The Influence of Proactive Personality and Coping on Commitment to STEM Majors

Despite increasing demand for workers in fields that are grounded in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), retention rates are low among relevant college majors. Using Web‐based survey data from 290 STEM majors, the authors investigated links among personality, coping strategies, and STEM major commitment. Proactive personality was positively related to STEM major commitment and to the active planning coping strategy and negatively related to behavioral disengagement. Active planning was positively related to commitment to STEM majors and behavioral disengagement was negatively related to the outcome. Coping strategies fully mediated the relationship between proactive personality and commitment to STEM majors.     

Trade policy and the United States labour market

The United States Government proposed a sweeping review of existing trade deals when the current Administration took office in January 2017. This paper reviews the ongoing changes, and considers the potential impact of two strands of the trade policy debate on the United States labour market. First, we consider policy decisions that may impact the location decision of multinational enterprises, especially within the context of the renegotiation of NAFTA. Second, we review the policy debate related to the steel industry, and the potential channels through which an import tariff on steel imports may impact the labour market.     

Making sense of loss: a content analysis of end-of-life practitioners' therapeutic approaches

Clinical professionals working in end-of-life (EOL) contexts are frequently relied upon to address questions of meaning with dying and bereaved persons. Similar to the gulf between researchers and practitioners besetting the larger healthcare community, the voices of EOL practitioners are often underrepresented in the empirical literature. This study aimed to further the dialogue in the field of thanatology by surveying and describing the therapeutic approaches that EOL practitioners most commonly report using to facilitate meaning-making. A total of 119 practitioners from a range of EOL disciplines were surveyed to write about their intervention strategies for helping clients/patients make sense of loss. Overall, participants discussed using 23 different therapeutic approaches that comprised three overarching categories: 1) presence of the helping professional; 2) elements of the process; and 3) therapeutic procedures. Importantly, the results also indicated that practitioners from the different EOL occupations are converging on many of the same strategies for promoting meaning-making. Implications for future research on evaluating the effectiveness of meaning-making interventions are also discussed.     

Helping families where parents misuse drugs or alcohol? A mixed methods comparative evaluation of an intensive family preservation service

Option 2 is an intensive family preservation service for families with serious child protection concerns related to parental misuse of drugs or alcohol. A previous evaluation indicated that it reduced the number of children entering care and, as a result, produced cost savings; however, little data were gathered from families. This study involved interviews with 15 families (46 children) who had received the service, and a comparison group of 12 families (28 children) referred but not provided the service due to no workers being available. Outcomes and experiences were compared, on average, 5.6 years following referral. Findings included a significant reduction in children entering care, and improvements in relation to substance misuse, parental well‐being and family cohesion. There was no difference in emotional and behavioural welfare of children. Qualitative accounts were very positive about the impact of the service, identifying effective engagement of parents and key elements of good practice in supporting families to change. The findings provide additional support for suggesting that high quality, intensive interventions with families affected by parental substance misuse can be effective. Key lessons for current attempts to deal with the increase in children entering care and the English government's ‘troubled families’ initiative are considered.     

Predicting Assault by Juvenile Psychiatric Patients

This paper reports a post hoc study of the symptoms reported on admission of day and in-patient children, who subsequently proved to be violent to staff or other patients in a child and adolescent psychiatric hospital setting. Patients who were likely to be violent were easily identifiable from the data reported at the first interview. The early identification of such patients was thought to be of importance for their subsequent management, and for the maintenance of a safe environment within the hospital setting.     

Vaginal Dryness and Beyond: The Sexual Health Needs of Women Diagnosed With Metastatic Breast Cancer

While research on the sexual health of women with early stage cancer has grown extensively over the past decade, markedly less information is available to support the sexual health needs of women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 32 women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (ages 35 to 77) about questions they had concerning their sexual health and intimate relationships. All participants were recruited from a comprehensive cancer center at a large Midwestern university. Three themes were examined: the role of sexual activity and intimate touch in participants' lives, unmet information needs about sexual health, and communication with medical providers about sexual concerns. Findings indicated that sexual activities with partners were important; however, participants worried about their own physical limitations and reported frequent physical (e.g., bone pains) and vaginal pain associated with intercourse. When women raised concerns about these issues in clinical settings, medical providers often focused exclusively on vaginal lubricants, which did not address the entirety of women's problems or concerns. In addition, women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer reported needing additional resources about specialized vaginal lubricants, nonpenetrative and nongenitally focused sex, and sexual positions that did not compromise their physical health yet still provided pleasure.     

Raising multiracial awareness in family therapy through critical conversations

Multiracial families are uniquely affected by racial dynamics in U.S. society. Family therapists must be prepared to meet the needs of this growing population and to support racial equity. This article includes an overview of literature related to being multiracial and offers a framework for working with multiracial identity development in therapy. A critical conversation approach to working with multiracial identity is shared along with case examples. The authors' experiences developing the model via a practitioner inquiry group are highlighted.     

Female labour force integration and the alleviation of urban poverty: a case study of Kingston,Jamaica

The author posits that female labor force integration in Jamaica accomplishes little in alleviating poverty and making maximum use of human resources. Women are forced into employment in a labor market that limits their productivity. Women have greater needs to increase their economic activity due to price inflation and cuts in government spending. During the 1980s and early 1990s the country experienced stabilization and structural adjustment resulting in raised interest rates, reduced public sector employment, and deflated public expenditures. Urban population is particularly sensitive to monetary shifts due to dependency on social welfare benefits and lack of assets. Current strategies favor low wage creation in a supply-side export-oriented economy. These strategies were a by-product of import-substitution industrialization policies during the post-war period and greater control by multilateral financial institutions in Washington, D.C. The World Bank and US President Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative stressed export-oriented development. During the 1980s, Jamaican government failed to control fiscal policy, built up a huge external debt, and limited the ability of private businessmen to obtain money for investment in export-based production. Over the decade, uncompetitive production declined and light manufacturing increased. Although under 10% of new investment was in textile and apparel manufacturing, almost 50% of job creation occurred in this sector and 80% of all apparel workers were low-paid women. Devaluation occurred both in the exchange rate and in workers' job security, fringe benefits, union representation, and returns on skills. During 1977-89 women increased employment in the informal sector, which could not remain competitive under devaluation. Women's stratification in the labor market, high dependency burdens, and declining urban infrastructure create conditions of vulnerability for women in Jamaica.     

Stepfamily childbearing in Sweden: quantum and tempo effects, 1950-99

Several studies have demonstrated that stepfamily couples have a higher risk of childbearing than couples in a stable union with the same total number of children. Analysing retrospective data from a nationally representative sample of Swedish adults, we find that the risk of a second or third birth is higher when it is the first or second child in a new union. We also find a faster pace of childbearing after stepfamily formation than after a shared birth. The risk of a second birth (in total) is only a little higher in the first two years after stepfamily formation than in the first two years after a shared birth, and thereafter the risk is lower for stepfamilies. The risk of a third birth (in total) is particularly high early in the stepfamily union and remains higher than that of couples with two shared children for at least five years. The stepfamily difference was lower after than before 1980, when the Swedish government introduced parental leave incentives for short birth intervals.