Showing papers in "American Behavioral Scientist in 2013"

Racism and Health I: Pathways and Scientific Evidence

Abstract: This article reviews the scientific research that indicates that despite marked declines in public support for negative racial attitudes in the United States, racism, in its multiple forms, remains embedded in American society. The focus of the article is on the review of empirical research that suggests that racism adversely affects the health of nondominant racial populations in multiple ways. First, institutional racism developed policies and procedures that have reduced access to housing, neighborhood and educational quality, employment opportunities, and other desirable resources in society. Second, cultural racism, at the societal and individual level, negatively affects economic status and health by creating a policy environment hostile to egalitarian policies, triggering negative stereotypes and discrimination that are pathogenic and fostering health-damaging psychological responses, such as stereotype threat and internalized racism. Finally, a large and growing body of evidence indicates that experiences of racial discrimination are an important type of psychosocial stressor that can lead to adverse changes in health status and altered behavioral patterns that increase health risks.

Learning Analytics The Emergence of a Discipline

Abstract: Recently, learning analytics (LA) has drawn the attention of academics, researchers, and administrators. This interest is motivated by the need to better understand teaching, learning, “intelligent content,” and personalization and adaptation. While still in the early stages of research and implementation, several organizations (Society for Learning Analytics Research and the International Educational Data Mining Society) have formed to foster a research community around the role of data analytics in education. This article considers the research fields that have contributed technologies and methodologies to the development of learning analytics, analytics models, the importance of increasing analytics capabilities in organizations, and models for deploying analytics in educational settings. The challenges facing LA as a field are also reviewed, particularly regarding the need to increase the scope of data capture so that the complexity of the learning process can be more accurately reflected in analysis....

Learning Analytics: Ethical Issues and Dilemmas

Abstract: The field of learning analytics has the potential to enable higher education institutions to increase their understanding of their students’ learning needs and to use that understanding to positively influence student learning and progression. Analysis of data relating to students and their engagement with their learning is the foundation of this process. There is an inherent assumption linked to learning analytics that knowledge of a learner’s behavior is advantageous for the individual, instructor, and educational provider. It seems intuitively obvious that a greater understanding of a student cohort and the learning designs and interventions they best respond to would benefit students and, in turn, the institution’s retention and success rate. Yet collection of data and their use face a number of ethical challenges, including location and interpretation of data; informed consent, privacy, and deidentification of data; and classification and management of data. Approaches taken to understand the opportu...

Learning analytics dashboard applications

Abstract: This article introduces learning analytics dashboards that visualize learning traces for learners and teachers. We present a conceptual framework that helps to analyze learning analytics applications for these kinds of users. We then present our own work in this area and compare with 15 related dashboard applications for learning. Most evaluations evaluate only part of our conceptual framework and do not assess whether dashboards contribute to behavior change or new understanding, probably also because such assessment requires longitudinal studies.

Unpacking the Use of Social Media for Protest Behavior: The Roles of Information, Opinion Expression, and Activism

Abstract: Recent studies have shown a positive link between frequency of social media use and political participation. However, there has been no clear elaboration of how using social media translates into increased political activity. The current study examines three explanations for this relationship in the context of citizens’ protest behavior: information (social media as a source for news), opinion expression (using social media to express political opinions), and activism (joining causes and finding mobilizing information through social media). To test these relationships, the study uses survey data collected in Chile in 2011, amid massive demonstrations demanding wholesale changes in education and energy policy. Findings suggest that using social media for opinion expression and activism mediates the relationship between overall social media use and protest behavior. These findings deepen our knowledge of the uses and effects of social media and provide new evidence on the role of digital platforms as facili...

Informing Pedagogical Action: Aligning Learning Analytics With Learning Design

Abstract: This article considers the developing field of learning analytics and argues that to move from small-scale practice to broad scale applicability, there is a need to establish a contextual framework that helps teachers interpret the information that analytics provides. The article presents learning design as a form of documentation of pedagogical intent that can provide the context for making sense of diverse sets of analytic data. We investigate one example of learning design to explore how broad categories of analytics—which we call checkpoint and process analytics—can inform the interpretation of outcomes from a learning design and facilitate pedagogical action.

The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia’s Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its Decline

Abstract: Open collaboration systems, such as Wikipedia, need to maintain a pool of volunteer contributors to remain relevant. Wikipedia was created through a tremendous number of contributions by millions of contributors. However, recent research has shown that the number of active contributors in Wikipedia has been declining steadily for years and suggests that a sharp decline in the retention of newcomers is the cause. This article presents data that show how several changes the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have ironically crippled the very growth they were designed to manage. Specifically, the restrictiveness of the encyclopedia’s primary quality control mechanism and the algorithmic tools used to reject contributions are implicated as key causes of decreased newcomer retention. Furthermore, the community’s formal mechanisms for norm articulation are shown to have calcified against changes—especially changes proposed by newer editors.

No Place to Belong Contextualizing Concepts of Mental Health Among Undocumented Immigrant Youth in the United States

Abstract: This article examines the consequences of undocumented immigration status for those who grow up in the United States. The aim is to examine the relationship between undocumented immigrant status and mental and emotional health. Our efforts focus on undocumented immigrants who arrive as children and spend most of their formative years in the United States. The experiences of these undocumented members of the 1.5 generation are quite different from those who migrate as adults. We are interested in better understanding the effects confusing and conflicting experiences of inclusion and exclusion have on their mental and emotional health as well as the protective factors that may shape resilience. While previous scholarship has drawn some important implications to experiences of stress among undocumented youth and young adults, to our knowledge, no work has been done to explicitly draw the link to mental and emotional health. The article concludes with some suggestions for future research on the topic.

Climategate, Public Opinion, and the Loss of Trust

Abstract: Nationally representative surveys conducted in 2008 and 2010 found significant declines in Americans’ climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and trust in scientists. Drawing upon the Social Ampl...

Occupy Wall Street Exploring Informal Learning About a Social Movement on Twitter

Abstract: Recent events suggest that social media, also called web 2.0, can support mass social change. Although some critics have lamented how social media are eroding people’s ability to communicate, others have argued that social media may allow individuals to leverage their individual voices against authoritarian leaders. This article seeks to understand the ways in which individuals can use a particular social media platform, the microblog Twitter, to learn about the Occupy Wall Street movement. This article uses a mixed-methods approach, incorporating descriptive statistics, content analysis, and a case study of the author’s learning process to examine the existence of informal learning about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Scholars have proposed that informal learning about a social movement is associated with participation in the movement. This study suggests that Twitter supports multiple opportunities for participation in the Occupy movement—from creating, tagging, and sharing content to reading, watchin...

Motivation for Open Collaboration: Crowd and Community Models and the Case of OpenStreetMap

Abstract: This article presents an examination of motivational factors relating to contribution to the wiki OpenStreetMap, a site for voluntary geographic information. Based on a wide literature review of mo...

The Arab Spring and Social Media Audiences English and Arabic Twitter Users and Their Networks

Abstract: Although popular media narratives about the role of social media in driving the events of the 2011 “Arab Spring” are likely to overstate the impact of Facebook and Twitter on these uprisings, it is...

Climate Change Denial Books and Conservative Think Tanks: Exploring the Connection

Abstract: The conservative movement and especially its think tanks play a critical role in denying the reality and significance of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), especially by manufacturing uncertainty over climate science. Books denying AGW are a crucial means of attacking climate science and scientists, and we examine the links between conservative think tanks (CTTs) and 108 climate change denial books published through 2010. We find a strong link, albeit noticeably weaker for the growing number of self-published denial books. We also examine the national origins of the books and the academic backgrounds of their authors or editors, finding that with the help of American CTTs climate change denial has spread to several other nations and that an increasing portion of denial books are produced by individuals with no scientific training. It appears that at least 90% of denial books do not undergo peer review, allowing authors or editors to recycle scientifically unfounded claims that are then amplified by the conservative movement, media, and political elites.

“Not This One”: Social Movements, the Attention Economy, and Microcelebrity Networked Activism

Abstract: The emergent new media ecology which integrates participatory media into the structure of global information flows has fundamentally affected the means of production and distribution of attention, ...

A Cooling Climate for Change? Party Polarization and the Politics of Global Warming

Abstract: Analysis of three cross-sectional polls administered by the Gallup Organization at 10-year intervals—in 1990, 2000, and 2010—demonstrates that partisan identification has become an increasingly important determinant of environmental concern within the American mass public. Polarization on global warming is especially clear, even when compared to a variety of other social, economic, and political problems, but party sorting seems to occur only as citizens acquire information and become familiar with elite cues. The implications of this for the U.S. environmental movement and the strategies it employs are discussed.

Broadcasters and Hidden Influentials in Online Protest Diffusion

Abstract: This article explores the growth of online mobilizations using data from the indignados (outraged) movement in Spain, which emerged under the influence of the revolution in Egypt and as a precursor...

Precarious, Informalizing, and Flexible Work Transforming Concepts and Understandings

Abstract: There is a considerable body of academic and activist research that studies the prevalence of precariousness in contemporary societies. It goes by many names that are often interchangeable, including precarious work, precarity, informalization, and casualization. These are typically rooted in emerging theories of labor and work that temporally correspond to the globalization of production, distribution, and consumption in the neoliberal era. This article examines new ways of looking at the global economic system as a whole while focusing on the diverse experiences associated with precarious work. We address prominent social movements and scholarly responses to changes in work and life, including transforming politics and policy initiatives.

Bad Jobs, Bad Health? How Work and Working Conditions Contribute to Health Disparities:

Abstract: In this review, we touch on a broad array of ways that work is linked to health and health disparities for individuals and societies. First focusing on the health of individuals, we discuss the health differences between those who do and do not work for pay, and review key positive and negative exposures that can generate health disparities among the employed. These include both psychosocial factors like the benefits of a high-status job or the burden of perceived job insecurity, as well as physical exposures to dangerous working conditions like asbestos or rotating shift work. We also provide a discussion of the ways differential exposure to these aspects of work contributes to social disparities in health within and across generations. Analytic complexities in assessing the link between work and health for individuals, such as health selection, are also discussed. We then touch on several contextual-level associations between work and the health of populations, discussing the importance of the occupational structure in a given society, the policy environment that prevails there, and the oscillations of the macroeconomy for generating societal disparities in health. We close with a discussion of four areas and associated recommendations that draw on this corpus of knowledge but would push the research on work, health, and inequality toward even greater scholarly and policy relevance.

Spatial Polygamy and Contextual Exposures (SPACEs): Promoting Activity Space Approaches in Research on Place And Health

Abstract: Exposure science has developed rapidly and there is an increasing call for greater precision in the measurement of individual exposures across space and time. Social science interest in an individual’s environmental exposure, broadly conceived, has arguably been quite limited conceptually and methodologically. Indeed, in social science, we appear to lag behind our exposure science colleagues in our theories, data, and methods. In this article, we discuss a framework based on the concept of spatial polygamy to demonstrate the need to collect new forms of data on human spatial behavior and contextual exposures across time and space. Adopting new data and methods will be essential if one wants to better understand social inequality in terms of exposure to health risks and access to health resources. We discuss the opportunities and challenges focusing on the potential seemingly offered by focusing on human mobility and, specifically, the utilization of activity space concepts and data. A goal of the article is to spatialize social and health science concepts and research practice vis-a-vis the complexity of exposure. The article concludes with some recommendations for future research, focusing on theoretical and conceptual development promoting research on new types of places and human movement, the dynamic nature of contexts, and training.

Precarious Work and the Challenge for Asia

Abstract: This article discusses the social, economic, and political factors that led to the rise and consolidation of precarious work in various countries in Asia. We first define what we mean by “precarious work” and its utility for describing the growth of work that is uncertain and insecure and in which risks are shifted from employers to workers. We then provide an overview of the factors that generated precarious work in industrial nations, notably the spread of neoliberalism as a political and economic perspective, the expansion of global competition, and technological development. These macro structural influences created an impetus for greater flexibility among both states and employers, which in turn led to more precarious work in both formal and informal sectors of the economies of many Asian countries. This, in turn, has provoked various types of resistance on the part of workers against the negative consequences of precarious work.

“Choose Your Classmates, Your GPA Is at Stake!”: The Association of Cross-Class Social Ties and Academic Performance

Abstract: This article presents results from an investigation of the association between student academic performance and social ties. Based on social capital and networked learning research, we hypothesized...

Media Literacy as a Core Competency for Engaged Citizenship in Participatory Democracy

Abstract: The ubiquitous media landscape today is reshaping what it means to be an engaged citizen. Normative metrics for engagement—voting, attending town meetings, participation in civic groups—are eroding in the context of online advocacy, social protest, “liking,” sharing, and remixing. These new avenues for engagement offer vast opportunities for new and innovative approaches to teaching and learning about political engagement in the context of new media platforms and technologies. This article explores digital media literacy as a core competency for engaged citizenship in participatory democracy. It combines new models of engaged and citizenship and participatory politics with frameworks for digital and media literacy education, to develop a framework for media literacy as a core political competency for active, engaged, and participatory citizenship.

Leading Voices in the Denier Choir Conservative Columnists’ Dismissal of Global Warming and Denigration of Climate Science

Abstract: The conservative “echo chamber” is a crucial element of the climate change denial machine. Although social scientists have begun to examine the role of conservative media in the denial campaign, this article reports the first examination of conservative newspaper columnists. Syndicated columnists are very influential because they reach a large audience. We analyze 203 opinion editorials (“op-eds”) written by 80 different columnists published from 2007 to 2010, a period that saw a number of crucial events and policy proposals regarding climate change. We focus on the key topics the columnists address and the skeptical arguments they employ. The overall results reveal a highly dismissive view of climate change and critical stance toward climate science among these influential conservative pundits. They play a crucial role in amplifying the denial machine’s messages to a broad segment of the American public.

Inequality, Family Processes, and Health in the “New” Rural America

Abstract: Rural America is commonly viewed as a repository of virtuous and patriotic values, deeply rooted in a proud immigrant history of farmers and industrious working-class White ethnics from northern Europe. These views are not always consistent with the population and socioeconomic realities of rural terrains. Exceptions to these stereotypes are self-evident among large poor racial/ethnic minorities residing in rural ghettos in the “dirty” South and among poor Whites living in remote, mountainous areas of Appalachia. For these disadvantaged populations, sociocultural and economic isolation, a lack of quality education, too few jobs, and poor health have taken a human toll, generation after generation. Moreover, the past several decades have brought dramatic shifts in the spatial distribution and magnitude of poverty in these areas. And, America’s persistent racial inequalities have continued to fester as rural communities become home to urban-origin racial minority migrants and immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. As a result, the face of rural America has changed, quite literally. In this article, we address the primary question these changes pose: How will shifting inequalities anchored in poverty and race shape health disparities in a “new” rural America? Guided by fundamental cause theory, we explore the scope and sources of poverty and race inequalities in rural America, how patterns in these inequalities are transduced within families, and what these inequalities mean for the future of health disparities within and across rural U.S. terrains. Our goal is to review and interrogate the extant literature on this topic with the intent of offering recommendations for future research.

Where Does Political Polarization Come From? Locating Polarization Within the U.S. Climate Change Debate:

Abstract: How do we understand political polarization within the US climate change debate? This article unpacks the different components of the debate to determine the source of the political divide that is so noted in the mainstream media and academic literatures Through analysis of the content of congressional hearings on the issue of climate change, we are able to explain political polarization of the issue more fully In particular, our results show that, contrary to representations in the mainstream media, there is increasing consensus over the science of the issue Discussions of the type of policy instrument and the economic implications of regulating carbon dioxide emissions, however, continue to polarize opinion This article concludes by exploring how these findings help us understand more recent political events around climate change

Defining, Understanding, and Supporting Open Collaboration: Lessons From the Literature

Abstract: In this short introductory piece, we define open collaboration and contextualize the diverse articles in this special issue in a common vocabulary and history. We provide a definition of open collaboration and situate the phenomenon within an interrelated set of scholarly and ideological movements. We then examine the properties of open collaboration systems that have given rise to research and review major areas of scholarship. We close with a summary of consistent findings in open collaboration research to date.

Racism and Health II A Needed Research Agenda for Effective Interventions

Abstract: This article reviews the empirical evidence that suggests that there is a solid foundation for more systematic research attention to the ways in which interventions that seek to reduce the multiple dimensions of racism can improve health and reduce disparities in health. First, research reveals that policies and procedures that seek to reduce institutional racism by improving neighborhood and educational quality and enhancing access to additional income, employment opportunities, and other desirable resources can improve health. Second, research is reviewed that shows that there is the potential to improve health through interventions that can reduce cultural racism at the societal and individual level. Finally, research is presented that suggests that the adverse consequences of racism on health can be reduced through policies that maximize the health-enhancing capacities of medical care, address the social factors that initiate and sustain risk behaviors, and empower individuals and communities to take control of their lives and health. Directions for future research are outlined.

Public Enemy No. 1?: Understanding Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change

Abstract: Outlier voices—particularly those views often dubbed climate “skeptics,” “denialists,” or “contrarians”—have gained prominence and traction in mass media over time through a mix of internal working...

Hot Off the Wiki Structures and Dynamics of Wikipedia’s Coverage of Breaking News Events

Abstract: Wikipedia’s coverage of breaking news and current events dominates editor contributions and reader attention in any given month. Collaborators on breaking news articles rapidly synthesize content t...