Efficacy of a Self-Help Treatment for At-Risk and Pathological Gamblers

Available evidence suggests that self-help treatments may reduce problem gambling severity but inconsistencies of results across clinical trials leave the extent of their benefits unclear. Moreover, no self-help treatment has yet been validated within a French Canadian setting. The current study therefore assesses the efficacy of a French language self-help treatment including three motivational telephone interviews spread over an 11-week period and a cognitive-behavioral self-help workbook. At-risk and pathological gamblers were randomly assigned to the treatment group (n = 31) or the waiting list (n = 31). Relative to the waiting list, the treatment group showed a statistically significant reduction in the number of DSM-5 gambling disorder criteria met, gambling habits, and gambling consequences at Week 11. Perceived self-efficacy and life satisfaction also significantly improved after 11 weeks for the treatment group, but not for the waiting list group. At Week 11, 13% of participants had dropped out of the study. All significant changes reported for the treatment group were maintained throughout 1, 6 and 12-month follow-ups. Results support the efficacy of the self-help treatment to reduce problem gambling severity, gambling behaviour and to improve overall functioning among a sample of French Canadian problem gamblers over short, medium and long term. Findings from this study lend support to the appropriateness of self-help treatments for problem gamblers and help clarify inconsistencies found in the literature. The low dropout rate is discussed with respect to the advantages of the self-help format. Clinical and methodological implications of the results are put forth.     

Challenges related to the analytical process in realist evaluation and latest developments on the use of NVivo from a realist perspective

ABSTRACT

Realist evaluation (RE) is a research design increasingly used in program evaluation, that aims to explore and understand the influence of context and underlying mechanisms on intervention or program outcomes. Several methodological challenges, however, are associated with this approach. This article summarizes RE key principles and examines some documented challenges and solutions when analyzing RE data, including the development of Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations. An analytic method using NVivo features is also presented. This method makes it possible to respond to certain analytic difficulties associated with RE by facilitating the identification of patterns and ensuring transparency in the analytical process.     

Sensory siege: dromocolonisation,slow violence,and poetic realism in the twenty-first century short story from Gaza

Since the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the subsequent siege, and Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, including ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2008/2009 and ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in 2014, it has become difficult to convey the normality of life in Gaza, a normality that is often elusive in a situation that is increasingly defined by the accelerated and technological violence of dromocolonisation, at the same time that it is marked by what Rob Nixon has termed ‘slow violence.’ To make these forms of violence visible and apprehensible, recent short fiction from Gaza has turned to poetic realism and the use of the sensory experience to represent life under siege. Contrary to visceral realism, which promotes a focus on the body as a site of victimhood and suffering, poetic realism allows the short story writers discussed in this article to reclaim agency and to define a Gazan identity that resists the subjection and subjectification of human rights discourses and of the Anglophone media by focusing both on the ordinariness and the extraordinariness of living in Gaza in the twenty-first century.     

Growing Up in a Diverse Society: Adolescents’ Interest in Parental Religious Socialization Messages

Because Western societies are becoming increasingly religiously diverse, the sociocultural context in which young adolescents currently grow up differs from that of their parents. This raises the question to what extent adolescents are interested in communicating with their parents about religion. In a cross-sectional study of 498 Belgian adolescents ages 12–18-years (mean age = 14.94, SD = 1.34), we examined how adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion was related to the link between parental religious socialization messages and adolescent religious out-group attitudes. Testing two models, we aimed to understand whether (a) adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion mediated the link between parental religious socialization and adolescent religious out-group attitudes or (b) parental religious socialization mediated the link between adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion and adolescent religious out-group attitudes. Results revealed a dynamic interplay between study variables, and highlighted the importance of considering adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion.     

Internal migration and the politics of place: a comparative analysis of China and Indonesia

Spontaneous and organized population movements have long been used as a means of promoting a country's goals of development and national integration. At the local level, on the other hand, these movements have frequently done the opposite, fueling local grievances, sharpening group distinctions, and at times creating ‘sons-of-the-soil’ conflicts. In this paper, I explore this apparent tension between the national political rationale for internal migration and the political impact such migration has had locally, in four minority regions of China and Indonesia. I argue that the specific manner in which migration affects local politics is influenced by a country's political regime. In Indonesia, the impact of migration is observed in electoral politics, where ‘politics of place’ have been allowed to emerge. In China, it is perceived in the curbing of national minorities’ territorial autonomy. The role played by local elites and group competition between indigenous people and migrants are also reviewed.     

中国农村大龄未婚男性安全性行为倾向的影响因素：基于计划行为理论的研究

本文基于计划行为理论,研究了受到婚姻挤压的农村大龄未婚男性安全套使用倾向的心理因素和社会人口统计因素。数据来源于2008年8月-9月西安交通大学人口与发展研究所在安徽JC区开展的＂农村大龄男性生殖健康和家庭生活调查＂。Logistic回归分析结果显示,积极的互动态度、较高的性伴规范,较高的知觉行为控制和首次性行为中使用了安全套的经历与大龄未婚男性安全套使用倾向显著正相关。此外,较小年龄组的未婚男性更倾向于使用安全套。本研究结果有助于我们更好地理解农村大龄未婚男性安全套使用机制,能为促进农村地区安全性行为的干预项目提供理论借鉴和支持。     

Relationship between sarcopenia and fracture risks in obese postmenopausal women

It is known that obesity is inversely correlated with fracture risk. It remains unclear if a low muscle mass (sarcopenia) modulates the relationship between obesity and bone mass density. Twenty-seven obese women were matched for total fat mass (+/- 0.5 kg) and age (+/- 4 yrs) and divided in 3 equal groups: class II sarcopenic, class I sarcopenic, and nonsarcopenic. Body composition (DXA) and dietary intake were measured. Our results suggest that obesity may offer some protection against osteoporosis, even in sarcopenic postmenopausal women. However, further studies are needed to examine the actual implication of these results on a clinical standpoint.     

Increasingly heterogeneous ages at first birth by education in Southern European and Anglo-American family-policy regimes: A seven-country comparison by birth cohort

According to the 'reproductive polarization' hypothesis, family-policy regimes unfavourable to the combination of employment with motherhood generate greater socio-economic differentials in fertility than other regimes. This hypothesis has been tested mainly for 'liberal' Anglo-American regimes. To investigate the effects elsewhere, we compared education differentials in age at first birth among native-born women of 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts in seven countries representing three regime types. Women with low educational attainment have continued to have first births early, not only in Britain and the USA but also in Greece, Italy, and Spain. Women at all other levels of education have experienced a shift towards later first births, a shift that has been largest in Southern Europe. Unlike the educationally heterogeneous changes in age pattern at first birth seen under the Southern European and Anglo-American family-policy regimes, the changes across birth cohorts in the study's two 'universalistic' countries, Norway and France, have been educationally homogeneous.     

Validating the Portuguese Version of the Satisfaction With Life Scale in an Elderly Sample

Life satisfaction is referred to a cognitive, judgmental process (Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985), in which person’s quality of life is globally assessed according to his/her chosen criteria (Shin and Johnson in Soc Indic res 5:475–492, 1978). Thus, life satisfaction is a conscious cognitive judgment, based on the comparison of one’s life with a self-imposed standard or set of standards, which lead to a global assessment of life (Pavot and Diener in Psychol Assess 5:164–172, 1993). Among the many scales developed to measure life satisfaction, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS, Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985) is one of the global life satisfaction scales more often used in the research arena. It is composed of five items assessing global life satisfaction, using a Likert type response format. The aim of this paper is to validate the Portuguese version of the SWLS via confirmatory factor analysis, with a sample of 1,003 elderly from Angola. Reliability, factorial and criterial validity estimates are presented. Overall, the results shown that the scale had an adequate one-factor confirmatory solution, satisfying reliability indices, and adequate criterion-related validity when assessed in a sample of Angolan elderly. The discussion relates the results with existing literature and posits the contributions of the paper: firstly, it offers the researchers on life satisfaction in Portuguese-speaking contexts a brief, self-rated measure of satisfaction with life that has sound psychometric properties, validity, and reliability; secondly, it is the first confirmatory validation of the scale in Portuguese.     

The moral economy of contemporary working‐class adolescence: managing symbolic capital in a French public ‘Adolescent Centre’

Working‐class adolescents of French urban peripheries are key figures in a new social debate that reactivates the nineteenth century spectre of ‘dangerous’ classes to be controlled. Since the 1990s, French social counselling has privileged two modalities of response: taking account of suffering and government by listening and speech. We hypothesize that the contemporary moral economy allows for social interactions that go beyond social control and institutional domination. This is partly because professionals engaged in this moral undertaking may keep a critical distance, and partly because the concerned populations aren't necessarily devoid of resources to advance their interests or incapable of resistance. The concept of moral economy, coupled with the ethnographic method, is heuristic for fully comprehending the complexity of these issues and their stakes. Our fieldwork was centred on a French Adolescent Centre in an impoverished commune in Paris's periphery, from January 2010 through March 2011. These institutions were established in the early 2000s to respond to adolescent ‘suffering’ by crossing social work and psychiatry. Adolescents, parents, and other institutions (especially schools) solicit the professionally diverse staff for assistance, which in turn may take on cases and/or make referrals to other support institutions. By paying attention to all the scenes upon which the story of a counselled adolescent evolves, and bearing more general social evolutions in mind by applying the concept of moral economy, we can consider the multiplicity of seemingly contradictory processes as a whole. We see the destabilization of parents and their loss of symbolic capital, partly due to the norms of contemporary parenthood and partly due to the stigmatization of working‐class adolescence. But we also discern possibilities for expressing sentiments of injustice and humiliation, for increasing symbolic capital, and in some cases a reappropriation of the system, particularly in trajectories marked by a will for social ascension.