Sex and gender are fundamental determinants of health, disease risk, and treatment responses, yet they remain inconsistently and inadequately integrated into biomedical research. Despite major funding and regulatory policies over the past two decades, sex and gender continue to be treated primarily as descriptive variables rather than drivers of discovery. As the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences (OSSD) marks twenty years of leadership in this field, this policy statement articulates OSSD’s position on best practices for the integration of sex and gender in health research. Drawing on empirical evidence, landmark policies, and persistent gaps in implementation, this statement provides clear guidance for researchers, funders, and journals. OSSD explicitly recommends prespecified sex- and gender-responsive questions, appropriate study design and statistical power, transparent analysis and reporting, and accountability mechanisms to translate into practice. Adoption of these standards is essential to improving scientific rigor, reproducibility, and clinical relevance.
Cases in which a costly helping act by a benefactor can greatly improve the outcomes of a beneficiary abound. Such help conforms with prevalent social norms and can increase collective welfare. We study how the surplus created through such help is shared by the benefactor and the beneficiary. We hypothesized that aspects of the situation, such as relative wealth, social distance, whether the help increased gains or prevented losses, and perspective may result in variations in this division. In two experiments, we compare participants' judgments (N = 695) and participants' bargaining choices (N = 617 dyads). In both tasks, the proposed compensation for the cost incurred, while the benefits of helping exceeded the cost and was affected similarly by the manipulated factors. We observed pro-social equalizing of outcomes, less indebtedness to family benefactors than to commercial ones, and sensitivity to the fact that help-seeker was suffering a loss. However, whereas the judgments allocated to the beneficiary about 80% of the surplus generated, in (consequential) minimal bargaining, the surplus was split more equally, as expected by economic theory. This gap raises doubts about the validity of using nonconsequential measures.
This study examines how changes in state corporate tax rates affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance among U.S. firms. Using staggered state-level tax reforms and a difference-in-differences (DiD) design, we identify an asymmetric causal effect: tax cuts significantly enhance CSR performance by reducing concerns, whereas tax increases only marginally weaken CSR strengths. Drawing primarily on signaling theory, complemented by slack resource and stakeholder perspectives, we argue that tax cuts expand financial slack, enabling firms to use CSR as a positive signal of financial strength, long-term orientation, and responsible use of tax savings. In contrast, firms avoid cutting CSR significantly after tax hikes to prevent negative signaling. In support of the theories, our heterogeneity analyses show that these effects are stronger among financially constrained firms and are concentrated in material CSR issues that are financially relevant to investors. A domain-level analysis further reveals that tax increases reduce environmental strengths, while tax cuts lower concerns related to employee relations, diversity, and environmental practices. These findings highlight how tax policy shapes CSR through its impact on financial flexibility and stakeholder expectation, offering implications for corporate strategy and public policy.
This article investigates whether state efforts to combat violence against women (VAW) shape personally held stigmatizing attitudes toward victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) and views of the stigma society attributes to them. Drawing on the policy feedback effect and source cues literature, we argue that credible sources delivering messages about anti-VAW laws can reduce stigmatizing attitudes toward IPV victims and persuade people that society is more welcoming to victims, thereby reducing public stigma. Using survey experiments collected from Mexico and Guatemala, we find that credible sources matter in predicting a host of attitudes related to personally held and public stigma toward victims, but these effects are conditional on gender and hostile sexism. This article demonstrates that even in contexts of impunity, state efforts can positively shape social norms on VAW.
This study explores how organizational members draw on discursive resources to enact resilience when navigating challenges in a public education institution. Drawing on qualitative interview data from educators, findings reveal that resilience is a dynamic, socially constructed, collective process that emerges through (1) invoking a bigger purpose, where challenges are discursively framed as inherent in meaningful work, and (2) growth mindset messaging, where learning is foregrounded through storytelling. Taken together, these communicative practices make up a recursive process-with drawing on past experiences of successfully overcoming adversity and discursive framing-to co-construct individual and collective resilience in the organizational context of public education. Our findings extend the literature on meaningful work, growth mindsets, and the Communication Theory of Resilience. We offer practical implications for (1) cultivating growth mindset messaging and (2) building narratives anchored in a bigger purpose to foster a collective identity.
