University of Massachusetts Boston
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Healing Japan\u27s World War II Trauma: Transgenerational, Collective, and Cultural
Get PDFHealing Japan\u27s World War II Trauma: Transgenerational, Collective, and Cultural. Volume 36, Issue 2 of the New England Journal of Public Policy
Long-Term Impact of World War II on Suicide in Japan
Get PDFLong-Term Impact of World War II on Suicide in Japan. Volume 36, Issue 2 of the New England Journal of Public Policy
Fourth Symposium Discussion
Get PDFFourth Symposium Discussion. Volume 36, Issue 2 of the New England Journal of Public Policy
Fifth Symposium Discussion
Get PDFFifth Symposium Discussion. Volume 36, Issue 2 of the New England Journal of Public Policy
The Imperial Japanese Soldiers and Perpetrator Trauma
Get PDFThe Imperial Japanese Soldiers and Perpetrator Trauma. Volume 36, Issue 2 of the New England Journal of Public Policy
The Presence of Microplastic in the Lungs of Marine Megafauna
Get PDFMicroplastics, plastics smaller than 5mm, are ubiquitous on this planet. Not only has plastic been found in nature, but it has also been discovered in the bodies of living organisms. While microplastic research is still ongoing, it is unknown whether microplastics are present in the lungs of marine megafauna. This research sets to test the lungs of 6 marine megafauna (2 seals, 1 dolphin, and 2 turtles) to uncover if there is a presence of microplastics in marine megafauna lungs. Since this is the first research of its kind, a new procedure had to be created via methods testing. Once the hydrolyzation and staining procedures were created, microplastics were discovered in all the lung samples. Concentrations ranged from 2.27 mp/g to 21.93 mp/g. Both microplastic categories, fibers and fragments, were found in each section of the lung across all samples. Seals held the highest concentration of microplastics per gram, followed by turtles, then the dolphin
Increasing Housing Stability Through State-Funded Community Mediation Delivered by The Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (HMP) FY2023 Evaluation Report
Get PDFThe Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (HMP) is a comprehensive statewide program that provides free housing mediation services as a tool to increase housing stability with the intention of preventing homelessness created by landlord-tenant disputes. It is administered by the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston and deploys the community mediation system infrastructure with 11 Community Mediation Centers (Centers) participating and serving all 14 counties of the Commonwealth to provide free conflict resolution services for tenants and landlords/property managers with housing disputes at any stage, from the earliest point a problem occurs, up to, and after any eviction action in court.
The HMP is a vital public program, particularly against the backdrop of a housing crisis that has worsened. MA residents cited housing as the biggest issue on their minds. The country is also facing a dramatic 12% increase in homelessness, which is its highest reported level as soaring rents and a decline in COVID-19 pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans. Homelessness among individuals rose by 11%, among veterans by 7.4%, and among families with children by 15.5%.
Though a clear causal link between housing mediation through the HMP and homelessness prevention is difficult to determine, several factors support housing mediation’s role in preventing homelessness and increasing housing stability. These factors include: 1) the ability of mediation to improve communication and help reduce landlord-tenant/tenant-tenant conflict; 2) the opportunity afforded by mediation for landlords/property managers and tenants to negotiate in good faith and the option to generate creative solutions to issues surrounding the non-payment of rent, repairs and a host of tenancy-related issues; and 3) the coupling of mediation with housing counseling and other assistance programs.
Data from the centralized case management system (MADtrac) indicates that mediating landlord-tenant cases resulted in 65.2% of the tenants preserving their tenancy in FY2023 where Centers served 428 housing cases under the HMP resulting in 279 tenancy preservations. A strong correlation does exist between housing mediation provided through the HMP and tenancy preservation. For example, using a subset of mediated cases and an analysis of a sampling of 163 written mediated agreements reached between landlords/property managers and tenants through housing mediation provided by Centers during the 12-month period from July 2022 to June 2023 shows that 85 agreements, a little over one half (52%), resulted in the preservation of tenancy, suggesting a strong correlation between housing mediation and the preservation of tenancy
Communities in Action: The Early Years of the Upward Bound Program
Get PDFThis critical historical narrative sought to understand how secondary and postsecondary educators can best engage community partners in providing access to a college education—and the opportunities associated with it—for students who have been systemically excluded. Based on extensive archival research and 21 oral history interviews with Upward Bound students and staff in the MIT Science Day Camp and the MIT–Wellesley Upward Bound program from 1966 through the mid-1970s, as well as with those who added to the national perspective, this study examined the original anti-poverty, community action framework of the Upward Bound program. The sensitizing concepts of race and class offered a lens for examining MIT and Wellesley College as racialized organizations, underscoring the deeply rooted, systemic racism and deficit ideology against “the poor” that was in place at all levels of educational institutions—and still exists today. Findings indicated that the first Upward Bound programs did indeed reflect the community action principles that were part of the original federal proposal and that host institutions, such as MIT and Wellesley College, engaged deeply with the community surrounding the MIT campus. While the findings are based on how one urban Upward Bound program operated and built community, with the “maximum feasible participation” of the racially diverse and low-income students and families in the neighborhood adjacent to their campus, they are more broadly emblematic of how programs were run locally, revealing a counter-narrative to what was expected and required at the federal level. The findings are a testament to the parents, families, program staff, teachers, group leaders, tutor-counselors, and especially the students themselves, who worked to increase opportunities for access to a college education for local students, while creating the shared community and family that was, and still is, the MIT–Wellesley Upward Bound program. Lessons learned from the rich stories shared by the oral history narrators, enhanced by compelling archival details, led to several important recommendations for practice, policy, and future research
Effectiveness of a Formal Comprehensive Mentoring Program Implemented with Black Male Students Attending a Predominantly White Private High School
Get PDFMentoring programs can be effective interventions for improving academic persistence and intrapersonal experiences (e.g., belongingness) for Black students, especially males. However, much of the research has focused on college students rather than Black high school adolescents (Alejandro et al., 2020; Ashktorab et al., 2017; Budge et al., 2020; J. Graham & McClain, 2019; Kennedy & Tuckman, 2013; McKenna et al., 2013). Yet, there is significant research on school belongingness among Black adolescent boys, which indicates belongingness is highly correlated with positive teacher/adult-student relationships (Brooms, 2019; Bulanda & McCrea, 2013; D’hondt et al., 2015; Ellis et al., 2018; Lardier et al., 2019; Pierre et al., 2020). There are many similarities in the literature between general teacher/adult-student relationships and specific mentoring relationships, but there are very few studies evaluating formal school mentoring programs. In addition, there are even fewer studies that focus on Black boys in predominantly White single gender private secondary schools. The following study used mixed methods to evaluate the effectiveness of a formal mentoring program for Black adolescent boys attending a predominantly White single-gender private secondary school. Results of quantitative analyses did not yield any statistically significant differences between pre- and post-mentoring measures of school belongingness of self-efficacy; however, the number of students in quantitative analyses (n = 10) was too small and lacked sufficient power to detect even large magnitude differences. Results of qualitative group interviews with mentees (n = 13) and individual group interviews with mentors (n = 2) revealed several common themes including (a) enhanced community, relationships, and connectivity through shared identities, interests, and (b) shared understanding of racial experiences, marginalization, and consciousness. Limitations and future directions are discussed
The Language Environmental Analysis (LENA) System in Toddlers with Early Indicators of Autism: Test-Retest Reliability and Construct Validity
No full textClinical language assessments often play an important role in determining the type of services children with early indicators of autism receive, especially within the context of federally legislated Early Intervention (EI) programs. Although these standardized assessments provide essential knowledge about children’s language ability, they are inherently limited in that they only sample a restricted amount of the child’s language and often take place outside of the child’s natural language environment. In this study, we assess the potential of using language processing technology - the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) system - as supplemental clinical information regarding children’s linguistic capabilities and natural language environments. LENA consists of a digital recorder, which is worn on the child’s chest, and records daylong in-home samples of children’s linguistic input and output. LENA software processes the language recordings and generates the following five distinct linguistic variables: 1. adult word count (AWC): how many times an adult vocalized during the session, 2. child vocalization count (CVC): how many times the key child vocalized during the session, 3. conversational turn count (CTC): how many times a key child and adult engaged in two-step sequential vocalizations, 4. vocal productivity (VP): a standard score based on normative data from typically-developing 2-to-48-month-old toddlers indicating how the average number of canonical syllables per utterance compares to the peer average number of canonical syllables per utterance, and 5. automatic vocalization assessment (AVA): a standard score based on normative data indicating the degree to which the phonemic composition and distribution of children’s vocalizations are similar to the phonemic composition and distribution of children of a similar chronological age. Although preliminary evidence of LENA’s clinical utility is promising, no studies to date have examined stability or test-retest reliability for all five of these LENA variables in the same participant sample, nor have they examined concurrent associations among variables or in relation to standard assessments of language. The current study is designed to address gaps in literature with two aims. The first aim is to evaluate test-retest reliability of a subsample of participants with two valid proximal recordings (n=101). The second aim is to examine associations between all five automatically-generated LENA variables - AWC, CVC, CTC, VP, & AVA - and two clinical assessments of language commonly used among children with social communication delays: the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Third Edition (VABS-III) and the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI): Vocabulary Checklist in a sample of children showing early signs of autism aged 16-33 months (N=128)