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Throughout human history and around the world, co-sleeping was the context for human evolutionary development. Currently, most of the world’s peoples continue to practice co-sleeping with infants, but there is increasing pressure on families in the West not to co-sleep. Research from anthropology, family studies, medicine, pediatrics, psychology, and public health is reviewed through the lens of a developmental theory to place co-sleeping within a developmental, theoretical context for understanding it. Viewing co-sleeping as a family choice and a normative, human developmental context changes how experts may provide advice and support to families choosing co-sleeping, especially in families making the transition to parenthood. During this transition, many decisions are made by parents “intuitively” (Ball, Hooker, & Kelly, 1999), making understanding the developmental consequences of some of those choices even more important. In Western culture, families are making “intuitive” decisions that research has shown to be beneficial, but families are not receiving complete messages about benefits and risks of co-sleeping. Co-sleeping can be an important choice for families as they make the life-changing transition to parenthood, if individualized messages about safe infant sleep practices (directed toward their individual family circumstances) are shared with them.

This paper describes the development of mental health promotion strategies for rural communities in Northern Ireland. The initial phase of a community‐based project targeting depression and suicide is examined. The paper brings together practitioner and research perspectives on an analysis of the factors that made this initiative possible and facilitated its development to date. The paper is written in two sections. Section one describes the process and practical experience of planning and implementing the initial phase of the project. Section two reports on the community needs assessment study. The research approach adopted is outlined and the implications of the findings are discussed.

This article provides an introduction and assessment of the English and Spanish literatures on gender relations in disaster contexts. We analyze regional patterns of differences and similarities in women’s disaster experiences and the differing research questions raised by these patterns in the scholarly and practice‐based literature. The analysis supports the claim that how gender is theorized makes a difference in public policy and practical approaches to disaster risk management. We propose new directions in the field of disaster social science and contribute a current bibliography in the emerging gender and disaster field.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce narrative construction, a method by which participants produce a narrative to make sense of their organizational context, as well as strategically guide action and decision making. While narrative theory has long‐held that people construct narratives to make sense of, and guide, their experience, narrative construction here entails a deliberate and strategic approach to narrative theory.

This is part of an ethnonarrative approach that includes both a constructionist and interpretive narrative and ethnographic methodology.

Narrative construction has research implications for an ethnomethodology of social construction and empirical observation of narrative enactment. There are practical implications for enabling change and building highly‐coordinated organizations.

Narrative construction offers a new qualitative methodology and extends ethnonarrative research. The research setting, a death penalty defense team, is also unique. It also moves narrative theory beyond an interpretive device to a constructionist strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of crop insurance premiums being determined by small samples of yields that are spatially correlated. If spatial autocorrelation and small sample size are not properly accounted for in premium ratings, the premium rates may inaccurately reflect the risk of a loss.

The paper first examines the spatial autocorrelation among county-level yields of corn and soybeans in the Corn Belt by calculating Moran's I and the effective spatial degrees of freedom. After establishing the existence of spatial autocorrelation, copula models are used to estimate the joint distribution of corn yields and the joint distribution of soybean yields for a group of nine counties in Illinois. Bootstrap samples of the corn and soybean yields are generated to estimate copula models with the purpose of creating sampling distributions.

The estimated bootstrap confidence intervals demonstrate that the copula parameter estimates and the premium rates derived from the parameter estimates can vary greatly. There is also evidence of bias in the parameter estimates.

Although small samples will always be an issue in crop insurance ratings and assumptions must be made for the federal crop insurance program to operate at its current scale, this analysis sheds light on some of the issues caused by using small samples and will hopefully lead to the mitigation of these small sample issues.

Dictionaries of quotations are one of the more personal categories of reference books as evidenced by the diverse responses of their reviewers. The latest edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations was considered “a splendid achievement” by one and “a disaster” by another, while a third introduced his critique with the caution, “It can be said about any such book that its contents will be in‐adequate and its editors presumptuous …”

The purpose of this paper is to consider evidence on the effectiveness of preschool social and emotional interventions in preschool contexts and focuses on the application of an implementation framework described in relation to the Preschool Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum. Active parent involvement and engagement were not included in the implementation but preschool establishments spontaneously involved parents or parents sought involvement, creating innovations in delivery and context. The need for structured parent involvement and its impact are considered in relation to evidence on integrated programmes and different models of parent involvement.

This paper reports on an interim evaluation of practitioners’ and parents’ experiences of the implementation processes, focusing on the involvement and engagement of parents.

Evidence for the rationale for parent engagement in this context is substantiated. The Preschool PATHS curriculum is known to impact on children’s social competence, problem behaviour and, in the early school context, attainment. However the programme does not target parent skill directly or address parent behaviours that may affect children’s social competence and behaviour. It is suggested that the programme needs to be extended to provide structured input for parents via training and information similar to that provided for practitioners. A pilot study using integrated parent training material and supported by an implementation framework is advised.

The paper describes a flexible, evidence-based framework supporting replicable processes useful to service providers across programmes and contexts. An “innovation” (a term used to describe deviations from programme fidelity or implementation standards) is explored which affected the creation of parallel parent involvement strategies but not the delivery of the programme itself which was carefully monitored. While adaptations and deviations are inevitable, some flag up areas where development or issues of contextual fit need to be addressed and might, as in this case, inform better integration of evidence and practice development.

As the number of working mothers increases, the problems associated with being an employee and a parent also increase. This has led to a debate concerning the employer’s role/responsibility in helping employees deal with these problems. Congress has seriously considered legislation that would mandate a certain level of “accommodation” by covered employers. And several states have passed laws granting job‐secured leaves. This article presents some of the arguments for and against such legislation, the basics of the proposed federal legislation, and the impact of legislation on employers and employees.

Using Schein’s Descriptive Index (SDI), this paper aims to first examine gender role stereotypes and requisite managerial characteristics among Irish business students over a 10-year period. Then, the paper investigates whether there have been changes in gender role stereotypes during this period and subsequently unpack the reasons behind any changes recorded.

In total, 1,124 students from the same business student population rated men, women and managers in general, using SDI. Data was collected first during the academic year 2008–2009 and again in 2018–2019 to determine stability or change in gender role stereotypes and requisite managerial characteristics. Intraclass correlation coefficients scores were computed to determine the relationship between gender and requisite managerial characteristics and identify differences and similarities between the two samples. To explore the content of gender stereotypes, an examination of the specific descriptive items was conducted by performing a factorial analysis using Duncan’s Multiple Range Test. Finally, the authors adapted the scales developed by Duehr and Bono (2006) to determine whether broad gender stereotypic characteristics with respect to communal and agentic, attributed to men, women and managers, differ by sample.

The overall findings indicate changes in the extent of gender role stereotyping of the managerial role among the male cohorts studied. The subsequent analysis of the descriptive items identified that the change among the male cohort is due to the levels of agency they perceive women to now possess.

The authors contribute to the literature on both gendered and managerial stereotypes by showing changes in the pro-male stereotype of the managerial role and contribute to the existing debate on a shift towards a more androgynous view of leadership.

These findings help understand the content of gender role stereotypes that recent graduates bring with them to their first job post-graduation. The observed changes in the level of agency ascribed to women by their male counterparts could prove to be an important step forward for women’s advancement to managerial positions.

The findings indicate that both male and female cohorts in Sample 2 perceived men and women in general to possess the same levels of communal and agentic traits as their managerial counterparts.