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The Canadian Family-Friendly Community Resources for Better Balance, Health, and Well-Being study (FFCR) is the first study in North America to comprehensively examine the impact of regional community context on work-family conflict, health, and wellbeing. The study was designed to collate data from disparate sources on a variety of community characteristics across Canada over time, including education services, food stores, recreational facilities, religious organizations, police, and fire protection services, for example. These data were then linked to individual-level data from the Canadian Work, Stress and Health study – a longitudinal national sample of Canadians across a myriad of work and family circumstances. These data are more comprehensive than any other dataset attempting to link work, family, and community data. We situate our contribution of the FFCR in literature on 'work-family conflict', which is defined as the incompatibility between role obligations. Context-level data were compiled at years corresponding to the individual-level data (2011–2019). Using multilevel analyses based on both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, we find that that resources, like the prevalence of food stores, education resources, recreation facilities, and public safety outlets are negatively associated with residents' work-family conflict levels. However, these findings are more pronounced across a combination of FFCR overtime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using multi-level modeling and lenses of gender socialization and gendered organizations, we investigated the role of U.S. girls' high schools in adolescent political participation and social engagement, characterized by voting interest, volunteerism, and interactions with diverse communities among other variables, with a focus on the role of all girls' schooling. Results demonstrate benefits for graduates of girls' schools in community-orientation, civic engagement, social agency, and political involvement compared to similar peers in coeducational environments. The conclusions provide broader insight for all types of schooling into the ways that they can focus on increasing engagement for their students. Implications for policy and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Defense Theory (SDT) states that anxious attachment reflects an adaptive sentinel strategy, whereby anxious people should be better able to detect lies than secure people. Existing research on this issue, however, has not been able to evaluate whether heightened lie detection among anxious individuals is due to an actual ability or a bias to assume that others are lying (one that pays off when others are, in fact, lying). We addressed this issue in a study in which 254 adults had to determine whether people in videos were lying or telling the truth about their experiences. Contrary to the predictions of SDT, highly anxious people did not have a heightened ability to separate lies from truths, but were biased to assume that others were lying regardless of the authenticity of their statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess whether the household is an apt scale of analysis to examine food insecurity of Indigenous Batwa of Kanungu District, Uganda. Our objectives were: 1) estimate the prevalence and range of food insecurity, 2) estimate the variation in food insecurity associated with household and community factors. The survey was administered 6 times at 3-month intervals (Jan 2013-April 2014). Multilevel modeling was used to determine household and community associations with food insecurity. The Batwa were highly food insecure (97%). Variation in food insecurity that is explained by household and community factors was low. Food insecurity analyses should be considered scale-dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the grand challenge of refugees influence nascent entrepreneurs in host countries? To explore this question, we build on social identity theory and analyse how the 2015 European refugee event is related to the strength of different founder social identities (i.e. Darwinian, Communitarian, and Missionary founder social identities) of nascent entrepreneurs in the countries accommodating the refugees. Using a dataset of 6,096 nascent entrepreneurs from 24 European countries, we reveal a positive relationship between the refugee event and the strength of the Communitarian founder social identity. This relationship is even stronger when the previous percentage of foreign migrants in a country is lower and is mediated by the human health and social work industry. Interestingly, we do not find significant relationships between the refugee event and the strengths of the Darwinian or Missionary founder social identity, respectively. Hence, refugees as a grand challenge are likely to have divergent influences on different types of entrepreneurship in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across two studies, we investigated connections between leader humility, servant leadership, and follower satisfaction. Leaders were resident and spiritual life advisors in on-campus housing at a university. In Study 1, we assessed leaders' self-reported expressed humility, intellectual humility, and servant leadership at three times across six months. Leader humility did not change across time, but aspects of both forms of leader humility were positively associated with servant leadership. In Study 2, leaders were rated by their followers. Leaders reporting more respect for diverse viewpoints, a characteristic of intellectual humility, had followers who were more satisfied with their leaders' interpersonal leadership and justice orientation. This research suggest potential benefits to cultivating humility among novice leaders in some contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian leaders and parties are challenging the foundations of democracy across the world. We argue that this authoritarian upsurge is systematically linked to culturally shared beliefs about the world. Study 1 linked social axioms to authoritarianism and ethnonationalism in a US college sample. Study 2 replicated these findings with a multi-national dataset and predicted authoritarianism with country-level social axioms. Results from these two individual-level studies indicated that right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and ethnonationalism were related to reward for application, religiosity, and fate control, but low social flexibility. Left-wing authoritarianism was linked to high levels of social cynicism, and fate control, but inversely related to the other three axioms. Countries with high dynamic externality had weaker democracies, as evident in fewer civil liberties and worse political culture, and a greater prevalence of individual-level authoritarian and ethnonationalist sentiments. We discuss the implications of the relationship between authoritarianism and culture in this current democratic backsliding, and the susceptibility of different cultures to the lure of illiberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental designs to examine attitudes and behavior are crucial to make causal inferences. However, studies that assess attitudes and behavior of journalists are still dominated by correlational designs, such as used in surveys with journalists. Elaborating on historical and practical reasons for that, we argue in this paper why journalism scholars may benefit from including a certain experimental approach to their toolbox: the factorial survey experiment. Using data from a factorial survey with German newspaper journalists, we illustrate the application of factorial surveys from their conceptualization to the data analysis. Suggestions for further fields of application are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bayesian estimation has become very popular. However, run time of Bayesian models is often unsatisfactorily high. In this illustration, we show how to reduce run time by (a) integrating out nuisance model parameters and by (b) reformulating the model based on covariances and means. The core concept is to use the sample scatter matrix which is in our case Wishart distributed with the model-implied covariance matrix as the scale matrix. To illustrate this approach, we choose the popular multi-level null (intercept-only) model, provide a step-by-step instruction on how to implement this model in a multi-purpose Bayesian software, and show how structural equation modeling techniques can be employed to bypass mathematically challenging derivations. A simulation study showed that run time is considerably reduced and an empirical example illustrates our approach. Further, we show how the JAGS sampling progress can be monitored and stopped automatically when convergence and precision criteria are reached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Despite a growing trend in community-based research, studies investigating the influence of multi-level community factors on individual-level outcomes remain relatively sparse. Objective. The current study aimed to extend this literature by investigating the association between community disadvantage measured at the community level, and adolescents' substance use over time. Additionally, this study also investigated the influence of parental support and community belonging on this association. Methods. Data were drawn from Waves I and III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health data set. Using a multi-level modeling approach, we tested the association between community disadvantage and substance use during adolescence. Second, to determine if this association held longitudinally, we examined the influence of community disadvantage on substance use over time, into young adulthood. Lastly, we tested the moderating effects of parental support and community belonging on the association between community disadvantage and substance use during adolescence and young adulthood. Results. Findings suggested that individuals experiencing the greatest disadvantage were less likely to engage in substance use in comparison to those experiencing the greatest advantage. Conclusions/Importance. Differential effects of parental support and community belonging on community disadvantage and substance use were also found. Implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prognostic modeling in moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) has historically focused primarily on the projection of crude outcomes such as the risk of mortality and disability. Initial work in this area has perpetuated the notion that prognosis after moderate to severe TBI can be measured as a single, static, and dichotomous outcome. However, more recent conceptualizations describe moderate to severe TBI as the initiation of a chronic disease state with high levels of inter-individual variability in terms of symptom manifestation and disease progression. Unfortunately, existing prognostic models provide limited insight into the extent of chronic cognitive and neurodegenerative changes experienced by moderate to severe TBI survivors. Though prior research has identified a variety of acute factors that appear to influence post-injury cognitive and neuropathological outcomes, an empirically supported framework for prognostic modeling of these injury-distal outcomes does not exist. The current review considers the literature on an expanded array of empirically supported predictors (both premorbid and injury-related) in association with long-term sequelae of moderate to severe TBI. We also provide a theoretical framework and statistical approach for prognostic modeling in moderate to severe TBI in order to unify efforts across research groups and facilitate important progress in this research area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-first century and higher-learning skills such as critical thinking are highly desired for new college graduates entering the workplace, especially with rapid changing technology and a more globalized economy. As a result, the importance of critical thinking development at higher education institutions has increased. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of student and institutional variables on the difference in critical thinking scores between first-year and third/fourth-year students at higher education institutions. We examined the extent to which institutional variables moderate the relationship between student variables and the critical thinking score difference. We used a multi-level modeling approach to account for the clustering of students in institutions. Results of this study showed that: (a) institutional variability accounted for 15% of the variance in estimated critical thinking scores, (b) third/fourth-year students had higher critical thinking scores as compared to their first-year peers even when controlling for college admissions score, and (c) in the final model, the main effects of college admission scores, student-faculty ratio, and percent Black/African American were statistically significant; however, retention was the only significant moderator of the relationship between critical thinking scores and class level. Implications and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public concerns about food risks have grown in recent decades in response to many food-related scandals. Despite some evidence that risk concerns vary across societies and risk domains, these variations remain understudied. To address this gap, this paper conducts a multi-level analysis of public concerns about biological and chemical/technical food risks in 26 European countries. Findings confirm previous work on individual predictors of risk concern and suggest that several contextual factors contribute to cross-national variations: aggregate perceptions of risks as unnatural, retail concentration in the food sector, and media coverage. The effect of institutional trust on risk concerns varies substantially across nations. Findings also reveal important differences in public concerns about biological versus chemical/technical food risks, supporting the view that food risk perception is multi-dimensional and complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to compare a specialized community-oriented policing (COP) unit to a reactive unit on officer perceptions of public contact and officer perceptions of job performance. We also compare bicycle patrol officers to motor vehicle patrol officers within these units. Using a static group comparison design, questionnaires were distributed to officers within the Toronto Police Service (n = 178). Bicycle patrol is associated with more contacts with the public and higher rates of proactive policing when compared to motor vehicle patrol and bicycle officers are more likely to rate higher on several measures of crime control. Officers with a COP mandate engage with the public for a wider variety of reasons compared to those with a reactive mandate, and are more likely to rate higher on perceptions of performing job duties in a procedurally just manner. This study demonstrates the value of a specialized COP unit that includes bicycle patrol in achieving tenets of COP. It contributes to the literature on COP and the use of bicycle patrol in law enforcement by presenting the perspective of the police officer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research investigated how government spending helps to promote sport participation in the population while relying on average funding figures. The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between sport-related government spending and sport and exercise participation in more detail by specifically looking at the role of funding size, period, and consistency. Individual-level data from the 2011 German Socio-Economic Panel (n = 17,319) are combined with state-level data including government spending on sport facilities, swimming pools, and general sport promotion for all 16 states. Multi-level models were estimated to examine how government spending and individual factors are related to regular sport and exercise participation (i.e. at least once per week). The results show that average funding is not significantly related to sport participation except for swimming pool spending over a 10- and 15-year period. Consistent spending on sport facilities is positively associated with participation in sport and exercise, while inconsistent spending on pools has a positive effect. The findings suggest that the role of funding size and consistency differs among the three types of sport-related spending. If state governments want to promote public health through participation in sport and exercise, spending on facilities should be consistent, while spending on swimming pools should occur large in size and allowing for some inconsistencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trends in state-level public opinion on the environment within the U.S. are examined, using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) from 1976 to 2008. Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification (MRP) approach estimates public support for environmental spending at the U.S. state-level over three decades. This allows for an analysis of inter-state homogeneity of environmental public opinion, over the latter half of the twenty century. The findings indicate state-level trends mirror those at the national-level, but state-level public opinion is becoming more analogous over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although delinquency in US schools is near historic lows, concern over delinquency in US schools remains a pressing issue among school officials, parents, and policy-makers. Many scholars argue that the current approach to discipline in the United States is highly punitive. While some projects have assessed the effect of punitive security on students’ perception of safety and general well-being, little attention has been given to understanding the role these measures play in extracurricular activity. Using the Educational Longitudinal Study (2002/2004), we examine the role of security measures in predicting student extracurricular activity cross-sectionally and over time. Results show that schools with greater numbers of security measures have students who are less involved in extracurricular activities, although the presence of security measures does not relate to decreased levels of participation over time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A two-cohort cluster-randomized trial was conducted to estimate effects of small-group supplemental vocabulary instruction for at-risk kindergarten English learners (ELs). Connections students received explicit instruction in high-frequency decodable root words, and interactive book reading (IBR) students were taught the same words in a storybook reading context. A total of 324 EL students representing 24 home languages and averaging in the 10th percentile in receptive vocabulary completed the study (Connections n = 163 in 75 small groups; IBR n = 161 in 72 IBR small groups). Although small groups in both conditions made significant immediate gains across all measures, Connections students made significantly greater gains in reading vocabulary and decoding (d =.64 and.45, respectively). At first-grade follow-up, longer-term gains were again greater for Connections students, but with smaller effect sizes (d =.29 and.27, respectively). Results indicate that explicit Connections instruction features designed to build semantic, orthographic, and phonological connections for word learning were effective for improving proximal reading vocabulary and general decoding; however, increases in root word reading vocabulary did not transfer to general vocabulary knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on right-to-carry laws and subsequent crime reduction has relied heavily on the use of econometric models relying on aggregate-level data. We examine the underlying individual-level motivations for obtaining a concealed weapon permit utilizing a survey of permit holders and citizens in New Orleans. Employing a multi-level modeling strategy, we simultaneously examine individual-level characteristics along with contextual effects, specifically the neighborhood violent crime rate. In sum, we find little evidence to support the supposition that concealed weapon permits are utilized by those most likely to be at risk for violent crime victimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even if the literature on the effects of pupil composition has been extensive, no clear consensus has been reached concerning the significance and magnitude of this effect. The first objective of this article is to estimate the magnitude of the school composition effect in primary schools (6th grade) in French-speaking Belgium. Different indicators of school composition are used: academic, socio-cultural, ‘language’ and sex composition. Except for sex composition, the results show that the school composition effect explains significant amount of between schools variance even after controlling for pupils’ initial performance, socio-cultural background, and non-cognitive dispositions. The second objective is to examine covariance between school composition and several organisational variables and their joint effect on school performance. The second set of analyses is intended to question the conceptual nature of the school composition effect, establishing whether it is direct or indirect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]