Do universities benefit local youth? Evidence from the creation of new universities

In this study, I examine university and college participation rates, as well as graduate outcomes, following the establishment of a university in cities where there were previously none. The creation of a local university is associated with a large increase in university attendance among local youth in each affected city. However, the increase in university participation came at the expense of college participation in most cities. Furthermore, not everyone benefited equally from new universities in terms of university enrolment. In the short run, the creation of a local university is associated with a substantial increase in the probability of moving out of one city for men and women. For men, employment rates rise, while for women, there is an increase in business services and public sector employment.     

The Value of Vocalizing: Five-Month-Old Infants Associate Their Own Noncry Vocalizations With Responses From Caregivers

The early noncry vocalizations of infants are salient social signals. Caregivers spontaneously respond to 30%–50% of these sounds, and their responsiveness to infants’ prelinguistic noncry vocalizations facilitates the development of phonology and speech. Have infants learned that their vocalizations influence the behavior of social partners? If they have, infants should show an extinction burst in vocalizing when adults temporarily stop responding to infant vocalizations. Thirty‐eight 5‐month‐olds were tested in the still‐face paradigm with an unfamiliar adult. When the adult assumed a still face, infants showed an extinction burst. Thus, 5‐month‐olds have learned the social efficacy of their vocalizations on caregivers’ behavior. Furthermore, the magnitude of 5‐month infants’ extinction bursts predicted their language comprehension at 13 months.     

Engineering Privacy by Design: Are engineers ready to live up to the challenge?

Organizations struggle to comply with legal requirements as well as customers’ calls for better data protection. On the implementation level, incorporation of privacy protections in products and services depends on the commitment of the engineers who design them. We interviewed six senior engineers, who work for globally leading IT corporations and research institutions, to investigate their motivation and ability to comply with privacy regulations. Our findings point to a lack of perceived responsibility, control, autonomy, and frustrations with interactions with the legal world. While we increasingly call on engineers to go beyond functional requirements and be responsive to human values in our increasingly technological society, we may be facing the dilemma of asking engineers to live up to a challenge they are currently not ready to embrace.     

The gender gap in early career transitions in the life sciences

We examined the extent to which and why early career transitions have led to women being underrepresented among faculty in the life sciences. We followed the careers of 6,336 scientists from the post-doctoral fellowship stage to becoming a principal investigator (PI) – a critical transition in the academic life sciences. Using a unique dataset that connects individuals’ National Institutes of Health funding histories to their publication records, we found that a large portion of the overall gender gap in the life sciences emerges at this transition. Women become PIs at a 20% lower rate than men. Differences in “productivity” (publication records) can explain about 60% of this differential. The remaining portion appears to stem from gender differences in the returns to similar publication records, with women receiving less credit for their citations.     

Requirements engineering for e-Government services: A citizen-centric approach and case study

Throughout the last decade, user involvement in e-Government service design has been virtually non-existent. Over time, e-Government experts began to realize that these services would benefit from a citizen-centric requirements engineering approach which has led to a demand for such an approach for this particular field. This article presents a citizen-centric approach towards user requirements engineering for e-Government services. It utilizes interviews and citizen walkthroughs of low-fidelity prototypes. A case study of a social support portal illustrates the approach and shows the need for repeated citizen inquiry, as the implementation of user requirements in low-fidelity prototype design is not always accepted by prospective end-users.     

Creating procedural justice and legitimate authority within school discipline systems through youth court

Schools' ability to manage student misbehavior rests largely on students' perceptions of the discipline system and authority. According to the procedural justice perspective, when schools use discipline practices students perceive as unfair, they fail to see authority as legitimate, making them less likely to comply with rules and demand. Youth Court, a peer adjudication program, has been implemented in schools as an alternative to punitive policies. While effective, there is no current research that examines if Youth Court creates procedural justice and legitimate authority. Using qualitative data from three urban schools, this study investigates the fairness of Youth Court procedures within a procedural justice framework, as well as perceptions of primary discipline practices and authority. Findings revealed that each school still largely uses punitive policies that create procedural unfairness and undermine legitimate authority. Additionally, findings indicate Youth Court utilizes practices that allow for procedural justice that foster legitimate authority.     

Exploring fourth graders’ sourcing skills / Un análisis de la capacidad de escrutinio sobre las fuentes de información de los estudiantes de cuarto grado

Acquiring information from the Web creates new educational demands even in elementary school. Children need to scrutinize source information (‘sourcing’) to choose trustworthy information. So far, few studies have documented young readers’ abilities to identify and evaluate source information. With two studies, we seek to gather more evidence on elementary students’ sourcing skills and use. In study 1, we investigate to what extent fourth graders can identify source information and evaluate informants’ expertise and intentions in simplistic, age-appropriate reading tasks. In study 2, we explore whether fourth graders spontaneously apply their sourcing skills when reading simplified multiple documents. Results suggest that fourth graders can successfully identify source information and evaluate informants’ expertise and intentions in simple and direct tasks but fail to apply this ability to more complex and implicit tasks. Implications for information literacy education are discussed.