Annik Sorhaindo, Kirstin Mitchell, Adam Fletcher, Patricia Jessiman, Peter Keogh and Chris Bonell
Evaluation of the Teens & Toddlers (T & T) positive youth development (PYD) and teenage pregnancy prevention programme suggested that the intervention had minimal…
Abstract
Purpose
Evaluation of the Teens & Toddlers (T & T) positive youth development (PYD) and teenage pregnancy prevention programme suggested that the intervention had minimal effectiveness partly due to its unclear theory of change. The purpose of this paper is to examine the lived experiences of young women participating in the programme to contribute to a clearer understanding of intervention process and potential mechanisms.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted four focus groups (n=20), eight paired or triad interviews (n=12) and 15 interviews with young women participating in an randomized controlled trial of the T & T programme in England, analysing these data using a phenomenological approach.
Findings
T & T provided some opportunities to experience the “five Cs” that underpin PYD programme theory: competence, confidence, connection, character and caring. However, the young women did not experience the programme in a way that would consistently develop these characteristics. The lack of opportunities for skill-building and challenge in the activities constrained their ability to build competence and confidence. Some programme facilitators and counsellors were able to achieve connections and caring relationships with the young women, though other adults involved in the programme were sometimes perceived by the participants as overly critical. The character development activities undertaken in the programme addressed attitudes towards sexual risk-taking.
Originality/value
Few studies of the PYD approach examine young people’s perspectives. This research suggests that the young women were not consistently provided with opportunities to achieve youth development within the T & T programmes. In refining the programme, more thought is needed regarding how delivery of particular components may facilitate or impede a PYD experience.
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Kenneth Backlund, Tomas Sjögren and Jesper Stage
This paper aims to present a theoretical underpinning for the fact that empirical studies have found an inverted-U curve relationship between emigration and per capita income…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a theoretical underpinning for the fact that empirical studies have found an inverted-U curve relationship between emigration and per capita income, based on credit restrictions. The implications for tax policy are also analyzed.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an intertemporal general equilibrium model, the authors characterize how the presence of an “inverted U-curve” relationship between emigration and per capita income will influence the optimal tax and expenditure policy in a country where agents have the option to move abroad.
Findings
Among the results it is shown that if age-dependent taxes are available, the presence of an inverted-U curve provides an incentive to tax young labor harder, but old labor less hard, than otherwise.
Originality/value
This migration model fits the empirical facts of migration better than most of the migration models previously used in the optimal taxation literature.
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Young people are widely known to have poorer outcomes, social status and political representation than older adults. These disadvantages, which have come to be largely normalized…
Abstract
Young people are widely known to have poorer outcomes, social status and political representation than older adults. These disadvantages, which have come to be largely normalized in the contemporary context, can be further compounded by other factors, however, and are particularly amplified by coming from a lower social class background. An additional challenge for young people is associated with place, with youth who live in more remote and less urban areas at a higher risk of being socially excluded (Alston & Kent, 2009; Shucksmith, 2004) and/or to face complex and multiple barriers to employment and education than their urban-dwelling peers (Cartmel & Furlong, 2000). Drawing upon interviews and focus groups in a qualitative project with 16 young people and five practitioners, and using Nancy Fraser’s tripartite theory of social justice, this paper highlights the various and interlocking disadvantages experienced by working-class young people moving into and through adulthood in Clackmannanshire, mainland Scotland’s smallest council area.
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Explores attitudes towards abortion in the USA and whether or not they have changed during the period 1977‐1993 (based on data from the National Opinion Research Centre’s General…
Abstract
Explores attitudes towards abortion in the USA and whether or not they have changed during the period 1977‐1993 (based on data from the National Opinion Research Centre’s General Social Survey). Describes the research methodology used and how the data was analysed, testing for attitudinal change by age, gender and race, through a comparison of mean scale scores, longitudinal analysis, and multiple regression. Finds that younger people are more pro‐choice but that there has been an increase in pro‐life attitudes among women and pro‐choice among men. Indicates that racial differences on abortion are declining. Reveals that increased religiosity affects attitudes towards abortion, which may account for black women generally being more pro‐life. Notes, also, that respondents with higher levels of education were more pro‐choice. Refers to a particular legal decision on abortion, which, it was thought, had prompted a pro‐choice attitude, but finds that this is not actually the case.
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This paper aims to communicate the challenges and tensions faced by front‐line workers in negotiating the demands of performance targets and those of the young people they work…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to communicate the challenges and tensions faced by front‐line workers in negotiating the demands of performance targets and those of the young people they work with.
Design/methodology/approach
An in‐depth study, over a two‐year period, of a number of training programmes combining participant observation and qualitative directed data collection.
Findings
Workers need to be sensitive to young people's previous educational experiences and social context while encouraging participation in education‐based work. Personal problems had to be addressed if progress towards the target of education, employment or training was to be achieved. Effective programmes rely on the front‐line workers but systems of accountability do not recognise the breadth of this work in handling the wider personal situations of young people. The role of training programmes needs to be better understood within this wider socio‐economic context.
Research limitations/implications
The study is of a small number of training programmes so it is not possible to generalise from the findings. A limitation of the paper is that the ethical, moral and practical implications of the study are not explored.
Practical implications
This paper extends our understanding of the complexity involved in the delivery of training programmes for young people.
Originality/value
Providing practitioners working in training settings with an account of the work which may address some of the criticisms often levelled at them. It has potential value to inform policy development, implementation and future forms of accountability.
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The main aim of this paper is to examine the effect of economic growth on worker mobility and the effect of this mobility on income distribution.
Abstract
Purpose
The main aim of this paper is to examine the effect of economic growth on worker mobility and the effect of this mobility on income distribution.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper develops an overlapping generation model with multiple categories of labor. In order to confirm the theoretical results and demonstrate that the model can be used for empirical analysis, an example and a simulation were presented.
Findings
The analysis demonstrates that, as capital stock increase, workers are mobilized up to better jobs, their income grows and income distribution becomes more equalized.
Research limitations/implications
Endogenous technological improvement and population growth might also be added to the discussion, but at the price of a more complicated model. Discussion on these issues showed be left for future research.
Practical implications
The effect of tax policy can be easily added to the model and to the discussion.
Originality/value
This paper extended the overlapping generation model to include different types of individuals. The importance of the paper is in its ability to analyze the changes in the income of various categories of workers along the growth path of the economy.
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The purpose of this paper is to study how young vocational school students in Finland frame themselves and their participation in society and whether they are seen in various…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study how young vocational school students in Finland frame themselves and their participation in society and whether they are seen in various media. The explorative research, with n = 213 vocational school and prepatory VALMA students as co-researchers, tells us that young vocational school students use value framing to create understandings of themselves as participants in society and in media. The purpose is this to present the breadth of their thinking and to draw conclusions from the empirical data produced solely by the co-researchers.
Design/methodology/approach
Explorative multidisciplinary research was done as co-research with n = 213 vocational school students in Finland. Research includes theoretical background and focuses on empirical qualitative data to further illustrate the explorative nature and results of the study.
Findings
The findings of the explorative co-research tell us that young vocational school students use value framing to create understandings of themselves as participants in society and in media. Co-researchers view themselves as missing in traditional media but find freedom on social media. Content from various media is viewed as reliable and trustworthy but also as problematic propaganda based on personal value framing. The relationship with traditional print media is strained because young people feel that media has othered them and continues to frame them negatively. While they look for that entertaining content across the media spectrum, bullying is an ever-present concern.
Research limitations/implications
This study focused only on vocational school students in Finland. A broader sample of young people, or of minorities, could produce profound results on media literacy, relationships and power relations in the society. Also, framings of the various international media would provide content for analysis. More profound analysis of the data shall be done in the next phase of the research.
Practical implications
Study time was limited. More in-depth study will follow. Implications to future research, media consumption and framing should be done with a larger group of researchers and youth.
Social implications
Social implications towards framing of youth in various media and the transfer of these framing as knowledge in larger society. This includes notions of power of various actors in media and in society at large.
Originality/value
Multidisciplinary explorative co-research on the topic is largely missing from academia. Additionally, the voices of those in the fringes of society is muted, whilst also those youth studying the vocational schools.
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Gisella Lopes Gomes Pinto Ferreira
Much of the research on intimate partner violence focuses on adults, and little of it emanates from the Global-South. The study reported upon in this chapter is aimed at…
Abstract
Much of the research on intimate partner violence focuses on adults, and little of it emanates from the Global-South. The study reported upon in this chapter is aimed at addressing these gaps. Adopting a Southern Feminist Framework, it discusses findings from interviews with Brasilian and Australian advocates working on prevention of youth IPV. Participants from both countries noted disturbing instances of digital coercive control among the youth with whom they work, as well as underlying factors such as gender-based discrimination that simultaneously contribute to the prevalence of such behaviors, as well as their normalization among young people. However, they also emphasized the positive role that technology can play in distributing educational programming that reaches young people where they are and circumvents conservative agendas that in some cases keep education about gender discrimination and healthy relationships out of schools.