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This study used confirmatory factor analysis to analyze the secondary data resulting from a service quality survey conducted by a large public library. The library outsourced the development of this survey, which was founded on the well-recognized SERVQUAL and LibQUAL+ service quality models. Applying structural equation modeling and recognized fit indexes to the secondary data, this study determined that the library model did not fit the data and that the data itself were neither reliable nor valid. This study developed a nine-step process for implementing the SERVQUAL model that enables the data derived from SERVQUAL-type implementations to provide superior information for decision making.

Significant unemployment among adults with serious mental illness (SMI) is a well-documented problem. Estimates suggest that as many as 85% of adults with SMI are unemployed at any one time (Anthony & Blanch, 1987; Milazzo-Sayre, Henderson & Manderscheid, 1997; Rogers, Walsh, Masotta & Danley, 1991). Recent years have seen advances in the development and dissemination of a variety of supported employment services for adults with disabilities. When people with SMI are enrolled in services with a specific employment focus, they achieve employment outcomes (e.g. job placement rates, job tenure) superior to those achieved by people receiving standard mental health services such as day treatment (Bond et al., 2001; Cook, 2003). Supported employment is now considered an “evidenced-based” practice (Bond et al., 2001). Although supported employment approaches vary, evidence-based services share common principles, including (1) prioritizing client preferences for type and timing of work; (2) providing in-vivo and follow-along supports as long as needed; (3) viewing work attempts as part of a learning opportunity; (4) having a commitment to “competitive” employment as an attainable goal; and (5) not relying on pre-vocational training, day treatment or sheltered workshops (Bond et al., 2001; Mowbray, Leff, Warren, McCrohan et al., 1997; Ridgeway & Rapp, 1998).

In this paper, I use 33 interviews with songwriters to explore the relationship between songwriting and emotion, particularly as it relates to the lived and embodied aspects of emotional experience. I contend that songwriting can be understood as a form of sensual reflection and inquiry, one that synthesizes the emotional and evocative properties of both music and language. For songwriters, the creative process of songwriting serves as an embodied vehicle through which to assign meaning to lived emotional experience and the self. Resultant performances represent an expressive forum in which to communicate the outcomes of this process. For sociologists of emotion, examining the neglected process of songwriting represents an opportunity to extend the study of emotion beyond discursive and dramaturgical approaches, lending fresh insight into the lived, embodied character of emotion.

This study examines the cost-effectiveness of reintegrating ex-combatants from armed groups in Colombia. After an ethnographic exploration of the challenges of reintegration that ex-combatants face, I evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the reintegration program operated by the Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization (Agencia para la Reincorporación y la Normalización, ARN), the government agency that handles the reintegration of ex-combatants from all armed groups in Colombia. I analyze the agency's approaches (past, current, and proposed) toward reintegrating ex-combatants from various armed groups, comparing the financial costs against outcomes. The ARN has been successful at achieving two of its primary goals: minimizing recidivism and maximizing employment of ex-combatants. Only 10% of ARN program participants rejoin criminal groups and 93% find employment across both the formal and informal sectors (informal employment is widespread in Colombia and Latin America). The ARN has been unsuccessful at providing adequate security for ex-combatants. Approximately 6% of ex-combatants enrolled in the ARN program have been murdered since 2001: approximately 3,000 program participants have been assassinated. Next, I evaluate the cost-effectiveness of both the ARN's overall program and its outcome across different regions and demographics of the participant population. Finally, I suggest ways that other countries facing the challenge of reintegrating populations of ex-combatants can learn from the Colombian experience, as well as ways that Colombia can improve its own reintegration cost-effectiveness.

Four reputed leaders for the coming years in the field of special education for individuals with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) each with a slightly different perspective on the field were asked to respond independently to a prompt asking what does special education mean for students with EBD and what is being done and how do we maintain tradition? The contributors' responses to the prompt are presented and then summarized across the essays. A remarkable consistency emerges across the independent essays. In addition to the tradition of providing a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment, the contributors identify needs to support teachers serving this population. Needs in teacher training and the expertise required to meet the needs of individuals with EBD are outlined as well as potential contributions of technology to carry out specific tasks. We conclude with a call for increased advocacy for use of the knowledge that we currently possess and that which will soon be discovered to support students with EBD as well as their teachers. We also note that the contributors' names are listed alphabetically to acknowledge the equality of each person to the final product.

In this chapter we examine how micro- and macro-level issues including access to child-only or family public health insurance shape low-income immigrant families’ health care experiences in two policy contexts in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

This qualitative study includes 40 in-depth interviews with first-generation, low-income immigrant Latin American and African mothers in DC and Northern Virginia.

The majority of families living in Virginia had child-only health insurance, whereas most of the families living in Washington, DC, had family health insurance. Regardless of these insurance differences, all mothers had access to free health care for prenatal care. Pregnancy, for most, was their entry into the U.S. health care system. Families’ ongoing health care experiences differed in relation to insurance access, and culture, including parents’ previous experiences with health care in their countries of origin.

Future research should consider the experiences of other immigrant groups, mental health experiences of immigrants, and fathers’ experiences with health care.

Future initiatives to address health care should focus on providing family health care to low-income immigrant families across the country, improving access to mental health services for immigrant families, and creating more culturally and linguistically appropriate health care services.

This study points to the importance of family health care for immigrant families, as well as care that is culturally and linguistically competent.

This study illustrates the need for public family health insurance for low-income immigrant families, and the importance of culturally competent health care for immigrants.

This chapter discusses the unique role that public libraries can play to (re)build our Republic by centering the lived experiences and voices of marginalized communities. As robust sites for out-of-school time learning and community-based information spaces, public libraries have long played a key role in promoting the health and well-being of our nation’s democracy. Public libraries’ inclusivity efforts, though, have not always been evenly balanced, and these efforts have often been underdeveloped, poorly articulated, and undervalued by other key civic actors. Bringing together a Learning Sciences scholar of youth development and civic engagement, Library and Information Sciences scholar on free speech, and an Assistant Director of a public library in the Southeast, this chapter will offer interdisciplinary research-practice insights into both the challenges and opportunities that exist for public libraries as they grapple with the serious question of how to serve the public in the complex reality that is this third decade of the twenty-first century. In particular, this chapter explores questions like: how can public libraries balance the constraints of the status quo to hear, share, and amplify the voices of marginalized communities? And in what ways can library staff encourage opportunities that bridge librarians’ expertise and libraries’ resources with the lived realities and needs of marginalized communities? In this chapter, the authors expand upon these questions and collectively dream about the ways in which public libraries might be reimagined to more authentically and equitably serve the many faces of the contemporary American public.