Toward a New Social Contract: A Tripartite Mixed-Methods Analysis of Social Sustainability at Three Land-Grant Universities

Increasingly, colleges and universities in the United States are adapting toward a model of behavior that incorporates issues of sustainability. This adaptation in universities and in society has implications on the organizational and nation-state level, the very core of which may serve to reshape the social contract between the two. In addition to supplying a strong counter-hegemonic argument that alters the competitive economic agenda-setting paradigm, this study serves as a tripartite comparative case study analysis of university adaptation toward social sustainability. By employing a social capital lens to understanding social sustainability in higher education, this study seeks to examine the relationship between higher education, sustainability, and the nation-state.The conceptual framework of this analysis will draw on Putnam\u27s concept of social capital, in the effort to understand the relationship between higher education, sustainability, and social capital as well as what a sustainability paradigm could mean in terms of a new social contract. The methodology of this study is exploratory and aimed at understanding university adaptation in three ways: first, elements of organization and administration aimed at advancing sustainability; second, teaching and research efforts that have been established within a sustainability frame; and third, community and outreach efforts that examines the role of the university in its local environment as well as the work toward public service. The specific methodology employed can be categorized as comparative case study (Yin, 2003). To validate findings, data is triangulated via a between-methods design and collected through: qualitative survey, contextual content analysis, and comparative discourse analysis respectively (Jaeger, 1988). The result is effectively a 3 x 3 mixed methods design so that each individual case study employs each of the three methodologies in order to provide a rich description of the social sustainability phenomena and offer data for comparative discourse analysis. Findings reveal three distinct strands amongst the case studies in the analysis of sustainability discourse. Results show the importance of the role of, organizational context, personal approach of the chief sustainability agent, and organizational saga in contributing to adaptation. In this way, sustainability approaches and the priority and university adaptation differed. These three approaches can be described as: an energy/operations/facilities perspective, a research and academic-focused perspective, and a humanistic-grassroots approach

Self-Determination Through Circus Arts: Exploring Youth Development in a Novel Activity Context

Youth development takes place in many contexts, with different resulting participant outcomes. Broadening the scope of research to include non-traditional contexts such as youth circus arts programs, which are both similar to and different from other out-of-school-time contexts, may promote better understanding of the ways in which these programs impact youth development. The present study examined the prevalence of support for basic psychological needs and positive developmental outcomes among youth circus program participants. Single time-point quantitative surveys were completed by 111 youth members of the American Youth Circus Organization (62% female), ranging in age from 10 to 21. Results indicated psychological need support predicted positive developmental outcomes. Relatedness was the strongest predictor of intrinsic motivation, affect, and positive youth development. This study illustrates a novel way in which physical activity and youth development can be integrated in youth programs. It contributes to the understanding of youths’ self-determined motivation in physical activities and points to the importance of examining under-studied youth activity contexts such as circus arts

Debt, Doubt, and Dreams: Understanding the Latino College Completion Gap

We surveyed individuals who had matriculated to, but never completed, at least one college program (community college, college, university, trade school, or certificate program). With a survey sample of more than 1,500 respondents, 35 percent of whom self-identified as Latino* (Latino = 522; non-Latino = 985), we gathered critical information about the most salient barriers to college completion, especially those that disproportionately burden Latino students. Based on prior literature and research, we paid particular attention to the relationship between debt, attitudes about debt, and college completion. We organized the barriers to college completion into four categories: precollege, institutional, environmental, and financial. Precollege factors account for one’s experience and environment before entering a higher education program, including high school academic experience, social capital, and motivation and/or fit at college. Institutional factors account for one’s experience and environment with and at the chosen college institution and include academic integration and cultural integration. Environmental factors account for the responsibilities and challenges in one’s life outside of school while in a college program, and include family responsibilities, health concerns, and transportation concerns. Financial factors account for the financial pressures and stressors facing students, including financial crises, need to work, and desire to avoid debt

The Impact of Leisure Constraints on Physical Activity Among Parent - Adolescent Dyads

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Measuring Concurrency Attitudes: Development and Validation of a Vignette-Based Scale

Concurrent sexual partnerships (partnerships that overlap in time) may contribute to higher rates of HIV transmission in African Americans. Attitudes toward a behavior constitute an important component of most models of health-related behavior and behavioral change. We have developed a scale, employing realistic vignettes that appear to reliably measure attitudes about concurrency in young African American adults

Exploring Purpose as a Resource for Promoting Youth Program Engagement

Recent evidence that reflecting on one’s purpose in life increases engagement with academic tasks inspires questions about whether purpose interventions might enhance learning engagement more broadly. This potential may be particularly fruitful for programs serving youth from a wide range of ages wherein sustaining engagement may be challenging. Here, we explored whether a brief purpose writing intervention would increase adolescents’ engagement in 4-H programs. Participants (N = 130) were randomly assigned to write about either their sense of purpose or a control topic prior to the first day of a program, and they reported their level of program engagement at the end of that day. Regression analysis showed participant age was negatively associated with program engagement. However, writing about purpose halted this age-related decline in engagement. These preliminary findings situate purpose as a resource that can be leveraged to sustain older youths’ interest and engagement in youth programming

Predictors of Nonresponse in a Longitudinal Survey of Adolescents

Research in this study focuses on two related aspects of unit nonresponse (nonresponse by sampled members of study populations) in the rounds of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) (Chantala and Tabor, 1999): (i) round-specific nonresponse bias and its component contributions, and (ii) the statistical utility of alternative approaches to adjusting sample weights for nonresponse. This work is part of four research studies funded by CDC-NCHS, at the UNC Center for Health Statistics Research

Primary Care Physicians’ Knowledge of and Experience with Pharmacogenetic Testing

It is anticipated that as the range of drugs for which pharmacogenetic testing becomes available expands, primary care physicians (PCPs) will become major users of these tests. To assess their training, familiarity, and attitudes toward pharmacogenetic testing in order to identify barriers to uptake that may be addressed at this early stage of test use, we conducted a national survey of a sample of PCPs. Respondents were mostly white (79%), based primarily in community-based primary care (81%) and almost evenly divided between family medicine and internal medicine. The majority of respondents had heard of PGx testing and anticipated that these tests are or would soon become a valuable tool to inform drug response. However, only a minority of respondents (13%) indicated they felt comfortable ordering PGx tests and almost a quarter reported not having any education about pharmacogenetics

Consideration of patient preferences and challenges in storage and access of pharmacogenetic test results

Pharmacogenetic (PGx) testing is one of the primary drivers of personalized medicine. The use of PGx testing may provide a lifetime of benefits through tailoring drug dosing and selection of multiple medications to improve therapeutic outcomes and reduce adverse responses. We aimed to assess public interest and concerns regarding sharing and storage of PGx test results that would facilitate the re-use of PGx data across a lifetime of care

Research-Practice Partnerships as Community-Engaged Learning: Lessons Learned from a Collaborative Project with Youth Development Programs

To bridge the gap between community-engaged learning and research-practice partnerships, we describe our experiences in a project jointly conceptualized and implemented by undergraduate students and youth development practitioners over the course of two academic semesters. The project offered students the opportunity to apply the skills they learned through coursework in a way that also supported the needs of community practitioners, providing both groups with opportunities to learn from each other. In this paper we describe the collaborative project, our process, the challenges we faced, and the impact of the project on the student researchers and the youth development practitioners. Written by representatives of both the student researchers and the practitioner collaborators, we hope this paper will inspire others to incorporate students in research-practice partnerships and that our reflections on the strengths and challenges of this process will facilitate more effective implementation of community-engaged scholarship in the future