The fight to establish victim rights in Florida began with a handful of dedicated practitioners, victims and survivors. They battled burnout, apathy, rejection and less than adequate funding. Power struggles arose between personalities, egos, the institutionalized governmental agencies, and funding sources. This dissertation chronicles the creation of the Florida Network of Victim Witness Services (FNVWS) as an agent of social reform, and documents the organization's evolution. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-08, Section: A, page: 3084. / Major Professor: Leroy C. Gould. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

An increasingly challenging phenomenon for both developing and advanced economies, the negative consequences of long-lasting youth unemployment both at the individual and the societal level are well established. The volatility of local economies in an era of recurrent global economic crisis may have solidified the disadvantaged status of young people within the larger economies. Understanding youth labor outcomes in developing countries may offer new perspectives for policy makers as well as help to unmask chronic problems in our economic systems and give direction to further studies concerning the youth labor market. / One might expect that declines in the size of the youth cohort observed in the past two decades would have contributed positively to labor outcomes of youth in developing countries. Panel fixed-effects regression analyses covering a span of the last 22 years in 18 economically advanced and 23 developing countries were conducted to test the impact of changes in the size of the youth cohort on youth employment and unemployment controlling for macroeconomic conditions. A second question this study focused on concerns the impact of individual supply factors on youth outcomes in Turkey. The roles of human capital factors such as education and of family factors such as parent and sibling characteristics related to social capital were tested using micro data from the Turkish Household Labor Force Survey and hierarchical modeling. The study also tested the impact of the structural characteristics of regions. / Analysis of time series data across countries illustrated that relative cohort size had no impact on youth labor market outcomes controlling for other factors, in contrast to the findings of earlier studies. Results of the micro-level analysis illustrated the varying impact of education, the significance of the role of both parents and siblings and the distinct nature of family dynamics in rural versus urban contexts and across genders. Both micro and macro analysis indicated that with the structural changes taking place in developing economies today coupled with their context-specific features, youth unemployment is both a problem in its own right and signifies a problem larger than itself.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Counseling Psychology, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0519. Adviser: Michael L. Tracy.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Francisco, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Advisers: Charlene Harrington; Craig R. Cohen.

<p> The role of grievances in drawing public concern and activist support is a surprisingly understudied topic in modern social movement literature. This research is the first to parse grievances into core components to understand whether some grievances are more successful than others in evoking mobilizing, affective and cognitive reactions that can ultimately benefit social movements. I find that not all grievances are created equal when it comes to concern, support and interest in activism, and that the content of grievances can be studied in systematic ways to identify the types of grievances likely to be more powerful injustice events. </p><p> This dissertation bridges social psychology and social movements by applying concepts from Affect Control Theory (such as evaluation ratings and deflection) to grievance evaluations. To understand the differential effects of grievances, I break grievances into three basic building blocks&mdash;a Perpetrator (Actor), the act itself (Behavior), and the victim (Object). I then use measures of cultural perceptions of the goodness or badness of behaviors and identities to investigate how people react to different configurations of good or bad perpetrators, behavior and victims in injustice events. I posit that two mechanisms&mdash;concern about the wellbeing of others and desire for consistency in meanings about the world&mdash;drive reactions to the goodness or badness of elements in a grievance. I test hypotheses using an experimental design, specifically a vignette study. </p><p> I find strong support, across outcomes, that bad behavior, particularly when directed toward good victims, constitutes a form of grievance that promotes strong mobilizing, affective and cognitive reactions. I also find that the perpetrator matters for many outcomes, but that the effect of perpetrator is weaker than the effect of behavior and its target, tends to be insignificant for measures specific to behavioral activism, and largely disappears in cases of bad behavior toward good victims. In general, bad perpetrators produce higher levels of concern and emotion than do good perpetrators. The results also show that while concerns about the wellbeing of others dominate grievance evaluations, expectations about how the world should be (and deflection from those expectations) are useful for understanding reactions to perpetrators and to injustice events involving good behavior. </p><p> The conclusions from this dissertation contribute to a number of social movement arenas, including participation, movement outcomes, framing and emotions. Further, it has the real world implications of suggesting how well particular social issues might fare in attracting public concern and activist attention. This provides insights into both the types of movements more likely to be successful as well as the types of social problems less likely to draw public attention, increasing the chances that such problems persist.</p>

<p><!-- Fragment document type declaration subset: ArborText, Inc., 1988-1999, v.4002 --> <formattedtext>The Experience of Sacred Breathwork&trade;: Healing Through Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness</formattedtext>

In this dissertation I examine how the family, market and state affect poverty outcomes among mothers and single mothers. In so doing, I enrich the gender and state literature with methodological approaches from the international literature on poverty. I examine the extent to which predictions from these theories are supported by evidence of mothers' and single mothers' poverty and labor market outcomes across nine Western nations. In a more applied vein, many of my questions concern how the U.S. could ameliorate its high poverty rates among mothers and single mothers. My findings challenge several of the gender and the state theories and suggest that more complex questions could lead to better measures of mothers' economic outcomes. I conclude by discussing what kinds of social policies could improve mothers' economic well-being, in the U.S. and across other Western nations.

A descriptive design was used to study the subjective sleep characteristics of permanent night shift workers, examine the validity and reliability of the Visual Analog Sleep (VAS) Scales, and to compare the scores to a previously tested non night shift working sample. The VAS Scales, which employ a visual analog format to measure subjective perceptions of sleeps were reworded slightly to apply to this population, giving rise to the VAS/NS (Night Shift) Scales. A sample of 40 night shift workers completed the VAS/NS Scales on two separate days. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to evaluate this data. The VAS/NS Scales evidence good internal reliability. The factors remained essentially the same with some changes for this sample. The subjective experience of sleep was significantly different from the non night shift working sample for five of the 13 characteristics tested.

The purpose of this study was to identify reporting of child sexual abuse among professionals. Forty out of one hundred questionnaires were completed and returned. The population for this study consisted of men and women in the following professions: Pediatricians, nurses, preschool workers, teachers, religious workers, and counselors in a southwestern community. A questionnaire was used to obtain demographic data and general information. Included in the questionnaire were eight hypothetical case vignettes of child sexual abuse. The professionals were asked to answer ten questions pertaining to the cases. Results showed that although professionals are aware of reporting laws, they still are not reporting all the cases of child sexual abuse when they suspect abuse. In certain cases, professionals are reluctant to report following a retraction by the child, or when the parents deny the allegation. Religious workers have the least knowledge of reporting laws of the professionals sampled. Overall, pediatricians report more often when they suspect child sexual abuse than the other professionals in the sample.

<p> This policy analysis examined the purpose, goals, implementation, and impacts of mandatory minimum sentences as outlined in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. After reviewing government documents and scholarly literature that address the policy, a modified version of David Gil's 1992 framework was used to conduct the analysis. </p><p> Significant findings include the misalignment between the policy's objectives and the factual American condition regarding drugs and drug-related crime. Since implementation, people and communities of color have been disproportionately disadvantaged by this policy. New social problems, such as prison overcrowding, have resulted from lengthy prison sentences. </p><p> From this analysis, social workers can learn the importance of educating the public about drug use and related systemic issues. Social workers can use this information to advocate for relevant and effective policies to respond to problematic drug use in America from a public health, rather than criminal justice, perspective.</p>