Sociology Commons^™

The State Of Working Vermont 2006, Allison Churilla

Carsey Publications

Vermont enjoys higher-than-average workforce participation rates and the lowest unemployment in New England, but the state's wage levels remain well below regional standards and the workforce is aging, finds this issue brief prepared by the Carsey Institute in partnership with the Public Assets Institute of Vermont. The brief highlights trends related to the economic and labor force characteristics of Vermont's workers.

Resident Ownership In New Hampshire's "Mobile Home Parks": A Report On Economic Outcomes (Revised 2010), Sally Ward, Charles A. French, Kelly Giraud

Carsey Publications

Since 1984, the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund has been helping residents of manufactured home communities purchase the land underneath their homes. Since then, homeowners have purchased 80 manufactured home communities and converted them into “Resident Owned Communities” (ROCs) in New Hampshire. These communities now include 4,200 homeowners. The premise of the loan fund program is that resident ownership provides both an important vehicle for preserving affordable housing and economic benefits to homeowners in ROCs. Until now, no systematic data have been available to confirm the benefits. To fill that gap, the fund contracted researchers from the Carsey Institute at …

Latin Heritage Month 2006

Diversity Programs

Lectures, Cultural Events, and Latin Cuisine during Latin Heritage Month, September 15-October 15, 2006.

Building A Better Board: Springboard Into Action, Milan Wall

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

Building a Better Board: Springboard into Action

Roles and responsibilities

Time devoted to six basic elements

Obstacles

Strategies

Ethics

Recruitment

The Rattler (Volume 94, Issue 1, Edition 1), St. Mary's University

The Rattler (Previous issues)

Founded in 1919, The Rattler is the student voice of St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. The newspaper documents campus life, academic and social issues, student opinion, and local and national events as they relate to the University community. Content typically includes news articles, editorial commentary, arts and culture coverage, sports reporting, and advertisements.

The Changing Spatial Concentration Of America’S Rural Poor Population, Kenneth M. Johnson, Daniel T. Lichter

Sociology

This paper documents changing patterns of concentrated poverty in nonmetro areas. Data from the 1970 through 2000 U.S. Census Summary Files reveal the changing shares of poor people and children living in rural counties with disproportionately poor populations. Nonmetro poverty rates – both overall and for children – declined more rapidly than metro rates in the 1990s. The 1990s also brought large reductions in the number of high-poverty nonmetro counties, and declines in the share of rural people, including rural poor people, who were living in them. In particular, the number and percentage of rural people living in extremely poor …

Xhosa Single Mothers: Reasons For Remaining Single, Oertel Nicole Sparks

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study seeks to identify the situational and cultural influences related to single motherhood among a specific population in South Africa. Through semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this thesis reveals the life stories and experiences of the women utilizing the Salem Baby Care Centre. Hopefully, this contributed to a better understanding of these Xhosa mothers' reasons for remaining single. These single mothers are caught in a cycle of poverty. They often begin having children at a very young age, leading to children with different fathers. This differs from traditional family systems where women and children were protected. Women are …

The International Protean Career: Considerations For Human Resource Management, Marian Crowley-Henry

Conference papers

This paper presents some career patterns from a research undertaking which qualitatively sampled highly educated Western foreign residents in the South of France. In the data collection, their individual career stories were relayed to the researcher from in-depth exploratory interviews. The very personal and individual nature of these careers is underlined in the research findings. The aim of this paper is to share some of the broader findings from the study, which invoke discussion on the wider concerns for career management within the HRM discipline in the future.

Torch (September 2006), Amy Homans, Civil Rights Team Project

Torch: The Civil Rights Team Project Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Economic Resource Receipt Of New Mothers, Laura Nichols, Cheryl Elman, Kathryn M. Feltey

Sociology

U.S. federal policies do not provide a universal social safety net of economic support for women during pregnancy or the immediate postpartum period but assume that employment and/or marriage will protect families from poverty. Yet even mothers with considerable human and marital capital may experience disruptions in employment, earnings, and family socioeconomic status postbirth. We use the National Survey of Families and Households to examine the economic resources that mothers with children ages 2 and younger receive postbirth, including employment, spouses, extended family and social network support, and public assistance. Results show that many new mothers receive resources postbirth. Marriage …

Enhancing The Global Fight To End Human Trafficking, U.S. House Of Representatives Committee On International Relations

Human Trafficking: Data and Documents

When I held the first hearing on human trafficking as Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights back in 1999, only a handful of countries had laws explicitly prohibiting the practice of human trafficking. Individuals who engaged in this exploitation did so without fear of legal repercussions. Victims of trafficking were treated as criminals and illegal immigrants and had no access to assistance to escape the slavery-like conditions in which they were trapped. Few seemed to be even aware that this modern form of slavery was taking place and even some of those who did failed to …

No. 21: The Un Convention On The Rights Of Migrant Workers: The Ratification Non-Debate, Vincent Williams, Jonathan Crush, Peggy Nicholson

Southern African Migration Programme

In recognition of the need to explicitly define and uphold the rights of migrants, and in particular migrant workers and their families, the United Nations General Assembly approved the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (ICMW) on 18 December 1990 (Appendix A).

The significance of the Convention has been identified as follows:

• Migrant workers are viewed as more than labourers or economic entities. They are social entities with families and accordingly have rights, including that of family reunification.
• The Convention recognizes that migrant workers and members of their families, …

New Hampshire Got It Right: Statutes, Case Law And Related Issues Involving Post- Secondary Education Payments And Divorced Parents, Ryan C. Leonard

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Divorced parents in New Hampshire can rest a little easier these days. While there are a myriad of economic reasons why a divorce can become contentious, financing a child’s college education can no longer be included among those reasons. In January 2004, in a rather bold and unconventional move, the New Hampshire legislature overruled years of legal precedent and enacted a new statutory amendment that should alleviate some of the financial pressures divorced parents inevitably face. The amendment, RSA § 458:17(XI-a), is a victory for divorcees across the state because it prohibits superior court judges from issuing orders forcing …

Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare Vol. 33, No. 3 (September 2006)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• THE EFFECTS OF PROLONGED JOB INSECURITY ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING OF WORKERS - Cynthia Rocha, Jennifer Hause Crowell, and Andrea K. McCarter
• THE POET/PRACTITIONER: A PARADIGM FOR THE PROFESSION - Rich Furman, Carol L. Langer, and Debra K. Anderson
• "PUT UP" ON PLATFORMS: A HISTORY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY ADOPTION POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES - Michelle Kahan
• ALTRUISM OR SELF-INTEREST? SOCIAL SPENDING AND THE LIFE COURSE - Debra Street and Jeralynn Sittig Cossman
• ECONOMIC WELL-BEING AND INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE: NEW FINDINGS ABOUT THE INFORMAL ECONOMY - Loretta Pyles
• JOB SATISFACTION AMONG TANF LEAVERS - Jeff Scott
• SEARCHING …

Economic Well-Being And Intimate Partner Violence: New Findings About The Informal Economy, Loretta Pyles

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between intimatep artnerv iolence (IPV) and women's participationin the informal economy (both legal and illegal) and their impact on economic well-being. This research was part of a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) study that was concerned with women's survival of childhood and adult abuse. For the 285 women that were in this sample, there were positive, medium correlations between IPV and various types of informal economic activity. Illegal informal economic activity, institutionalized informal economic activity, incarceration and physical abuse negatively impacted women's economic well-being.

Design And Implementation Of The Domestic Violence Services In Rural Clinics Intervention, Ann L. Coker, Paige H. Smith, Vicki C. Flerx, Daniel J. Whitaker, Mary Kay Fadden, Melinda Williams

CRVAW Faculty Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

2006 Nebraska Rural Poll Results: Views Of Life In Nebraska’S Rural Communities, Rebecca J. Vogt, Randolph L. Cantrell, Bruce B. Johnson, Alan J. Tomkins

Publications from the Center for Applied Rural Innovation (CARI)

Many rural communities have experienced population growth during the past decade. Communities can continue to attract new residents and maintain their current population by enhancing and promoting their amenities and services. How do rural Nebraskans feel about their community? Are they satisfied with the services provided? Are they planning to move from their community next year?

This report details 2,482 responses to the 2006 Nebraska Rural Poll, the eleventh annual effort to understand rural Nebraskans’ perceptions. Respondents were asked a series of questions about their community. Trends for some of these questions are examined by comparing data from the ten …

Creating And Using Learning Objects In Qualitative Research Education, Ronald J. Chenail, Jennifer L. Spong, Jan Chenail, Michele Liscio, Lenworth G. Mclean, Holly G. Cox, Brenda Shepherd, Nura C. Mowzoon

The Qualitative Report

Based upon the lessons learned and the educational materials generated from a doctoral course on qualitative data analysis, a group of doctoral students, their professor, and a linguistics consultant launched an on- going project to create a series of reusable learning objects designed to help other groups of students and professors learn how to analyze qualitative data. The results of the first six months of this project are shared, as the team describes how they have begun to use instructional design and software applications to create a digital learning environment in the form of a series of activities engineered to …

Conceptual Metaphors As Interpretive Tools In Qualitative Research: A Re-Examination Of College Students’ Diversity Discussions, Bruce Kochis, Diane Gillespie

The Qualitative Report

In this contribution to the growing literature on conceptual metaphor as a fruitful heuristic for qualitative analysis, the authors re-analyzed transcripts of college student discussions of problematic situations involving cultural diversity and interpersonal conflict. The authors show how they identified metaphorical linguistic expressions and from them derived three conceptual metaphors (life is a journey, the problem is a barrier/maze, and the self is divided) that in turn formed patterns or constellations of meanings in students’ problem-solving strategies. As an interpretive tool, conceptual metaphors link certain isolated individual metaphors to these larger patterns of meaning, including ideological frameworks readily available in …

「長青傳動力」 : 活動計劃成效評估調查, 長青傳動力計劃統籌委員會, Asia-Pacific Institute Of Ageing Studies, Lingnan University 嶺南大學亞太老年學研究中心, Cheung Ming, Alfred Chan, Yuk Yin Fung

APIAS Research Report 研究報告

德勤會計師行、中華電力、基督教香港信義會及救世軍自2003年在全港5個地區推行試驗性質的跨代服務「長青傳動力」，效果良好；自2004年即將服務地區增至12區，參與的服務團體亦增至4間。至2005年，長青傳動力委員會繼續邀請香港明愛、基督教香港信義會以及救世軍合辦「長青傳動力」活動計劃，期望長者能透過參與義工服務繼續貢獻社會，肯定自我的價値；同時，亦期望創造出一個供長者和青少年溝通的平台，讓雙方互相了解，促進長青共融。爲了更有系統地總結過去3年經驗，並規劃日後計劃發展，委員會今年邀請了嶺南大學亞太老年學硏究中心作服務成效評估，以作回顧前瞻之參考。

爲評估「長青計劃」的成效，本中心推行了一項調查硏究，並因應活動目標及各區同工所提供的量度指標，來探討參加者在以下數方面的轉變：（一）對義務工作的參與、（二）自尊心、（三）長青雙方的互相觀感及（四）社會支援網絡。

Data Note: Relationship Between Mr/Dd Consumers In Integrated Employment And Working Ssi Recipients, Katherine Fichthorn, Dana Scott Gilmore

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

State mental retardation/developmental disability (MR/DD) agencies provided day and employment supports to over 466,500 people in 2001. Of these, 108,981 individuals were supported in integrated employment settings. The percentage of individuals working in integrated employment varied widely by state, from 56% in Washington to only 2% in Alabama.

Use Of Section 5310 Transportation Resources In Urban And Rural America: A Baseline Assessment, Tom Seekins Ph.D., University Of Montana Rural Institute

Independent Living and Community Participation

Consistently, people with disabilities living in rural areas and those who serve them report the lack of transportation as a primary concern (Jackson, Seekins, & Offner, 1992; National Council on Disability, 2005). Section 5310 of the Federal Transit Act (49 USC 5310) authorizes a program of capital assistance to help local organizations acquire vehicles to transport elderly individuals and people with disabilities when other public transportation is unavailable or insufficient. To effectively maximize the availability and use of transportation resources, rural disability advocates and transportation planners need data on rural and urban distribution and use of Section 5310 funds (e.g., …

Key Leadership Roles In The 9/11 Terrorist Attack, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

Personality assessment of three al-Qaida leaders in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States – Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mohamed Atta – provides evidence for a rudimentary model of the leadership roles required for a global-reach terrorist operation: (1) a narcissistic, charismatic leader devoid of core values beyond personal self-interest, adept at exploiting others in pursuit of his grandiose ambitions (e.g., bin Laden); (2) a strategic-thinking “true believer” without constraints of conscience regarding the level of violence he is willing to employ in his single-minded pursuit of mission (e.g., al-Zawahiri); and (3) unobtrusive, disciplined operatives …

Relationships, Layoffs, And Organizational Resilience: Airline Industry Responses To September 11, Jody H. Gittell, Kim Cameron, Sandy Lim, Victor Rivas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, affected the U.S. airline industry more than almost any other industry. Certain airlines emerged successful and demonstrated remarkable resilience while others languished. This investigation identifies reasons why some airline companies recovered successfully after the attacks while others struggled. Evidence is provided that layoffs after the crisis, although intended to foster recovery, instead inhibited recovery throughout the 4 years after the crisis. But, layoffs after the crisis were strongly correlated with lack of financial reserves and lack of a viable business model prior to the crisis. Digging deeper, the authors find that having a …

Altruism Or Self-Interest? Social Spending And The Life Course, Debra Street, Jeralynn Sittig Cossman

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The primacy of self-interested individuals is often regarded as the appropriate basis for US social spending decisions. One thread of this argument has advanced age-based self-interest and politically powerful elderly to explain why Social Security and Medicare have thrived in a policy environment that has seen retrenchment in other programs. We argue that crude self-interest and individual programs considered in isolation are insufficient to understand social spending preferences. We use General Social Survey data to contrast conventional and critical explanations for understanding the role of age in preferences for social spending. Factor analyses demonstrate that social spending preferences cluster into …

An Agent-Based Model Of Crisis-Driven Ethnic Migration, Michael Makowsky, Tamas Makany, Patrick Meier, Jorge Tavares

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The literature on ethnic migration suggests that natural disasters, armed conflict, economics and cultural networks are key drivers of migration. The dearth of georeferenced ethnic data, however, limits the value of econometric analysis. We build an agent-based model to simulate crisis-driven migration. Agents within a multi-ethnic population monitor their spatial environments to formulate perceptions of the risk of being persecuted. The expected utility of staying within a given neighborhood is inversely related to the perceived probability of persecution. Cultural networks temper an agent's security calculus, with strong social ties dampening the human security dilemma. Agents express preferences regarding the different …

Small Business Apparel Retailing In Jamaica: An Exploratory Investigation Into Product Development Processes And Practices, Natalie Johnson-Leslie, Luann R. Gaskill

The Qualitative Report

While the process and practices of retail product development in developed countries have been documented, avoid exists in descriptive analysis regarding retail product development in an international setting. The primary purpose of this study was to explore small business apparel retailing, and specifically the retail product development process and practices in Jamaica. Using the case study approach, five apparel retailers in Jamaica who engaged in retail product development are profiled. In- depth interviews, observations, and documents were used to collect data and results were presented after analysis. The findings revealed that the process of product exclusivity, training of workers, modern …

Brief Note On The Origins, Evolution, And Meaning Of The Qualitative Research Concept Thick Description, Joseph G. Ponterotto

The Qualitative Report

The origins, cross-disciplinary evolution, and definition of “thick description” are reviewed. Despite its frequent use in the qualitative literature, the concept of “thick description” is often confusing to researchers at all levels. The roots of this confusion are explored and examples of “thick description” are provided. The article closes with guidelines for presenting “thick description” in written reports.

Focused Group Interviews As An Innovative Quanti- Qualitative Methodology (Qqm ): Integrating Quantitative Elements Into A Qualitative Methodology, Brian J. Grim, Alison H. Harmon, Judy C. Gromis

The Qualitative Report

There is a sharp divide between quantitative and qualitative methodologies in the social sciences. We investigate an innovative way to bridge this gap that incorporates quantitative techniques into a qualitative method, the “quanti-qualitative method” (QQM). Specifically, our research utilized small survey questionnaires and experiment-like activities as part of the question rout e in a series of five focused group interviews on nutrition education. We show how these quantitative-type activities fit naturally with our question route and contributed to testing the hypotheses within the context of the five important characteristics of focused group interviews. The innovative use of QQM in focused …

Social Environment And Depression Among Pregnant Women In Urban Areas Of Pakistan: Importance Of Social Relations., Ambreen Kazi, Zafar Fatmi, Juanita Hatcher, Muhammad Masood Kadir, Unaiza Niaz, Gail A. Wasserman

Community Health Sciences

Aspects of the social environment, including social conditions (socio-economic status, household situations, chronic illnesses) and social relations (attitude and behaviors of relations) are major determinants of depression among women. This study evaluates the relative power of social relations and social conditions in predicting depression among pregnant women in Pakistan. In the qualitative phase of the study, social environmental determinants were identified through literature search, and experts' opinions from psychologists, psychiatrists, gynecologists, sociologists and researchers. Along with this, 79 in-depth interviews were conducted with pregnant women drawn from six hospitals (public and private) and two communities in Karachi, Pakistan. Identified determinants …