Journal of Applied Social Science

This study examines loneliness within 12,019 patients in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States with existing health conditions who are at risk for worsening health, higher care utilization, and higher costs. Member survey data from Highmark, a large Blue Cross Blue Shield insurer, is used to examine the prevalence of loneliness and investigate its association with social determinants of health to understand which needs pose the greatest risk in developing or maintaining loneliness. Findings reveal that concern over a potential lack of food and housing may matter more than the material lack of resources. This study also finds that many social determinants associated with loneliness depend on age, calling for greater sociological inquiry into the processes involved in the loneliness of precarity. Identifying intervention points is key to lessening loneliness and improving health outcomes.

This study involved the analyses of extant data from two U.S. states of post-school outcomes (PSO) for students with a specific learning disability (SLD) one year after they had exited high school. The purpose of this study was to fill two gaps in the literature. The first gap was to understand what happened to these exiters in the first year after high school related to employment and further education or training at a state level. The second gap was to demonstrate the necessity of local and state education professionals to use PSO data, which is collected annually, by applying predictive analytics (PA) to support their decision making. The data analyses produced two main findings. One, the strongest predictors of PSO were students graduating from high school and their high school classroom placement. Two, PA was reasonably accurate in predicting PSO and demonstrated robust capabilities for reliable use on an annual basis to support policies, programs, and practices. Limitations of this study related to the data and number of predictors. The study concludes with implications of administrative state data use and PA for state and local education professionals and for researchers.

Myriad research examines benefits and drawbacks of working from home, both pre- and post-pandemic. Our research looks at how work from home mandates due to the COVID-19 pandemic were implemented, primarily by those who also had caregiver roles to fulfill. We used a convenience sample, drawing from full-time college faculty at a mid-sized state college in Florida, gathering information from caregivers and non-caregivers for comparative purposes. As we analyzed our data, we considered two additional concepts: Elmore’s backward mapping, which asks us to consider how employer mandates are implemented and will assist us in making policy recommendations, and Smith’s Standpoint, which allowed us to consider our own different gendered experiences as we analyzed survey responses. Our findings reveal that there are some employees well suited to working from home, while others are less enthusiastic about this initiative, and that a significant factor is household caregiving responsibilities, often considered to be the domain of women. Our insights shed light on differences in caregiver-employee statuses; we hope to help guide effective institutional policy should there be a need for workplaces to shut down again and to encourage administrators to consider faculty who may be a good work from home fit should it be considered for everyday work. Understanding where the strengths and weaknesses were/are for workers who work from home will benefit employers.

Individuals experience different types of role strain when managing work-family role boundaries (work-family role integrating vs. segmenting), which thus affects their perceived difficulty in work and family role demands. The current research explores whether integrating work-family role boundaries ameliorates role strain. To address the subjectthe research explored 408 full-time employees in North America using data collected from a 2005 dataset that used the e-mail method. Results show that integrating work-family role boundaries does not show lower levels of role strain and thus does not theoretically support work-family role boundary theory.

In this study, we clarified the effect of training by enterprise size for the training service (TOSA Marugoto Business Academy Project [Tosa MBA]) provided by Kochi Prefecture in Japan by applying structural equation modeling to online survey data. In large enterprises, expert knowledge that can be used at work had a positive effect on job satisfaction rather than career status such as annual income and job title. This may have been the case as while promotion involves higher wages and greater privileges, in large enterprises, the extent of responsibility and working hours increase even more. Conversely, in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), career status has a more positive effect on job satisfaction than does expert knowledge. For SMEs with a simple organizational structure, job position has a greater influence on work attitudes. The results present meaningful suggestions to enhance the design of local government training services.

This paper presents preliminary findings from two prison horticulture intervention projects. Our project sites are located in a women’s community corrections facility in the U.S. Midwest and a women’s maximum-security prison in the Southeastern United States. These garden projects illustrate the importance of sociological theory and clinical sociological practice in the development of programs that will benefit incarcerated women who remain underserved and disenfranchised in U.S. society. We apply Bourdieu’s theories of capital to understand incarcerated women’s lived experiences. We find that clinical sociological prison gardens foster women’s rehabilitation and increase food security within incarcerated settings. They also are an important site of capital and skill-building for participants.

Marginalized populations, such as people experiencing homelessness and immigrants, are seen as among the most challenging populations to study, both methodologically and ethically. Although there are basic guidelines on how to conduct research with majority populations, the relative lack of published guidelines on how to conduct ethical and scientifically rigorous research with marginalized populations can make researchers apprehensive about seemingly unending questions from grant reviewers and institutional review boards (IRBs) concerning research ethics and the safety of human subjects. As a result, there is a persisting gap in research conducting large-scale studies on these populations outside of community organizations and clinical and institutional settings. We emphasize the calls of prior research to streamline IRB processes further to study vulnerable groups. In this paper, we focus on the study of people experiencing homelessness, yet we have used related methods to study immigrants, including those who may be undocumented. We provide guidelines derived from successful social scientific studies on homelessness and immigrants, which can be used to help ease IRB approval for other researchers to gather important data. The benefits of social science research on hard-to-reach populations often outweigh possible risk. By helping to increase research on hidden populations, we can improve the scientific rigor of all research and make important contributions to knowledge.

The Internet provides many societal benefits such as diversified sources of information, communication, and entertainment. However, the development of the Internet has negatively impacted users in some ways, with many users displaying symptoms of Internet addiction. Internet addiction is an emerging societal problem, warranting research on its causes. This study examines the impact of perceived social support and the mediating role of emotional intelligence on Internet addiction among Vietnamese undergraduates. The respondents included 787 randomly undergraduate students in Vietnam. The study used exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and using SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 20.0. The results showed that perceived social support negatively affected Internet addiction, and emotional intelligence played a mediating role in the relationship between perceived social support and Internet addiction.

Lack of accessibility and affordability to safe and affordable drinking water remains a major challenge in fulfilling sustainable development goals. Community-based water management emerged as a policy response to address the issues. However, the impact of producing community-based water supply institutions on the community is hardly noticed in this context. This paper tries to fill the gap through the relational understanding between the provision of safe water and communities’ socioeconomic upliftment, which remains the main reason behind the establishment of the potable water facility in Porapara village located in West Midnapur district of the state of West Bengal, India. The study findings revealed that community participation through the process of empowerment results in good governance of the potable water project and the socioeconomic well-being of the community in Porapara village. This kind of intervention study may help policymakers in evaluating the societal impact to achieve socioeconomic well-being.