Claremont Graduate University

The objective of this study was to describe characteristics of effective pediatric primary care interventions that focused on parenting education about healthy parent-child relationships. A scoping review of 4 electronic databases searched for related systematic reviews published in English from January 2000 to June 2023. The full texts of 14 systematic reviews were evaluated by 2 independent reviewers and used to identify 25 unique parenting interventions of which 21 improved outcomes more than the comparison group. Results demonstrate that a range of low to high intensity interventions can improve parent-child relationships, and many of these also improve parent mental health and child behaviors. By contrast, multi-component interventions were needed to improve child development and reduce injuries. Interventions that decreased child injuries focused on reducing parental stress through professional support, access to community resources, and mental health information. Future research is needed on pediatric primary care parenting education that incorporates responsive parenting, includes patient samples with ACEs, and measures physical health outcomes or biomarkers.

Eudaimonic identity theory (EIT) suggests that engaging in activities aligned with personal beliefs, goals, and values fosters flourishing. EIT posits that the subjective experience of eudaimonia, termed personal expressiveness (PE), guides optimal identity-related choices. Two studies of U.S. adults, employing correlational and experimental designs respectively, examined links between feelings of personal expressiveness and identity. Study 1 (N = 78) explored the relationships between feelings of personal expressiveness and identity-related constructs, identity commitment, identity reconsideration, and passion. Study 2 (N = 270) aimed to investigate the impact on identity reconsideration when participation in these types of activities is threatened and if psychological flexibility acts as a buffer in the face of participation threat. Study 1 found that personal expressiveness was positively associated with identity commitment and both harmonious and obsessive passion and unrelated to identity reconsideration. Study 2 replicated the relationships between personal expressiveness and identity commitment and reconsideration found in Study 1. However no moderating effect of severity of threat to participation or psychological flexibility was found. Results revealed a consistent and robust effect of high threat on reconsideration when compared to low threat. Theoretical and practical implications of these results, as well as opportunities for future research are discussed.

This Element will focus on the various denominations in the Mormon tradition, collectively sometimes referred to as 'Mormonism.' They include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as the several sects of Mormon fundamentalism and multiple other denominations. Often described as the quintessential new religious movement, Mormonism is useful for studying the dynamics of new religious formation, evolution, schism, and adaptation to American culture more broadly. It emerged in the heat of the Second Great Awakening, the flourishing of religious creativity and innovation that followed American disestablishment, inspired by the visionary ideas of Joseph Smith, Jr., a New York farmer who adopted a particular style of restorationism, a form of Christianity popular in the period. Since that time, the various branches of Mormonism have embraced different relationships with the broader stream of American culture. Some have sought integration with America's Protestant majority; others have emphasized sectarian distinctiveness.

While links between certain chronotypes and poorer health outcomes have been well established in previous studies, few studies have examined the relationship between chronotype and cellular aging. Using data from the California Teachers Study (CTS), the present study evaluates the relationship between cellular aging and chronobiology through an analysis of leukocyte telomere length (LTL) and chronotype among 817 predominantly postmenopausal women with no history of cancer and occupations not associated with night-shift work. Unconditional logistic regression models were run to estimate odds ratios (ORs) for each chronotype category, adjusted for age, ethnicity, and smoking status. Analyses were then stratified by potential modifiers to assess whether results varied among specific subgroups within the sample. Women who reported being current evening types and evening types from teen years to now were significantly less likely to have short LTL compared to women who reported being current morning types or morning types from teen years to now (OR = 0.72; 95% CI = 0.53-0.98; OR = 0.57; 95% CI = 0.39-0.84). Our results suggest that women with no history of cancer who identify as evening chronotypes may undergo decreased cellular aging compared to women in the same population who identify as morning types. Further studies on populations of postmenopausal women are warranted.

The relationship between economic freedom and improvements in social and economic outcomes is well-documented. Yet, increasing support for government control of voluntary exchange has arisen in the US and many other countries. The present study analyzed whether videos describing human flourishing would influence support for economic freedom. In Study 1, a ‘‘brain as predictor’’ approach measured the neurologic responses of participants (N = 64) to a library of videos in order identify the videos most likely to influence people's attitudes. Study 2 then sent two videos to a representative sample of US adults (N = 1212) and assessed support for economic freedom compared to a no-video control group. The analysis first identified demographic categories that had statistically low support for economic freedom (Californians, those with low incomes, Democrats, young adults, individuals without a college education, people receiving substantial government support, and women) as targets for influence. Two different videos increased support for economic freedom between 5 and 10% among Californians and among those receiving government aid. A feature importance analysis was used to rank the demographic factors affecting support for economic freedom, identifying those receiving government aid as the group for whom future messaging would have the largest impact.

Why do free markets at the macroeconomic level perform better than command and control economies over time? Similarly, why do more open, less rigid hierarchal organizational systems at the microeconomic level, generate higher levels of productivity over the long term? Systems thinker Russ Ackhoff asserted that if you want to know how something works, you analyze. However, if you want to know why something works you synthesize. As we shall explore in this paper, Max U-based analyses adopted in traditional neoclassical (Samuelsonian) economics are useful for helping us explain how markets work but not necessarily why. The purpose of this article is: (1) to synthesize insights from humanomics, neuroeconomics, and systems thinking to explore why free markets at the macroeconomic level and more open, less hierarchal organizational systems at the microeconomic level, allow human ingenuity and creativity to flourish and (2) to apply those insights to exploring how we can improve communication and cooperation in boundaryless systems such as the global economy or virtual organizations that operate within it. This article is part of a project that was organized by a group of Public Choice scholars who are committed to the rigorous study of free markets and how their operations might be enhanced at the margin. JEL: A13, B53, D83.

Populist parties have been increasingly successful in European politics over the last decade. Although research suggests that nostalgic deprivation – a perceived loss of economic, political or social status — is linked to support for populist parties, the generalizability of this argument across voters and national contexts remains unclear. In this research note, we leverage original representative surveys across 19 European countries to demonstrate that perceptions of declining status are a consistent predictor of populist support. Decomposing nostalgic deprivation into different dimensions, we find that while social, economic and power deprivation have different antecedents, each predicts populist attitudes and voting behaviour. Moreover, we find that nostalgic deprivation predicts support for populist platforms among both left‐wing and right‐wing respondents, as well as across Eastern and Western Europe. While the antecedents differ across contexts, these findings confirm that perceptions of downward mobility are associated with the rise of populism in Europe.

Quantitative education research is often perceived to be “objective” or “neutral.” However, quantitative research has been and continues to be used to perpetuate inequities; these inequities arise as both intended effects and unintended side effects of traditional quantitative research. In this review of the literature, we synthesize how quantitative researchers have attempted to use critical paradigms to address questions of equity in education research published over the past 15 years. We identify and describe three main tensions that critical and quantitative researchers navigated: (a) creating and analyzing social group categories, (b) trying to describe commonalities within group experiences without erasing heterogeneity of experience within the group, and (c) determining what is a “significant” result when conducting critical and quantitative research.

The effect of non-binding guidelines (nudges) on citizens’ compliance with law has been studied theoretically and empirically in behavioral law and economics. Less is known about the impact of non-binding guidelines on the behavior of law enforcement agents and prosecution. Our work fills this gap. We study whether non-binding guidelines affect law enforcement and prosecution practices when the guidelines are not necessarily aligned with legal actors’ preferences. Our empirical analysis focuses on the impact of the adoption of a low priority initiative (LPI) on police and prosecutor behavior in Los Angeles County. Our results suggest that following the introduction of an LPI there is a rise in the number of misdemeanor arrests, but not in the rate that misdemeanor marijuana offenses are dismissed. We conclude that law enforcement preferences have a counterbalancing effect given that police officers may have strong punitive preferences. Prosecutors do not appear to respond to non-binding guidelines as evidenced by no change in the rate of dismissing cases.

Advanced gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancer (G/GEJC) poses significant therapeutic challenges. Immune checkpoint inhibitors, particularly targeting programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1), have emerged as promising agents to enhance patient outcomes. This meta-analysis evaluates the efficacy of PD-L1 inhibitors compared to chemotherapy in patients with advanced G/GEJC characterised by varying combined positive scores (CPS). We systematically searched PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of science for clinical trial studies comparing PD-L1 inhibitors and chemotherapy in CPS-positive patients, focusing on studies published up to 10 April 2023. Studies were evaluated with risk of bias tools. The primary clinical endpoint analysed in this study was overall survival (OS), and the secondary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS). This study is registered with Prospero (CRD42023495607). A total of 10 studies comprising 4522 participants were included. Our analysis revealed no statistically significant difference in CPS values between PD-L1 inhibitors and chemotherapy groups (≥ 1 : 1.03 [95% CI: 0.86–1.24], ≤ 1 : 0.92 [95% CI: 0.77–1.11]). However, the pooled hazard ratio for OS favoured PD-L1 inhibitors (hazard ratios – HR, 0.83, [95% CI: 0.78–0.88] and p < 0.00001), while PFS was better after chemotherapy (HR 1.28, [95% CI: 1.04–1.58], p = 0.02). Program death ligand-1 inhibitors improve OS, while chemotherapy enhances PFS in advanced G/GEJC, warranting further investigation into the impact of CPS on treatment outcomes.

Equilibrium climate sensitivity modeling relies heavily on paleoclimate records that were affected by meteorite impacts and volcanic explosions. This paper conducts a thought experiment by re-assembling known data and theories to shed new light on anthropogenic carbon waste. Anthropogenic activity, meteorite impacts and volcanic explosions all extract material from the Earth’s crust and deposit it in the atmosphere. This thought experiment tests if the mass of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from 1851 to 2021 is comparable to the mass of atmospheric emissions from historical planetary events. Approximately 3.60 trillion tons of anthropogenic carbon dioxide equivalents are converted into volume and then transformed into the shape of a meteorite impact structure named the “Carbon Crater.” The 35 km crater (bounded by 34%–68% confidence intervals of 25–45 km) would rank 23rd on the list of known impact structures. The 2.6 km projectile required to create the Crater would be a 10 on the 1–10 Torino hazard scale described as “. . .capable of causing global climatic catastrophe. . .” The estimated re-occurrence interval for a projectile of this size is 5.3 million years. An interval of this time in Earth’s recent history predates homo sapiens. The Crater’s volume is exponentially larger than the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa and ranks as an 8 (“mega-colossal”) on the 0–8 Volcanic Explosivity Index. The thought experiment indicates that the Carbon Crater’s scale is comparable with large historical biospheric events. These results likely confer few direct implications for the study of the paleoclimate in climate modeling but might change conceptual understandings of atmospheric human waste. Additional empirical research is required to understand the potential impact of the Carbon Crater on conceptual change.