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This study provides empirical support for a link between video game play and likelihood to major in a STEM field.

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), this study investigates whether adolescents who play video games are more likely than those who do not to choose a STEM field major in college, and if other characteristics explain this relationship.

Results from a nested series of logistic regression models show that – compared to those who do not play video games in adolescence – teens who play video games are 70% more likely to major in a STEM field when they attend college.

The Add Health dataset allows for empirical verification of the link between video game play and STEM major choice, but it is dated. Future research should use more recent data. Factors such as gaming platform and game genre are likely to be key variables in future research.

This finding lends support for including video game play as a potential factor in future studies on college major choice, and offers further empirical support for utilizing video games as a potential gateway into STEM.

Going beyond previous research, this study finds that playing commercial video games may be one entry point to STEM fields, and implies that it is important to understand the impact of games that millions of young people play.

By stepping outside of the consumer socialization model (Ward, 1974) which for many years has resembled a ‘body of verified truths’ when it comes to understanding the complex intimacy between young consumers’ identities and the marketplace, this research aims to offer a theoretical and empirical reconsideration of the tangible light and shade, indeterminacy and yet ambition in which these young adolescents’ consumption practices and social contexts are inextricably intertwined.

Five different data collection methods were employed; namely personal diaries, in-depth interviews (which were conducted at two separate intervals), accompanied shopping trips, e-collages and researcher diaries. Each method was chosen so as to fulfil a specific purpose and reflect a specific angle of repose on the lived experience and consumption practices of a liminar – those at the heart of marketing’s newest strategic boundary.

This chapter describes some of the constituent elements of metaconsumption; the proposed theorization of the liminars’ consumption practices and a suggested diversion from ‘the effects’ perspective on young consumers’ socialization.

This chapter adds to those which problematize the tendency to view young consumers’ interactions with consumption as measurable by having to pass through pre-defined stages if they are to become recognized as complete consumers. Instead this research aligns with the perspective that young consumers, like adults, must mediate the shifting milieus of their social lives through engagement with a myriad consumption practices.

This perspective responds to an acknowledged empirical dearth (e.g. Martens, Southerton, & Scott, 2004). However, secondly in line with Arnould & Thompson’s (2005) original motivation that CCT encapsulate those who see our discipline as ripe with the potential for new theory generation and widespread applicability, this research aligns micro understandings and theorizations of children’s social worlds and consumer culture practices with existing meso- and macro-levels of consumption theory.

This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.

Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a preeminent source of national behavioral health estimates of chronic medical illness, stress and disability, for selected sample years 2005–2014, we construct and analyze two foundational hypotheses underlying the exposure-vulnerabilities model: (1) greater exposure to stressors (i.e., chronic medical illness) among racial/ethnic minority populations yields higher levels of serious psychological distress, which in turn increases the likelihood of medical disability; (2) greater vulnerability among minority populations to stressors such as chronic medical illness exacerbates the impact of these conditions on mental health as well as the impact of mental health on medical disability.

Results of our analyses provided mixed support for the vulnerability (moderator) hypothesis, but not for the exposure (mediation) hypothesis. In the exposure models, while Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a long-term disability, the pathway to disability through chronic illness and serious psychological distress did not emerge. Rather, Whites were more likely than Blacks and Latinx to have a chronic illness and to have experienced severe psychological distress (both of which themselves were related to disability). In the vulnerability models, both Blacks and Latinx with chronic medical illness were more likely than Whites to experience serious psychological distress, although Whites with serious psychological distress were more likely than these groups to have a long-term disability.

Several possibilities for understanding the failure to uncover an exposure dynamic in the model turn on the potential intersectional effects of age and gender, as well as several other covariates that seem to confound the linkages in the model (e.g., issues of stigma, social support, education).

This study (1) extends the racial/ethnic disparities in exposure-vulnerability framework by including factors measuring chronic medical illness and disability which: (2) explicitly test exposure and vulnerability hypotheses in minority populations; (3) develop and test the causal linkages in the hypothesized processes, based on innovations in general structural equation models, and lastly; (4) use national population estimates of these conditions which are rarely, if ever, investigated in this kind of causal framework.

Barbara M. Altman, a Sociologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, is currently a Special Assistant on Disability Statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her previous position was Senior Research Fellow with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She is a past president of the Society for Disability Studies and served on the founding Board of Directors of that organization. Her disability research interests focus in three areas: operationalization of disability definitions/measures in survey data; access to, financing and utilization of health care services by persons with disabilities, particularly working age persons and women with disabilities; and disability among minority groups. She is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on disability topics, and has served as editor of special issues of Disability Studies Quarterly and Journal of Disability Policy Studies. She is co-editor of this series Research in Social Science and Disability.Deborah J. Anderson, Ph.D., has conducted policy research in the area of Aging and Developmental Disabilities at the University of Minnesota since 1985. Her studies have included analyses of the health status, health conditions and health-related limitations and needs of older adults with mental retardation living in a variety of residential settings as well as in their own homes. These studies have included a longitudinal study of a 10% sample of older adults living in residential facilities licensed by developmental disabilities agencies, the National Nursing Home Survey of 1985, the National Medical Expenditure Survey of 1987, and the National Health Interview Disability Supplement (NHIS-D) of 1994–1995. She has also studied careproviders of older adults with mental retardation, innovative programs serving aging adults with developmental disabilities/mental retardation, and state agencies’ preparation for serving adults with mental retardation as they aged. Most of this research has been conducted as part of the NIDRR-funded RRTC on Aging and Developmental Disabilities. Dr. Anderson is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN.Lynda L. Anderson, M.A., M.P.H., is a Resource Manager at No Place like Home in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. Ms. Anderson earned a Master of Arts degree in Human Service Administration and a Master of Public Health degree in Community Health. Ms. Anderson is a doctoral candidate in Work, Community and Family Education at the University of Minnesota. She has more than eighteen years of experience working with people with disabilities as a Direct Support Professional, Program Director, and Researcher. She has participated in NHIS-D analysis activities for the last five years.Sharon N. Barnartt, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Gallaudet University. She has co-authored two books: Deaf President Now: The 1988 Revolution at Gallaudet University (1995) and Contentious Politics in the Disability and Deaf Communities (2001). She has also presented papers and published widely in the areas of socio-economic status and disability/deafness, legal and disability policy issues, and social movements in the deaf and disability communities. She is a former president of the Society for Disability Studies, co-editor of Research in Social Science and Disability and on the editorial board of Journal of Disability Policy Studies.Phillip W. Beatty, M.A., is a Senior Research Associate at the National Rehabilitation Hospital Center for Health & Disability Research in Washington, DC. His recent research focuses on predictors of access to health services among adults with disabilities. Mr. Beatty is also conducting research to determine the ways in which functional outcomes information is being used by stakeholders in the medical rehabilitation industry.Edward Brann, M.D., M.P.H., is Acting Director of the Division of Human Development and Disability, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The division conducts a number of research and program activities for people with disabilities.Hong Chen, M.S., is an Economist in RTI International’s Division of Health Economics Research. His work focuses primarily on the analysis of large claims and survey databases, with an emphasis on diabetes prevention, substance abuse, and competitive bidding for durable medical equipment.Lisa J. Colpe, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a Clinical Epidemiologist Specializing in Survey Design and Research. At the time the work on this chapter was done, she was an Epidemiology Training Program Fellow in the Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics.Roger B. Davis, Sc.D., is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Davis has overseen the statistical design of numerous clinical trials, especially involving cancer and AIDS therapies. An expert in survival analysis, he also participates in health services research and clinical epidemiology studies with colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he serves as Biostatistician in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care.John Drabek, is an Economist in Office of Disability, Aging, and Long-Term Care Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He received his B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the federal government, he performed research at the University of Southern California, and at the University of California, Los Angeles.Laura J. Dunlap, M.A., is a Health Economist in RTI International’s Center for Interdisciplinary Substance Abuse Research. Since joining RTI in 1994, she has worked on studies analyzing the costs and benefits of substance abuse treatment, the effect of treatment services on post-treatment outcomes, and the costs and cost-effectiveness of public health and treatment interventions aimed at special populations such as drug users and low-income women.Holly J. Fedeyko is a former employee of the Disability and Health Branch, CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. While at the CDC she focused her efforts on Research in disability issues as related to questions from the National Health Interview Survey. She received her M.P.H. in Epidemiology and Environmental Health from Emory and her B.S. in Biology from McGill. She is currently employed as an analytical consultant for a private company and now resides in the San Francisco Bay area.Frances K. Goldscheider, University Professor and Professor of Sociology, began her Brown career in 1974. Since obtaining her Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971, Goldscheider has focused her research on census and survey data to address questions related to family structure and coresidential relationships, examining causes and consequences of change. Goldscheider pioneered research on the single-person household, and on home leaving and return to the nest of young adults, and has examined issues of labor force and family decisions of 20th century American women. She is an expert on family structure and relationships, fertility, parenthood, household economy, and marriage. Her intergenerational focus (on the living arrangements of young adults and the elderly) has expanded to include gender issues, particularly marriage and divorce, with a strong concern with the consequences of family structure for investments in childhood and young adulthood. Recent research interests include men’s roles in parenting and in the family.Scott D. Grosse, Ph.D., is a Health Economist at the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He conducts applied research on the costs associated with various childhood conditions and economic evaluations of screening programs and interventions intended to improve health and developmental outcomes in children.Gerry E. Hendershot, Ph.D., is a Consultant on Disability and Health Statistics. From 1985 to 2001, he held various positions on the staff of the National Health Interview Survey, including Assistant to the Director for Data Analysis and Dissemination. He had a lead role in promoting, designing, and analyzing the National Health Interview Survey on Disability. He is the author of many published statistical reports on disability and other health-related topics.Dennis P. Hogan, Professor of Sociology, joined the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University in 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976. He has taught at both the University of Chicago, where he acted as associate director of the Population Research Center, and Pennsylvania State University, where he served as director of the Population Research Institute. In 1997, Hogan was named to an endowed professorship as the Robert E. Turner Distinguished Professor of Population Studies. Some of his research interests include the interrelationships of the family lives of individuals and their social environments, the measurement of disability, family consequences of disability, and the transition to adulthood. Hogan’s current research focuses on child disability. He is the principal investigator on grants supporting this program from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics Subcommittee on Disability and the Spencer Foundation.Ghada al Homsi, M.S., is an Economist in RTI International’s Center for Interdisciplinary Substance Abuse Research. Her work focuses on the analysis of large surveys and the design and maintenance of databases of program costs.Amanda A. Honeycutt, Ph.D., is an Economist in RTI International’s Division of Health Economics Research. Since joining RTI in 1998, she has led a number of studies on the cost-of-illness, the cost of intervention programs, and the cost-effectiveness of prevention and treatment interventions that focus primarily on diabetes, HIV/AIDS prevention, and children’s health, disability, and development.Peter C. Hunt, M.P.H., was an Association of Schools of Public Health Fellow in the Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, at the time work on this chapter was done. He subsequently served as a Special Assistant to the Director of the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. He is currently a Research Associate at the University of Pittsburgh Model Center on Spinal Cord Injury.Lisa I. Iezzoni, M.D., M.Sc., is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Co-Director of Research in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care, Department of Medicine, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Her primary research interest is risk adjustment for assessing health care quality and improving the fairness of payments. A 1996 recipient of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, she also studies health policy issues relating to mobility impairments. Dr. Iezzoni is a member of the Institute of Medicine.Gwyn C. Jones, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.Ed., is a Senior Research Associate at the National Rehabilitation Hospital Center for Health & Disability Research in Washington, DC. She is a former ATPM/CDC Fellow and current grantee. Her research and publications have focused on health risks, chronic conditions, and use of preventive services among working-age adults with disabilities, prescription drug use among non-elderly adults with disabilities, and rural Medicaid managed care for adults with disabilities.Judith D. Kasper, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, and a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Health Services Research, at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests include health policy in long-term care, aging and disability, access to health care for vulnerable populations, and the development and application of data sources for health policy and health services research. Dr. Kasper holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.K. Charlie Lakin, Ph.D., is the Director of the Research and Training Center on Community Living at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Lakin has had extensive experience in gathering, analyzing, and using statistics from many primary and secondary data sources with the products of this work included in more than 200 publications in developmental disabilities and related services. Mr. Lakin was a member of the six-person external technical advisory panel on the instrumentation for the Disability Supplement. Mr. Lakin serves as Associate Editor of Mental Retardation, and consulting editor of The Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps (JASH), the Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disability and Social Science and Disability.Sheryl A. Larson, Ph.D., is a Research Associate at the Research and Training Center on Community Living at the University of Minnesota. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota. She has 20 years of experience in services to persons with DD as a residential counselor, behavior analyst, social worker, and program evaluator and has worked for the RTC for the last 14 years. Ms. Larson was the Co-Principal Investigator for a two-year NIDRR Field Initiated Project which used the National Health Interview Survey Disability Supplement to examine the characteristics and service needs of persons with intellectual or developmental disabilities. She directed a supplement to the Research and Training Center on Community Living’s core grant that funded an international user’s conference in June 2000 for researchers analyzing NHIS-D topics. She has co-authored several papers using NHIS-D data. Dr. Larson has also co-authored several books, book chapters, journal articles and technical reports on workforce development issues, residential services, and community integration for persons with developmental disabilities and is a consulting editor of Mental Retardation.Donald J. Lollar, Ed.D., Senior Research Scientist, Division for Human Development and Disability, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. His advanced degrees are from Indiana University, and his most recent writings include co-editing an Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation supplement on the Science of Disability Outcomes, and articles for the 2003 Annual Review of Public Health and 2002 Public Health Reports outlining public health strategies to improve the health and well-being of people with disabilities. He has spent the past seven years developing public health science and programs to improve the health of people with disabilities, prevent secondary conditions, and increase participation in society. He currently serves as the co-lead of the Healthy People 2010 workgroup on Disability and Secondary Conditions (Chap. 6 of HP 2010). Dr. Lollar began involvement with the WHO classification ICIDH in 1994 while still in private practice, assessing potential utility of ICIDH-2 for clinical records. He is currently a part of the team to adapt the ICF to improve its utility for children and youth.Pamela Loprest is a Labor Economist and Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on low-wage labor markets and how government policies can help to reduce and remove barriers to work among disadvantaged populations. Dr. Loprest has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been at the Urban Institute since 1991.Elaine Maag is a Research Associate in the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center. Her research focuses on policies affecting youth with disabilities and employment opportunities for adults. She also conducts research on how tax policy affects low-income families. Ms. Maag holds an M.S. in Public Policy from the University of Rochester.Jennifer M. Park is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her current research is funded by a grant she holds from the American Education Research Association to examine cognitive development among first grade youth with and without emotional impairment. Her dissertation explored cognitive growth among kindergarteners with and without perceptual impairment. Dr. Park holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University, where her research examined the diverse effects of child disability on family outcomes.Elizabeth K. Rasch, M.S., P.T., is an Associate Service Fellow at the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, working in the area of disability statistics. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science, with a concentration in Epidemiology. Her research interests include the health of persons with disabilities, factors that contribute to disability, as well as the use of and access to healthcare services by persons with disabilities. She has been actively involved in research since 1985 and has published articles and book chapters on topics related to disability and rehabilitation.Anne W. Riley, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, in the division of Health Services Research, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Riley has expertise in the assessment of mental health and health, especially of children and adolescents, methods development, and evaluation systems for monitoring the outcomes of care for youth.Diana E. Schendel, Ph.D., is a Lead Health Scientist at the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She directs both intramural and extramural epidemiologic studies of reproductive and developmental outcomes, with a primary focus on cerebral palsy, autism, and other neurodevelopmental problems.Hilary Siebens, M.D., is Lecturer in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director, PMR Service, at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She received clinical training in internal medicine, geriatrics, and PMR. Her publications address exercise among older adults, models of rehabilitation, and quality improvement initiatives.Lois M. Verbrugge, Ph.D., M.P.H., is Distinguished Senior Research Scientist in the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Michigan. She has contributed to disability theory and has conducted analyses of arthritis disability, gender differences in morbidity and mortality, and co-morbidity, using large-scale data sets. Her recent publications have emphasized the relative benefits of equipment and personal assistance for disability, the interleaving of aging and disability, and global indicators of disability. She was awarded the American Psychological Association Distinguished Contribution to Women’s Health Award in 1994.Whitney P. Witt, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Center for Healthcare Studies at the Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Witt’s prior work focuses predominately on people living with HIV/AIDS, including children and their families. Over the last five years, she has applied her experience in advocacy, policy, and research on vulnerable and high-cost, chronically ill populations to the field of maternal and child health services research. Dr. Witt’s research emphasizes the importance of family adaptation in ensuring the mental health of children with disabilities and for helping these children obtain access to mental health services. Most recently, her work has focused on the impact of maternal depression on familial health and mental health, preventive care practices, and use of health and mental healthcare services. She holds a Ph.D. in health services research and a M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a B.A. in women’s studies and law from Hampshire College.Li-shou Yang, Ph.D., is Research Investigator in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Trained in social demography, her research focuses on the family, the life course, and social change.

This chapter critically engages with ways that teaching excellence has been operationalised in practice. Specific focus is on developing individual teaching excellence, rewarding of success and recognition of teaching excellence and the building of evidence around what works in teaching for the benefits of students. We consider the daily interactions with students that form the basis of frameworks of teaching excellence before arguing that operationalisations of teaching excellence are highly context specific and operate at the level of institutions and the whole higher education sector. We discuss the criteria that underpin teaching excellence awards. This includes governance as well as development frameworks. After considering the complex links between research and teaching and the importance of the disciplinary dimension of teaching excellence, the chapter finally looks at the skills and attributes commonly associated with individual teacher excellence and argues that these are exceptionally difficult to pin down let alone measure. It concludes with some reflections on some of the challenges faced by institutions as they seek to develop the quality of teaching whilst meeting the requirements of the TEF.

Over decades, indigenous management practices and their values in Africa have changed from time to time. However, it continued to remain relevant in most business organisations in developing countries. Today in Africa and across the globe, there is a paradigm shift and stiff competition in human resource management practices as a basic element for effective and efficient business organisations’ performance. Effective human resource management practices and performance of organisations rely on the integration of indigenous management practices and sound strategies aligned to cultural values and cores business objectives. The study covers four regions of Africa as a continent. Empirical teachings of the study form a basis for active reforms and innovations, so as to revamp the use of indigenous knowledge, which was deliberately destroyed by colonial masters. Over the years, human resource management practice has evolved in favour of Western strategies and ideologies. Advocates for curriculum reforms in all African countries so as to incorporate indigenous knowledge content, since it is believed to be the future of Africa. An appropriate employees management practice in Africa is a necessary move in today’s business community as it enhances service delivery and performance. The application of indigenous management practices is believed to play a vital role and invokes effective decision-making practices in the business organisation. Therefore, the chapter traces the origin of indigenous wisdom and its fundamental structure in management practices. This chapter attempts to throw light on indigenous management practices and their values in business organisations in Africa.