In her recent article, Dr. Alston examines how charities solicit high-capacity donors to provide the funds for matching grants and leadership gifts. To do so, she conducts a field experiment of Texas A&M University’s fundraising organizations to see 1) whether high-income donors respond to non-personal solicitations and 2) whether these donors are willing to direct their donations to overhead costs. She finds that high-income donors are not responsive to letters or emails, regardless of whether they have the option to direct giving. Her results highlight the difficulties of motivating some high-income donors, especially when only impersonal communication is used.

In her recent article, Dr. Wong examines the relationship between outdoor temperature and sedentary behavior. This is important because there is a strong link between sedentary behavior and mortality and morbidity. She finds that maximum temperature, mean temperature, and diurnal variation have significant negative linear relationships with all-day sedentary time (p<0.01). There is no significant association between daily minimum temperature and all-day sedentary time.

In his recent article, Dr. Fay examines the extent to which states adopt each others’ constitutional amendments to prohibit same-sex marriage. Using conditional event history analysis on all states from 1999 to 2011, he finds that, when a nearby state passes a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage, it encourages legislatures in nearby states to do the same.