Economic evaluation of drug court: methodology, results, and policy implications

The purpose of this study was to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of three Drug Court programs in Kentucky for two groups of Drug Court participants: program graduates and program terminators. The economic benefits of the Drug Court programs were estimated relative to a comparison group of individuals who were assessed for the Drug Court programs, but did not enter the programs. This study highlights important factors in estimating the costs and the economic benefits of a Drug Court program. Results indicated that, particularly for graduates, Drug Court involvement was associated with reductions in incarceration, mental health services, and legal costs, as well as increases in earnings and child support payments. Net benefits and benefit–cost ratios for each program are presented and policy implications are discussed.     

Contentious issues in research on trafficked women working in the sex industry: Study design,ethics, and methodology

The trafficking of women and children for work in the globalized sex industry is a global social problem. Quality data is needed to provide a basis for legislation, policy, and programs, but first, numerous research design, ethical, and methodological problems must be addressed. Research design issues in studying women trafficked for sex work (WTSW) include how to (a) develop coalitions to fund and support research, (b) maintain a critical stance on prostitution, and therefore WTSW, (c) use multiple paradigms and methods to accurately reflect WTSW's reality, (d) present the purpose of the study, and (e) protect respondents’ identities. Ethical issues include (a) complications with informed consent procedures, (b) problematic access to WTSW, (c) loss of WTSW to follow‐up, (d) inability to intervene in illegal acts or human rights violations, and (e) the need to maintain trustworthiness as researchers. Methodological issues include (a) constructing representative samples, (b) managing media interest, and (c) handling incriminating materials about law enforcement and immigration.     

Poverty and educational achievement in the US: A less-biased estimate using PISA 2012 data

In the current paper, we employ the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data to calculate a less-biased estimate of poverty on US achievement. The PISA was specifically chosen as it is an assessment removed from a specific curriculum and instead focuses on concepts that students should know in order to participate in a global economy. Using a propensity score matching approach, our findings suggest that US students in poverty have notable educational attainment deficiencies compared to a matched group of students who are not in poverty. In other words, when we select two students who have a great deal in common but for the fact that one comes from a poverty background, the student in poverty is expected to perform nearly 28 points, or about a quarter of a standard deviation lower, on the PISA assessment. In real terms, this puts math achievement for children not in poverty on-par with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average, while children in poverty are well below the OECD average.     

Quantifying the Muslim population in Europe: Conceptual and data issues

A review of the growing literature on the Muslim population in Europe shows that it remains poorly captured in official statistics. There is no authoritative map of the distribution of Muslims in Europe, and little quantitative evidence on their demographic, social or economic characteristics. This paper undertakes a systematic review of the conceptual and methodological issues surrounding the quantification of Muslim populations. With few countries routinely collecting data on religious affiliation, this is generally based on an estimation of the association between religion and some other measure of identity, such as country of birth or nationality. The rationale for the various 'religiousproxy' methods, and their limitations, is discussed in relation to the range of different data regimes observed across the region. The paper argues that changes in the political status of Muslim populations (following naturalization) and the manner of their growth (increasingly driven by natural increase) have meant that in statistical terms, they represent a disappearing target. The paper concludes that meaningful statistics on the Muslims in Europe will increasingly depend on the direct measurement of religious affiliation.     

Perceptions of geography students in the USA and Egypt on global issues

The study aimed to compare the perceptions of Egyptian and US students on global issues. The authors developed a survey of global issues and administered it to sample of 321 Geography students in the USA and Egypt. The survey tapped five issues: global citizenship, cultural diversity, global conflicts, nuclear arms race, and global warming. The results showed that there were significant differences in Egyptian and US students’ perception of each of the global issues.     

Local practice and global data: loyalty cards, social practices, and consumer surveillance

Monitoring of consumers has become the most widespread mode of surveillance today. Being a multi-billion dollar business, the collected data are traded globally without much concern by the consumers themselves. Loyalty cards are an element with which such data are collected. Analyzing the role of loyalty cards in everyday practices such as shopping, I discuss how new modes of surveillance evolve and work and why they eventually make communication about data protection a difficult matter. Further, I will propose an alternative approach to the study of surveillance. This approach is concerned with local practices, focusing on subjective narratives in order to view surveillance as an integral part of culturally or socially manifested contexts and actions and not to view surveillance as something alien to society and human interaction. This will open up other possibilities to study modes of subjectivity or how individuals situate themselves within society.     

Drugs,the state and global change: A contemporary European perspective

Abstract

This article examines the issue of illicit drug control across three broad levels of analysis. On one level, it examines the nature of the response to a ‘global phenomenon’ and its impact on national sovereignty. On a second level, it considers emergent state forms and practices and their relationship to global changes; and, thirdly, it grounds the analysis temporally and empirically in the contemporary European Union (focusing on the issues raised in relation to an emergent European Police Office, better known as Europol). The complex, evolving and essentially fragmented character of state power is placed in the context of the classic state functions of authority and control. This is set against the growing transnational role of expert knowledge in policy‐making, and concludes with an assessment of the political implications that can be drawn from analysis of this complex set of factors.     

A cultivated environment: Exploring the global distribution of plants in gardens, parks and streetscapes

Plants cultivated in gardens, parks and streetscapes are becoming increasingly important to peoples?? experience of biological life, and have been the recent focus of research in ecology, invasion biology, human geography and sociology. However patterns of distribution have not previously been explored at a global scale. In this study, global patterns in the distribution of cultivated floras were explored to determine the significance of biophysical and social factors driving species distributions. The taxonomic similarity of 72 published species lists was examined, covering a wide geographic and climatic range and a variety of land uses. Cultivated floras across urban and rural settlements were found to be very different and unsurprisingly to be strongly filtered by temperature. However we found that human behaviour may overcome other physical drivers of plant distribution such as rainfall in some instances. Social factors were also found to be important. Having a different dominant language (a proxy for cultural background) and difference in GDP per person (a proxy for household income) were also related to the dissimilarity of cultivated floras. Differences in both the social and physical environment are related to floristic differences between cities. However, we recognise that other factors identified in the literature but unsuited to meta-analysis, may also influence the composition of cultivated landscapes. These include changes in policy relating to the provision of street and park vegetation, the availability of plants from nurseries and the preferences of influential gardeners and landscape designers. The significance of the relationship between temperature and species composition suggests that cultivated floras are likely to change in response to climate change. The high level of dissimilarity observed between settlements suggests that patterns of potential naturalisation of cultivated plants are likely to be more complex than currently accepted.     

The impact of basic income on the propensity to work: Theoretical issues and micro-econometric results

In France, there is much debate about “minimum social benefits”, and basic income is still perceived as too daring a proposal, in particular because it is believed to encourage idleness. How can we predict how individuals would use this unconditional income? As regards low wage earners, we look first at the uncertainties surrounding the economic theory as to the behavioural changes that this could induce. This is followed by an econometric study of answers given in 2000 by a panel of poorly qualified young adults who had recently become employed.     

Gender,race and global modernity: A perspective from Thailand

Abstract

This paper draws from cultural studies, postcolonial studies and political economy to track the trafficking in racism and sexism in the cultural economy of contemporary globalization. It approaches this by looking at how global modernity is enacted by Thais and Westerners in Thailand. The author argues that the pursuit of global modernity in Thailand leads Thais to invite and embrace global modernity's racist and sexist core, thereby constituting their self-orientalization. Globalization's racist and sexist economy of desire is shown to be manufactured and retailed by both global and local corporations and to operate in international education, public health, the mass media and public culture. The paper is based on a decade of participant observation and field research.     

A standard methodology for the analysis,recording, and control of verbal behavior

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Lack of a standard methodology has been one of the major obstacles preventing advancement of behavior analytic research in verbal behavior. This article presents a...     

Forensic, cultural, and systems issues in child sexual abuse cases--part 2: research and practitioner issues

This article introduces the second issue of the special double issue focusing on forensic, cultural, and systems issues in child sexual abuse cases. We briefly review the articles, which include a discussion of child sexual abuse myths, an empirical analysis of extended child sexual abuse evaluations, an article on the role of the medical provider in child sexual abuse evaluations, a study of satisfaction levels with multidisciplinary teams in child advocacy centers, and a commentary advocating for the credentialing of forensic interviewers. We call for further empirical examination of media related to child sexual abuse risk, research on appropriate models for extended sexual abuse interviews and evaluations, and optimal practices relevant to each member of multidisciplinary teams in a child advocacy center.     

Repositioning in the global apparel value chain in the post‐MFA era: Strategic issues and evidence from Sri Lanka

This article examines structural adjustment in the world apparel trade following the abolition of Multi‐Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quotas through a case study of the apparel industry in Sri Lanka. The evidence suggests that, in a quota‐free global market, individual exporting countries have room for carving out a niche in specific products. The Sri Lankan apparel industry has managed to maintain growth dynamism through specialization in intimate apparel and upmarket casualwear. The expansion of the industry and its adjustment to MFA abolition was aided by an easily trainable domestic workforce and collaborative actions of industry associations and the government, with foreign buyers playing a pivotal role in linking the Sri Lankan firms to the global value chain.     

Professional development in the youth development field: issues, trends, opportunities, and challenges

This chapter reviews key issues in professional development in the youth development field, describing important work done over the past two decades and lessons learned from major philanthropic investments in capacity building both nationally and locally.     

The economy of smiles: affect,labour and the contemporary deserving poor

This paper examines the affective dimensions of new forms of informal entrepreneurial work carried out in spaces of unemployment. Situating the analysis within contemporary scholarship on deservingness and on affect and labour, I shed light on the forms of entrepreneurial labour that rely upon affect‐driven economies of exchange underpinned by moral judgements of deservingness, value and worth. In particular, this paper draws on a multi‐city (Melbourne, London, San Francisco) study of homeless street press sellers (The Big Issue and Street Sheet) to explore the ways in which contemporary practices of charity and care are carried out through individualized market‐place exchanges. Sellers’ accounts of their work reveal how smiling and being (or looking) happy is a performative expectation that must be managed in the face of poverty and precarity.     

Evaluation of diagnostic procedures : A review of the issues

The expensive proliferation of new diagnostic medical technologies necessitates their rigorous evaluation. Diagnosis seeks to improve health outcomes by providing better information to guide treatment decisions. Evaluation may focus on various links in the management of patients by investigating (1) how diagnostic technologies affect the the information available to the physician, (2) how improved Information affects treatment decisions, and (3) how altered treatment decision affect health outcomes. For diagnostic procedures that do improve health outcomes, the gain in health status should be weighed against potential cost increases. This comparison may be made using risk-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses. Experience in evaluating diagnostic technologies has shown the importance of (1) estimating effect size, (2) randomizing, (3) blinding, (4) enhancing external validity, (5) accounting for patient characteristics, and (6) reflecting patient values. Errors in adopting new diagnostic procedures may be reduced through better coordination of development, evaluation, and dissemination. This requires (1) improved evaluative decision making, (2) restraint among potential users, and (3) accelerated evaluation.     

Krafting the obesity message: A case study in framing and issues management

This study examined the application of framing theory in issues management. Using case study methodology, the researchers analyzed message frames used by Kraft Foods in its public response to the obesity crisis, how the Kraft frames were reported by the media and whether Kraft's approach might help define effective framing and issues management practices in public relations. The study suggested that framing was indeed useful in Kraft's attempt to manage the issue of obesity.