Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper analyzes qualitative interview data with a sample of 41 executive directors of human services nonprofits to discover why people become executive directors, what career paths they follow, and how well these career paths prepare them for the job. All became executive directors because they wanted to help others. Less important motivations included influencing how programs operate, wanting to be successful, and wanting a higher salary. The paper proposes a new typology of career paths: founders who started their own nonprofit, fillers from the board or a volunteer position, planners who actively pursued an executive position for years, and risers who worked their way up through the ranks and found that executive director was the next step. Most considered themselves well prepared at the time they took on the position, and there was little difference among the four types of career paths in the level of perceived preparedness. The findings suggest that nonprofit organizations should pay more attention to training leaders who rise up through the ranks, and that management education programs can assist in this mid‐career training. Future research should expand the examination of career paths and preparedness to a large and nationally representative survey.

This article examines the testimony of fifty-seven torture victims in Saddam Hussein's Iraq to illustrate the processes by which torture fails to gain true confessions or accurate information. Theoretical analyses have identified several ways in which torture is likely to fail, but this is the first study to examine empirically how this occurs. In the study sample, victims stated that torture frequently led to inaccurate results, with respondents who were guilty of anti-regime activity refusing to confess or give information, innocent victims giving false information and confessions, and guilty victims giving accurate information followed by inaccurate information when the torture continued. The majority of victims stated that they resisted torture and did not confess or give any information. They did so because they knew that the regime relied on confessions to get criminal convictions and because they knew that confessing or providing information would only lead to more torture.

Abstract
This article examines the testimony of fifty-seven torture victims in Saddam Hussein's Iraq to illustrate the processes by which torture fails to gain true confessions or accurate information. Theoretical analyses have identified several ways in which torture is likely to fail, but this is the first study to examine empirically how this occurs. In the study sample, victims stated that torture frequently led to inaccurate results, with respondents who were guilty of anti-regime activity refusing to confess or give information, innocent victims giving false information and confessions, and guilty victims giving accurate information followed by inaccurate information when the torture continued. The majority of victims stated that they resisted torture and did not confess or give any information. They did so because they knew that the regime relied on confessions to get criminal convictions and because they knew that confessing or providing information would only lead to more torture.

Earlier cross-sectional studies have suggested that parents' levels of charitable giving and volunteering are influenced by transitions in their children's lives, such as the arrival of a new baby, the entry of their oldest child into elementary school, and the leaving home of their youngest child. To better investigate this contention, I used longitudinal data from the 2001-2009 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. When a new baby arrived, parents' charitable giving and volunteering decreased; when the oldest child reached the age of 2, their giving increased, but not their volunteering. When the oldest child entered middle and high school, parents' charitable giving and volunteering increased; when their youngest child left the household, parents decreased their giving and volunteering and redirected their charitable giving toward health and environmental organizations. The negative effects on volunteering were stronger for mothers, whereas the positive effects on volunteering were stronger for fathers.

Some social science research pays more attention to affective than cognitive empathy and much of the practitioner literature advises fundraisers to privilege emotion over reason when appealing to donors. "Who Helps Natural‐Disaster Victims" (Marjanovic, Struthers, & Greenglass, 2011. Who helps natural‐disaster victims? Assessment of trait and situational predictors. Analyses of Social and Public Policy, on‐line access.) challenges the assumption that emotions are most important and finds that cognitive empathy or perspective taking is more important than affective empathy in predicting actual helping behaviors after natural disasters. This comment argues that cognitive empathy is important because it helps potential donors avoid blaming the victim in human‐caused disasters. It suggests that nonprofits can use cognitive empathy to construct fundraising appeals using arguments based on reason and justice, which may be more effective with educated donors than emotion‐based appeals.

Psychological research has found that women score higher on most measures of the traits, motivations, and values that predict helping others, and women are more likely to help family and friends. However, sex differences in the institutional helping behaviors of volunteering and charitable giving are small. This article seeks to explain this apparent contradiction with the hypotheses that men have more resources and more social capital than women, which compensates for their lower level of motivation. The article tests these hypotheses using data from the 1995 Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey. The data show partial support for these hypotheses, as men score higher on measures of income, education, trust, and secular social networks. However, women have broader social networks through religious participation.