Early Precursors of Gang Membership: A Study of Seattle Youth

Karl G. Hill, Christina Lui, and J. David Hawkins

This study focuses on Seattle’s youth. It was done by the Seattle Social Development Project. This study looked at the behaviors between kids that are in gangs and kids that are not. The study was done in the 90’s. The research question for this research study is “Why do some youth join gangs while others do not?”.  So, the topic would be gangs and their decisions on why they want to join a gang. This is a good question to answer because this way we can know how to prevent the youth from joining them. The type of data used for this study is Acts, Behaviors, and Events. I would use this data because the surveyor wants to know if the children are involved in a gang or what kind of crimes they have committed. The data gathering method they used for this study was surveys and questioners. There were 808 kids that took these surveys.  The type of data analysis they used was categorical data. They were asked whether they were male or female.  They were also asked their age and what ethnicity they were. Overall I think this was a good study. I want to do something like this. I want to look at gang members and interview do them and ask them why they joined gangs. I will use this information to shape my research study. Something I think they did well was the use of graphs to show their results.

In the article “Long-term changes in soil pH across major forest ecosystems in China” the researchers look at various samples and research some long term effects in the soils of the Chinese forests because of the heavy industrial pollution produced in the recent years. In order to do that they  examined temporal variations in topsoil pH and their relationships with atmospheric sulfur and nitrogen deposition across China’s forests from the 1980s to the 2000s. To accomplish this goal, the researchers conducted artificial neural network simulations using historical data from the 1980s and a data set from literature published after 2000. The abstract further summarized their results, saying that there is a definite  negative correlation between atmospheric sulfur and nitrogen deposition, further supporting the argument that there is a need for measures that reduce sulfur and nitrogen emissions so as to maintain ecosystem structure and function in forests and any other ecosystem that may be effected.

The purpose of this study was to better our understanding of the effect of acidic deposition on soil pH, especially in China’s. It is generally well known that the effect of acidic deposition on soil pH is not very good for most plants and the animals that relay on them.  The data used in this study was mostly historical and various reports on how what was emitted and where and then experiments on different soils from the soils all collected together and ran through a satirical analysis software to look for a correlation that came out to be quite strong and in support of their hypothesis that there was a lot of harmful sulfur and nitrogen polluting and damaging the ecosystems.

To gather the data the researchers had to use both detached observations and various records that had been put together in previous years. I think this was a fairly useful study and incredibly important when trying to prove that there is an environmental issue present to be addressed. The only issue is their data for the historical soils is somewhat old, but that is a fairly minor issue.

Yang, Y., Li, P., He, H., Zhao, X., Datta, A., Ma, W., Zhang, Y., Liu, X., Han, W., Wilson, M. C. and Fang, J. (2015), Long-term changes in soil pH across major forest ecosystems in China. Geophys. Res. Lett., 42: 933–940. doi: 10.1002/2014GL062575.

In the education system today, there is a growing problem surrounding the suspension and expulsion rate, especially in high-density socioeconomically disadvantaged areas around the United States. These suspension and expulsion rates then tend to then be related to truancy, and poor performance in school, which then tends to lead to juvenile delinquency. Craig J. Forsyth, Holly Howat, Lai K. Pei, York A. Forsyth, Gary Asmus and Billy R. Stokes conducted a study in Louisiana to investigate patterns in school discipline infractions that lead to suspension and expulsion specifically focusing on the differences between the four racial/ethnic groups. The researchers goals were to answer these five questions. First what is the pattern of suspensions and expulsions among racial/ethnic groups in Louisiana public schools during the 2008–2009 school year? Second, what types of infractions result in suspensions and expulsions in Louisiana public schools during the 2008–2009 school year? Third, What infraction patterns exist among racial/ethnic groups in Louisiana public schools during the 2008–2009 school year? Fourth, what specific infractions tend to result in suspensions and expulsions in Louisiana public schools during the 2008–2009 school year? Lastly, what differences between racial/ethnic groups are noted among the specific infractions that tend to result in suspensions and expulsions in Louisiana public schools during the 2008–2009 school year?

To conduct this research project, they took sample data from all of the K-12 public schools in the Louisiana department of education (excluding private schools) and examined the enrollment and disciplinary rates for the 2008 2009 school year. They distributed this sample by gender and race, the largest groups being the males and the African Americans. According to the Louisiana Department of Education, student discipline infractions are divided into eight categories, which are disobedience, safety, substance abuse, vandalism, theft, violence, truancy and miscellaneous. With these eight categories of discipline they took data from the department education and created 3 additional tables containing the suspension and expulsion rates by race/ethnicity, discipline infraction by race/ethnicity and the specific disciplinary infraction by race and ethnicity. Analyzing the charts, African Americans have the highest suspension/expulsion percentage with a 69% of the total infractions. On the table that breaks down the specific infraction category by race/ethnicity African Americans also have the highest amount of infractions with 229,443 of the 330,210 total infractions by all race/ethnicity’s.

This research project didn’t come to as concrete of a conclusion as I would’ve expected. One conclusion that was drawn from this research though was that African American students had higher rates of disciplinary infractions and or suspensions and expulsions than any other race. But interestingly enough, they claim that “Any analysis, which compares discipline infractions and/or criminal offenses by students of different races/ethnicities should not accept a literal interpretation of the numbers.” Knowing that there are many more factors involved than just the ones represented in the data, tells me that there needs to be more research conducted in order to be able to fully understand this topic and its causes and correlations.

http://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/2/1/20/htm

The journal “International Advances in Economic Research”   contains the article  Charitable Donations: Evidence of Demand for Environmental Protection? by Debra K. Israel. This article  is an analyzing  the 2001 Giving and Volunteering in the United States survey in order to understand the connections between households and charitable donations to environmental organizations. Which gives way to the research question of how do factors such as levels of income, education, being female, home-ownership, and ability are relate to likelihood of charitable donations to environmental organizations. Since the reasons behind someone donating are many and varied the data type needed to answer the research question is survey data as it allows for collection from a large amount of people and questionnaires can cover enough of the factors to draw conclusions for the question. The analytical approached used in this article is stated as a sensitive analysis so it may fall under a type of analysis we do not cover in the course but can somewhat be compared to a descriptive analysis due to working with large amounts of data. I found this article to be very well done as the author during the analysis mentions that just because the data shows a specific trend doesn’t mean that it reflects why some households are more or less charitable since the information is being gathered from individuals. It is also very thorough as it also makes use of regression to see if there are any non-factors among the projected factors used in the research. One interesting thing I found in this article is that being female has no impact on the likelihood of donations but being Latino does slightly impact the likelihood of donations.

This article can found online in “International Advances in Economic Research” Issue 13 Vol 2 May 2007.

Link to article: http://0-web.b.ebscohost.com.books.redlands.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=64ff7b4d-2728-48eb-a39a-a20c418f547e%40sessionmgr104&hid=129

The journal of International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics published this article in 2009, two years before the APP (Asia-Pacific Partnership) was disbanded. The APP linked Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the United States with the aim “to reduce GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions through voluntary public-private partnerships and a focus on cleaner technology” (302). The abstract summarizes that China’s main concern is maintaining the same level of economic output with climate agreements, thus bringing to the fore the importance of APP over United Nations guidelines. According to the article China’s foreign policy is dominated by its domestic policy, which stresses economic development, poverty allocation, and social stability. With the goal of quadrupling China’s GDP by the year 2020, China also hopes to only double its energy consumption, which will rely heavily on fossil fuel consumption. However as GDP increases with increased fossil fuel consumption, China circa 2009 was beginning to feel the heavy effects of industrial effects on climate. A possible one-meter rise in sea level may threaten the eastern Chinese coast, which the article highlights could threaten 60% of China’s economic output. Thus climate change and pollution have become direct factors to Chinese domestic policy, and must be balanced when considering future economic growth.

Overall the article sought to explain whether or not the APP is beneficial to UN goals or detrimental—thus whether or not the APP will work in conjunction with the United Nations. To answer this question the article needed economic, environmental and organizational data, from public and private records. The author mixed a multitude of empirical data into his prose; however, I believe if he had chosen fewer sources and gone with more depth and conveyed this data in a numerical, the data would be more understandable (i.e. beyond stating facts). Overall the article discussed a lot of data but was shallow in its analysis of the data. This is not to say the article wasn’t well written, but the data that it produced was presented in a sporadic fashion. Without much context this article is difficult to understand, and I needed to research a couple of its sources to clarify where it came from.

Heggelund, Gørild M., and Inga Fritzen Buan. “China in the Asia–Pacific Partnership: consequences for UN climate change mitigation efforts?” International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 9, no. 3 (2009): 301-17. doi:10.1007/s10784-009-9099-5.

The article “Risk analysis reveals global hotspots for marine debris ingestion by sea turtles” by Schuyler, Qamar A. et al. is about the global marine plastic distributions and sea turtle habitat. They are trying to predict how much exposure sea turtles will get to plastic pollution. They took sea turtles that had died and measured all the possible issues that exposure to plastics could have on sea turtles. The scientists also modelled what risks ingestion of debris could have on turtles depending on the age, life history and what type of turtle consumed the plastics. According to Schuyler et al., “The regions of highest risk to global sea turtle populations are off the east coasts of the USA, Australia and South Africa; the east Indian Ocean, and Southeast Asia”. They have calculated that as much as 52% of sea turtles have ingested debris in the oceans.

The topic of this article is about where in the world sea turtles are at the most risk for marine debris ingestion.

The type of data needed to answer this question are acts, behaviors or events. The data collection method that was used is detached observations. The scientists also used the turtles for research along with observing their behaviors and where they live. The data analysis method was quantitative data, this is because they counted the sea turtles and found percentages and amounts of plastic in sea turtles.

I thought that this research article was very interesting and it made me want to focus my research on these hot spots of plastic pollutions to turtles. It made me ask more question about possibly what age are turtles affected the most and I didn’t even think that different species of turtles could be affected in different ways. I thought that it was very honest and non-bias and brought many good point to attention. One thing that I found particularly interesting is that loggerhead turtles have a higher probability of ingesting debris than other species.

Schuyler, Qamar A., Chris Wilcox, Kathy A. Townsend, Kathryn R. Wedemeyer-Strombel,, George Balazs, Erik Van Sebille, and Britta Denise Hardesty. “Risk Analysis Reveals Global Hotspots for Marine Debris Ingestion by Sea Turtles.” Citation Finder. Global Change Biology, Feb. 2016. Web. 19 Feb. 2017. <http://np9fq3va3u.search.serialssolutions.com/?genre=article&issn=13541013&title=Global%2BChange%2BBiology&volume=22&issue=2&date=20160201&atitle=Risk%2Banalysis%2Breveals%2Bglobal%2Bhotspots%2Bfor%2Bmarine%2Bdebris%2Bingestion%2Bby%2Bsea%2Bturtles.&spage=567&pages=567-576&sid=EBSCO%3AGreenFILE&au=Schuyler%2C%2BQamar%2BA.>.

I selected an article title The Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture in Africa. This article attempts to determine how drastically African agriculture will be affected as well as which regions will be the hardest hit. The author, John Asafu-Adjaye, gathered information from a variety of sources, specifically economic data as well as reports of events. He combined the two to develop a coherent evaluation. To begin, he noted that agriculture in Africa is rather vulnerable relative to other regions because as it stands it is already one of the warmest places on the planet. In addition, the economies in this region rely heavily on natural resources and rain-fed agriculture which are extremely sensitive to the variability accompanied by climate change. The model created showed that Southern Africa will suffer the greatest losses as a result of climate change followed by the remainder of sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and East Africa (in that order). Additionally he analyzed additional countries and came to the realization that Africa as a whole will experience the greatest impact from climate change in relation to economic growth and welfare losses. The research done was substantial in its results, and was done in a professional, ethical manner that presented what I believe to be an astounding conclusion.

John Asafu-Adjaye; The Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture in Africa. J Afr Econ 2014

The study conducted by Kouider Mokhtari , Carla A. Reichard, and Anne Gardner investigate how internet and television use impacts a college student in terms of their recreational reading and academic reading.  A hypothesis was that the internet created a change in how students would spend their time. The authors wanted to find if the trend in American reading less, having low reading skills, and that these declines impacted a negative civic, social, and economic implications was true for college students.  The questions that the authors asked included: How much time do college students spend on recreational and academic reading? What influences do internet and television use have on students’ reading habits and practices?  To find out these answers they performed a time-diary survey with a random sample of 4,500 undergraduate college students who attend a highly selective midwestern university.  The respondents received an email to voluntary participate in the survey.  Those who more likely to respond were female, full-time students, and their age was twenty-three or younger.  They found that students reported spending their time more on the internet than they did on academic reading, television watching, or recreational reading.  Also, found that a majority of respondents performed other activities while recreationally reading, academically reading, television watching, and using the internet.  An interesting find was that students spent significantly more time using the internet on Mondays and they did on Saturdays. Overall, I think the study showed a reality of how college students engage in recreational reading, academic reading, watching television, and Internet use.  I think it would have interesting to see if the study would have similar results if it was done in a public college rather than a highly selective midwestern university.

Mokhtari, Kouider, Carla A. Reichard, and Anne Gardner. “The Impact of Internet and Television Use on the Reading Habits and Practices of College Students.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52.7 (2009): 609-19. Jstor . Web. 18 Feb. 2017. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20468414>.

The article titled “Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence” by Michael Kimmel and Matthew Mahler can be found in the American Behavioral Scientist journal. The article discusses the 28 random school shootings from 1982-2001 and describes the overall patterns the authors collected from the research. They discovered that most of the boys who opened fire were mercilessly and routinely teased and bullied, the violence was retaliatory against the threats of manhood, more white young boys opened fire, and the specific content of the teasing and bullying is homophobia. The topic of the article is the relationship between masculinity, bullying, and violence. The proposed research question by the authors is “How does gender and homophobia contribute to mass school shootings perpetrated by males?” Since the researchers wanted to discover the relationship between masculinity and homophobia to violent school shootings, the logical structure of this research is ex post facto. The researchers are seeking the causes of violent mass shootings and use existing data to answer their research question. The researchers use multiple types of data to demonstrate how bullying affects a young boy’s masculinity, such as demographic data and survey data. They use aggregate data to portray that school shootings do not occur uniformly or evenly in the U.S., proving that school shootings are not a national trend. The researchers use survey data to show that students suggest that peer harassment is the most significant cause of school shootings. To understand the causes, the researchers suggest that gun culture, local school culture, and local gender culture must be examined. To analyze culture, the type of data needed is hidden social patterns. An analysis of secondary media reports, such as weekly news magazines and daily newspapers was conducted to discover social and cultural patterns in the lives of the perpetrators. The data collection methods of content and discourse analysis are necessary to discover the pattern of bullying and the role masculinity plays in young boys’ lives. The data analysis method is thematic analysis and coding because the researchers analyze different forms of media to trace the relationships and tie them to wider social patterns. I think this research successfully supports the claim of the researchers that being constantly threatened, bullied, and the desire to regain their manhood, by using more than one type of data. An interesting aspect of this research is the identification that media influence, drugs and alcohol, Internet usage, father absence, and parental neglect show weak or no correlation to violent school shootings.

Kimmel, M. S., & Mahler, M. (2003). Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence           Random School Shootings, 1982-2001. American Behavioral Scientist, 46(10), 1439 1458.

The research questions that the study analyzed were, “What are the different socio-demographic characteristics between TANF leavers who reach their lifetime limits and those who exit voluntarily?” and “What are the employment and family income differences between TANF leavers who reach their lifetime limits and those who exit voluntarily?The data was collected by the National Survey of America’s Family, they analyzed a total of 656 TANF leavers from the 50 states from 1999 to 2002. The results of the study demonstrates that TANF leavers who reached their lifetime limit were less likely to be employed and have high family income.  Due to these findings one can conclude that there should be an extension on the lifetime limit and to implement follow up services.

The method of data analysis was found with multiple regression results, chi square, and t test results. Through chi square and t test analysis they wanted to see if there was a difference in socio-demographic characteristics between TANF leavers and those who left voluntarily. The study also used correlation to determine the significance between the independent and dependent variables. The independent variables being lifetime limits, state household median income, high school degree/GED, child care assistance, health problems, and immigrants, married, female. The two dependent variables are employment and family income. While “the multiple regressions were used to find the employment and family income differences between TANF leavers who reached their lifetime limits and those who exited voluntarily.”

The results were telling, those who left TANF because of lifetime limits were found to have more mental health/physical problems, less employment, less family income,  and less EITC. Overall, this study revealed that TANF leavers who reached their lifetime limits had economic hardships due to high unemployment and low income. The study is significant in its findings because they compared TANF leavers and voluntary leavers at a national level. We need to implement follow up social services for TANF leavers which would shape the way we think about welfare public policy.

Lee, Kyoung Hag. “Effect of Lifetime Limits and Differences between TANF Leavers Who Had Reached Their Lifetime Limits and Those Who Had Exited Voluntarily.” Poverty & Public Policy 2.4 (2010): 689-710. Wiley Library. Web.