Through qualitative research, which involved qualitative interviews and focus group meetings with members of four student teams, we identified a number of barriers to the development of cohesiveness in teams of local and international exchange (IE) students, who were undertaking service-learning (SL) together. Lack of cohesiveness in such teams…

Grounded in critical policy theories and democratic conceptions of research, case studies of three community-based organizations, one in Canada and two in the U.S., were analyzed to determine if and how the groups engaged with research in their efforts to influence education policy. The findings demonstrate that the community-based organizations…

Across the world, community-based youth organizations are engaging youth as partners with adults to promote youth civic development. A sample of 528 youth from the United States, Portugal, and Malaysia were surveyed to explore associations between youth-adult partnership (youth voice in decision making; supportive adult relationships) and two key…

Based on years of human intelligence research conducted by Howard Gardner and results from a quantitative research study supporting Gardner's research collected from a sample of 205 faculty within the United States, the researcher examined students that are actively engaged in community service experiences and their approaches to reframing their…

Constance Flanagan and Peter Levine survey research on civic engagement among U.S. adolescents and young adults. Civic engagement, they say, is important both for the functioning of democracies and for the growth and maturation it encourages in young adults, but opportunities for civic engagement are not evenly distributed by social class or race…

Under conditions of uncertainty, we predict that development will be tied to the idiosyncrasy of organizational forms represented within local regions. Our investigation applies this theory to data on 342 counties and 43,352 businesses in the U.S. South during Reconstruction, finding support for the thesis that organizational idiosyncrasy…

This article focuses on gendered youth music practices in community-based organizations (CBOs) in Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Drawing on interviews and observational fieldwork from the Playing for Life research project, the authors highlight the absence of young women from many activities, especially in the area…

The research reported here tested the factor structure of a measure for sense of community in community organizations, and it evaluated sense of community's potential as an empowering organizational characteristic within an organizational empowerment framework. Randomly selected community organization participants (N = 561) were surveyed as part…

A study was conducted to determine whether the tenets of rural social work were applicable only to the developing countries or whether they were also meaningful in the context of other industrial nations of the West. (CT)

Describes a model of professional intervention for community workers. The various roles of the community worker are also examined. These include the role of researcher, social policy analyst, enabler, social planner, program developer, organizer, rehabilitator, coordinator, educator, and mediator. Differences between community work theory and…

A study investigating institutional factors affecting the performance of the employment service (ES) focused on (1) organizational characteristics conducive to high performance in state ES agencies and their local operations and (2) the external linkages of the ES with state and local politics, other agencies, and the U.S. Department of Labor…

Alcatraz, the Trail of Broken Treaties, Wounded Knee--these are the well-known sites of "takeovers" by American Indian activists, mostly members of the American Indian Movement or AIM, in the 1960s and 1970s. AIM began in 1968, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, when urban Indians organized to protect their rights and preserve their traditions.…

While the emphasis in much recent research has been essentially on urban concerns, there are very substantial empirical data resources which are available for the study of nonmetropolitan social, political, and economic phenomenon. The sources of computer-readable data relevant to investigation of nonmetropolitan phenomena can be grouped into…

A national evaluation study was conducted to ascertain the effects of the large quantity of manpower devoted to community organization and leadership development work by state cooperative extension services. Data were sought on evaluation questions which addressed objectives and policies related to community organizational and leadership…

This document contains the final report of the National Center for Productivity and Quality of Working Life, whose primary functions are to make the United States aware of the benefits of productivity growth and to encourage initiatives that will result in better productivity performance. Divided into six major sections, this report reviews the…