increased to a current ‘epidemic’ level, and which can be predicted probabilistically in terms of risk factors. This set of presuppositions gives rise to the common stigmatisation of those who present to Accident and Emergency services as a result of self-hurting. It is now being challenged in a small but growing body of social science literature which emphasises the diversity of self-hurting, and its range of socially situated meanings for those who self-hurt, family and health professionals. The present paper contributes to this research strand by discussing the accounts of their self-hurting given by a sample of 25 UK adults who had not been in contact with health or other services for this reason. The analysis focused on three value issues: the positive gains which motivated research participants to self-hurt; their own active efforts to mitigate associated risks; and the longer-term downsides which some respondents identified.

Unraveling the effect of offender citizenship status on federal sentencing outcomes

A large body of social science literature has focused on the factors that influence sentencing outcomes within the federal court system. A neglected variable in this line of research is the citizenship status of the offender. Using the United States Sentencing Commission’s Monitoring of Federal Criminal Sentences data from 2006, the present study examines the effect of citizenship status on the likelihood of incarceration and the length of the prison sentence. This study extends previous research in three ways: first, by examining citizenship status using post- Booker data; second, exploring the differences between citizens, legal aliens, and illegal aliens rather than comparing all non-citizens to US citizens; and third, examining all offenses rather than only drug offenses. Most importantly, this study partitions the data by citizenship status to determine if the effects of race/ethnicity and other variables (e.g., type of offense and level of education) vary by citizenship status. The results demonstrate that both legal and illegal aliens have a higher probability of incarceration than similarly-situated US citizens, but that the sentences imposed on illegal aliens are shorter than those imposed on citizens. However, different results emerged when the data were partitioned by citizenship status. Judges imposed shorter prison sentences on Latino citizens, but longer prison sentences on Latino illegal aliens. These results are discussed in relation to theoretical explanations and policy implications.

Chaos and the Abuse of Power

Bullying is a significant workplace problem—a fact highlighted by a growing body of social science literature. Its causes, however, have received little systematic attention beyond analyses of the personality attributes of bullies. This article explores the roles of relational power and organizational chaos in the emergence of workplace bullying. The analysis of content-coded organizational ethnographies integrates quantitative and qualitative techniques and draws heavily from the ethnographies themselves. Results suggest that the interplay of relational powerlessness and organizational chaos gives rise to bullying. In contrast, where there is a disjuncture between organizational and relational factors, the extent of bullying is determined by underlying, context-specific aspects of power. These results suggest a need for organizations not only to protect the weak, but also to eliminate chaos—chaos that creates openings for the abuse of power.

New Forms of Work Organization

A growing body of social science literature has examined the organizational innovations and staffing practices comprising new flexible forms of work. Researchers have investigated the depth and scope of these changes and questioned how they affect diverse groups of workers in the United States. Reviewing the research on this transformation reveals a model of combined and uneven flexibility, characterized by the opening of opportunities that are differentially distributed across different groups of American workers, emerging under conditions in which effort is intensified, control is decentered, and employment is destabilized. The essay concludes by suggesting additional areas of inquiry for sociologists concerned with new forms of work organization.

Generic prejudice and the presumption of guilt in sex abuse trials.

In 25 Canadian criminal trials involving charges of sexual abuse, 849 prospective jurors were asked under oath whether they could hear the evidence, follow the judge's instructions on the law, and decide the case with a fair and impartial mind. Knowing only the nature of the charges against the accused, on average 36% of the jurors stated that they could not be impartial. Some jurors explained that they themselves had been victims of abuse, others expressed fears for children, while others stated simply that they could not set aside a presumption of guilt. These findings from real trials are consistent with a body of social science literature about attitudes toward sexual abuse and sexual assault charges. The article distinguishes between prejudices arising from specific pretrial publicity and generic prejudices that cause prejudgments of the case of any defendant perceived as belonging to a general class of defendants who likely are guilty of the crime(s) charged.

Three Logics of "Major Power Rivalry" in the World-System: A Footnote to a Pentagon study

A vast body of social science literature on long waves and major power wars has greatly enriched our knowledge about the rhythms and violent transitions of the modern world-system. The correlations between long waves and major power clashes in the past has been established. What are the structural causal mechanisms between these two historical and cyclical movements? Using trade network patterns as an indicator of a deep structure, this article summarizes a longitudinial study attempted to construct one of the missing links between the two historical cycles. Based on a structural analysis of world trade networks in 1938, 1950, and 1990, and a quantitative study of U.S.--Japanese commercial rivalry in the Asia-Pacific region, this study considers three logics of "major power rivalry" in the past and its implication for the future: (1) the logic of rivalry over "life spaces"; (2) the logic of rivalry for global domination; and (3) the logic of imperial intervention. I contend that these three logics are related, and that changes in one logic result in changes in others.

Microcomputer Data Base Management of Bibliographic Information

A microcomputer data base management system designed for the personal use of social science researchers is presented. Discussed are data base needs required for a body of social science literature, existing microcomputer hardware and data base management software, development of a microcomputer data base management program suitable for storage retrieval of a body of social science literature, and ways a data base can be useful. Major advantages of establishing a personal data base of literature include permanent storage of information, ease of finding stored information, and the manipulation of information for word processing and other applications.

Understanding Your Child From Birth To Three: A Guide To Your Child's Psychological Development, by Joseph Church. New York: Random House, 1973, 267 pp., $6.95

More than 60% of the marriages contracted in the current year are expected to come to divorce or separation. Not only marriage but also parenthood is in a state of uncertainty; many young people are looking at the families they have known and wondering if the rewards of being parents outweigh the distress they believe they see. There is a growing body of social science literature that points to the isolated mother-father-child family–expecting to meet all of their needs behind the closed doors of their homes, and with responsibilities sharply divided between wage earner and housekeeper–as a family system that puts maximum stress on minimum strength.