This study explores the direct and indirect paths through which parental social capital, social networks and connections upon which individuals can draw upon for support, impacts supportive parenting and in turn contributes to youths' intrapersonal protective processes that mediate HIV risk engagement using structural equation modeling. Three hundred and thirty two (332) African-American mothers and their 11 year-old children from nine rural counties in Georgia were recruited to be involved in the study. As hypothesized, parental social capital was significantly and positively associated with supportive parenting and supportive parenting was also significantly and positively associated with youth intrapersonal protective processes. Finally, youth intrapersonal protective processes such as self-regulation, future orientation and resistance efficacy were negatively associated with risk engagement, indicating that youth who had higher levels of intrapersonal protective processes were less likely to engage in risky behavior. This study merges multiple fields of research and theories to examine the effects of social capital on parents ability to foster youth development, which protects youth from engaging in behaviors that place them at risk for HIV. Implications of findings for future research are suggested and identification of malleable prevention targets related to social capital is provided.

This project was undertaken with the general goal of improving the wellness of disadvantaged young people. Low-income, urban youth face a variety of ecological barriers to their positive development. These young people also have the capacity to reshape their environments in a manner more conducive to wellness. In this dissertation, I use a mixed method approach to explore how the civic engagement of urban middle-school students is associated with wellness both at the individual level and at the school-setting level. A quantitative analysis of middle-school student survey and administrative data from an urban district shows that students who are more regularly engaged in activities to help improve their schools and neighborhoods enjoy better educational outcomes, in terms of achievement, attendance, and discipline referrals. A second analysis of these data show that an aggregate of civically engaged students in a school setting is associated with more positive school-climate and educational outcomes for all students, on average, in that setting. Finally, a case-study analysis of a student voice program in an urban middle school elaborates the mechanisms through which civically engaged youth can alter the culture and climate of their school. In sum, this project offers evidence that encouraging civic engagement on the part of urban youth holds much promise for improving their overall wellness. Youth civic engagement may be a strategy for simultaneously addressing multiple levels of ecology that influence youth development.

This dissertation explores three broad questions related to data, theory, and policy on medical migration from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to the United States. How many SSA-born and SSA-trained physicians are currently practicing medicine in the United States? How and why are they immigrating to the United States despite the extensive health needs in SSA? What can the United States do to mitigate the unsustainable immigration of SSA physicians? The three papers contained in this dissertation address these questions separately. The first paper uses the 2011 American Medical Association (AMA) Physician Masterfile to identify over 10,000 SSA physicians in the US physician workforce and provides a detailed descriptive analysis of their demographic characteristics and immigration patterns. The second paper examines the determinants of medical migration through in-depth interviews with migrant and non-migrant physicians from SSA. Findings from this qualitative analysis yields a complex and nuanced tapestry of factors associated with medical migration. The third paper draws insights from the two previous papers to propose a specific policy necessary in curtailing medical migration.

This dissertation focuses on the ways in which undocumented immigrant youth in Tennessee contest their marginalization and challenge various forms of social injustice arising from their immigration status and other facets of their social identities. Specifically, this study examines how youth challenge their marginalization through everyday acts of resistance and collective action, a process I refer to here as boundary politics. This study reflects participatory action research (PAR) and participant observation with undocumented youth affiliated with a youth-led organization, Jóvenes Unidos por un Mejor Presente (JUMP), which is located in Nashville, Tennessee. I investigate how they: engage in formal and informal forms of social change work; understand the social contexts in which they are embedded; and, hope to effect change at the individual, community, state, and national levels. This process is examined in relation to the social and structural barriers that emerge through municipal, state, and federal immigration policies, practices, and discourse. The tactics of subversion and overt contestation employed by youth individually and collectively are shaped by local contexts and the broader sociopolitical landscape. Youth deploy these tactics strategically in an attempt to address the causes and consequences of injustice as they manifest individually, relationally, and structurally. Immigration policy and practice in the U.S. is currently a topic of much debate and one that could be subject to public pressure, generated in part by the organizing efforts and activism of undocumented youth. Hence, it is hoped that this dissertation will inform scholarly and public discussion on how everyday acts of resistance and the social movement participation of undocumented youthand more broadly, marginalized youthcan shape social policy and practice in contemporary American society.

The anti-fracking movement in Bulgaria, 2011-2012, represents a remarkable case of citizen mobilization against techno-industrial development. The movement merits scholarly interest both as an instance of a larger controversy around a novel technology in a world at an energy crossroads and as a social phenomenon in its own right, with its novelty to the cultural context, its power, its success. Three studies take three different perspectives on the anti-fracking movement (AFM), aiming, in their combination, to describe and explain how the AFM shaped and was shaped by policy-making in its specific context. The first study advances a conceptual framework, a policy-making process (PMP) model, for the study of social movements (SMs). The study builds on the current accomplishments of SM scholarship and presents an approach that synthesizes important theories and emphasizes issue-focused policy-making. The AFM features as a case illustrating the application of the PMP model. The model allows for the concise description and deeper understanding of a whole SM, and for cross-case comparisons with SMs in other contexts. The second study focuses on the content and processes of meaning-making in the AFM. It attempts to answer how understandings emerged and developed among activists about the issue, the technology, the threat, and the major actors in the conflict. The analysis of meaning-making is performed and presented in a novel way, reconstructing activist meanings from bounded objects to complex higher-order systems. The study presents findings on the meaning-making mechanisms, the identities, ideologies, discourses, and storylines within the movement, and the relationships among them. The third study describes and evaluates the internal organization of the AFM as a grassroots democracy. A grassroots democracy lens can help understand how the AFM mobilized thousands of first-time activists in a society with only fledgling civil structures and networks. Additionally, the study examines how democratic forms helped the AFM community mobilize and sustain participation, while also developing an alternative political process. Findings on the movement-specific forms of power, equality, participation, and consent are presented, with explanations of their origins, legitimacy, and implications for movement actions. The mutual influence and impact of the PMP and movement democracy are examined.

Gentrificationâcommonly understood as the transformation of areas with high levels of affordable housing into areas targeting middle and upper income usesâprovokes a range of losses. People may lose their homes, neighbors, and sites of historical significance, along with their sense of place, belonging, and history. Yet, policy makers and community practitioners often restrict interventions in gentrifying neighborhoods to the material effects, such as trying to reduce displacement through the creation and preservation of affordable housing. While such responses are critical, they fail to recognize and address other harms residents may be experiencing concurrent with or independent from a loss of housing. This study explores the Neighborhood Story Project, a 3-month action research intervention engaging residents as researchers in their communities. Through a multi-case constructivist study of the intervention in three gentrifying, Nashville neighborhoods, I find that participants deepened their place-knowledge and place-attachments, strengthened social ties, and developed an increased sense of agency to advocate on behalf of their community. Results suggest that interventions such as the Neighborhood Story Project can complement efforts to build and preserve affordable housing in important ways. Through creating a learning, caring, and empowering environment, The Neighborhood Story Project offers a practice model for fostering attachments to people and places, and facilitating collective action in gentrifying neighborhoods. This study also suggests the need to retheorize gentrification to better account for the more than material dimensions of neighborhoods, and for researchers to engage residents as theorizers and agents of change in their communities.

Family housing instability is a persistent public health issue in the U.S. This study developed risk models for returns to housing instability among previously homeless families. Participants include 466 families assigned to receive priority offers of long-term housing subsidies and 578 families assigned to usual care in a random assignment housing intervention experiment. Relationships between family characteristics recorded at shelter entry and returns to housing instability 20 months later were examined empirically. Correlation, logistic regression, and receiver operating characteristic curves were used to combine family characteristics into predictive risk models. Results indicated that few observable family characteristics beyond previous housing instability and economic support offered predictive utility. Access to affordable healthcare, reliable employment, effective substance dependence treatment, long-term housing subsidies, and disability benefits like SSI and SSDI may reduce housing instability.

This report is a literature review of System Dynamics (SD) and simulation, with enough information so the receiver can form a mental model of his own of what SD is. It started in the 1950s by Jay W. Forrester at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a devoted man that through his career always sought for practical applications of theory and gained skills. The key in why this new way of approaching problems in complex systems was its strength in capturing the dynamics, through the use of a computer to run a modeled system for a set of time and experimenting on which variables to modify or rearrange. SD methodology uses the theory of information feedbacks (i.e. closed loop structures), and the structure is based on the decision making processes or policies that interrelate in ways in the system. The model is valid if it shows the same dynamic behavior as the real system. In the report you will find some history and background to SD and the contents of the methodology, some application areas and two models; of which simulation is performed, one made by Jay Forrester and one very simple made by Gary Linnéusson. Main purpose with this review was to find out if SD could serve as a tool for simulating organizational development. If it can, further research on how will be part of a doctoral study project within CAPE, an Industrial Graduate School in Advanced Production Engineering. This due to that Arkivator Falköping AB is interested in to conduct an attendee in that School which would research on: "developing a method that would support management in decisions to develop their organization". The result of this review shows that SD can be a tool to treat that issue, one of very few tools that consider interrelations and interactions within organizational systems.

Organizations constantly face the challenge of identifying, adopting and implementing necessary changes in order to stay competitive. An option for executing these changes is to contract an external management consultant with experience and expertise in organizational development. Our aim is to find if and how certain demographic variables of management consultants’ background affect how they identify an organizational development problem. This thesis is focused on management consultants within organizational development, and their responses when presented with a laboratory business simulation. There are limited generalization parallels to other consultancy areas and situations beyond the specific area of organizational development. We conducted a descriptive experimental study with 83 responding management consultants. Participants answered a questionnaire in combination with the presented business simulation, regarding how they identify problems based on their personal background. The data set was compiled statistically and rendered in IBM SPSS. Furthermore the answers were analyzed using multiple regression analysis and single correlation test statistics. We found that Management consultants showed a preference towards external environment as major contributing factor to the problem(s) at hand. Furthermore we found a positive relation to “Age” and “School”, and negative relation to “Work-life experience”. Consequently, management consultants do differ in their problem identification approach based on their personal background. With greater understanding of how management consultant differ, clients and supplier of management consulting services can better align consultants with organizational problem(s), in order to generate better synergy effect.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2006.