The Role of Mobile Phones in Family Communication

Whilst there is a wealth of research into family communication and family relationships, there is little information about whether (and if so how) mobile phones have impacted on these processes. The authors’ study involved individual semi‐structured interviews with 60 families, including parents/carers and young people aged 11–17, to investigate this further. The interviews explored how mobile phones are used in family communication; participants’ views about the benefits and disadvantages of mobile phone use; and issues around safety, surveillance and privacy. The findings show that young people and parents see mobiles as a key way for families to keep in touch, and to monitor and ensure young people’s safety. However, some participants felt there was a downside to this, in relation to some young people either withdrawing into their own social worlds, or having a false feeling of security as a result of having a mobile. Gender differences in views and usage were also found. The paper concludes with some general comments about the role of mobile phones in family life.     

The influence of individual,marital, and family therapy on high utilizers of health care

Research has shown that people reduce their use of health care after individual, marital, and family therapy, which is known as the "offset effect." However, little research has been done to learn if high utilizers of health care reduce health care usage after therapy. Medical records of research participants (n = 65) from a health maintenance organization (HMO) were randomly selected and examined for 6 months before, during, and after therapy. Persons who received individual, marital, or family therapy all reduced their health care use after therapy, with the largest reductions coming from those participants who had some form of conjoint therapy.     

A GAME THEORETIC ANALYSIS OF VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA AND PHYSICIAN ASSISTED SUICIDE

In countries/states where voluntary euthanasia (VE) or physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is legal, the patient's decision about whether to request VE or PAS heavily relies on the information others provide. We use the tools of microeconomic theory to study how communication between the patient, his family and his physician influences the patient's decision. We argue that families have considerable power over the patient and that the amount of information that is transmitted from physician to patient might be severely diminished as a result of legalizing VE or PAS. We discuss our main results in the context of the ongoing normative debate over the legalization of VE and PAS. (JEL D8, I12)     

Like a Parent and a Friend,but Not the Father: A Qualitative Study of Stepfathers’ Experiences in the Stepfamily

Research about the experience and position of stepfathers in stepfamilies is scarce. Using data from semi‐structured interviews with eight stepfathers, we aim to explore how stepfathers experience family life and their relationships with their (step)children and extended family members (biological father and grandparents), as well as how they describe their position within the stepfamily. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed three main themes: most participants saw themselves ‘like a parent and a friend.’ While none of them considered themselves as ‘the father’ – this position being assigned to the biological father – they described acting like a parent or a father figure in their relationships with the children. Secondly, despite some difficulties in the initial stages of formation of their new families, most participants described a positive evolution over time and were satisfied with their current family situation. Thirdly, the stepfather's positioning towards non‐cohabiting family members such as the biological father and grandparents added complexity but was managed well. Research findings are discussed in light of the current family therapy literature on working with stepfamilies.     

Everyday health communication experiences of college students

OBJECTIVE: The authors examined college students' day-to-day health communication experiences. PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of 109 midwestern university students participated in the study. METHODS: The participants completed health communication diaries for 2 weeks, generating 2,185 records. Frequent health topics included nutrition and diet, minor health concerns, risky health practices, and body fitness. RESULTS: Approximately 27% of health communication experiences involved the proactive seeking of health-related information or advice. Interpersonal venues (face-to-face, telephone, and e-mail) were evident in about 75% of the records, which were dominated by exchanges with friends and family members. The authors found modest interactions of topic, channel, and purpose. CONCLUSIONS: Congruent with the uses and gratifications theory, the authors found that satisfaction with and perceived impact of health communication experiences varied by topic, channel, relationship, and purpose.     

Identity cues and dementia in nursing home intervention

This study examines the identity cues that family caregivers and healthcare personnel use with seniors living with dementia and living in nursing homes. The identity cues represent biographical knowledge used to stimulate the dementia sufferer, trigger signals and incite interaction. Our grounded approach hinges on three objectives: to identify and categorize identity cues; to document their uses; and to gain a better understanding of their effectiveness. We interviewed nine family caregivers and 12 healthcare workers. Qualitative data indicates that the participants use identity cues that evoke seniors' sociological, relational and individual characteristics. These identity cues play a central role in communication and constitute important information that the family caregivers can share with healthcare personnel. They sustain memory, facilitate care and reinforce seniors' self-value. These results help to define identity, foster a greater role for family caregivers, and constitute a sound basis for the implementation of personalized interventions.     

Psychosocial distress,physical illness,and social behaviour of close relatives to people with substance use disorders

ABSTRACT

This study explores how a family member with substance use disorder (SUD) affects the psychosocial, behavioral, and physical states of other family members. Sixteen in-depth interviews with relatives of Icelandic individuals afflicted with SUD were performed. The interviewees were selected from a pool of Icelandic families whose members included one or more chronic SUD users. They represented different relations to the user (spouses, parents, children, and siblings) and both genders. All participants except for siblings expressed that SUD had negatively affected their mental health by inducing depression, anxiety, and stress-related physical illness. All had experienced physical violence, mental abuse and financial loss. Parents indicated that the SUD of the family member had isolating psychosocial impacts on their children and caused a loss of connection among their family members. All participants, except the siblings, regarded their workplace as a shelter. The study’s findings can help social professionals to better understand the effects of SUD on families, family systems, and public health in general.     

Late Adapters? How Social Workers Acquire Knowledge and Skills About Technology Tools

Little is understood about the scope of information and communication technology (ICT) use in practice for agency-based social work professionals, and still less is known about how such practitioners acquire and avail themselves of opportunities to learn about ICT tools. This study asked a sample of social work field supervisors (n?=?371) to describe their personal and professional ICT use, to rank the technological sophistication of their agency, to describe the barriers and facilitators to ICT use in their organizations and to operationalize environmental opportunities for acquiring new skills and knowledge. The authors examine factors that may influence technology use: asking if organizational culture is related to uptake in the professional context, and if self-reported individual resistance to innovation and change can explain voluntary adoption of ICT tools. The results offer a portrait of how agency-based social workers are using technology in personal and professional life, describe how these supervisors learn about developing technologies for practice, and highlight the gaps in technology infrastructures among agencies, pointing to directions for further exploration.     

Strategies for Measuring and Promoting Mothers' Social Support Networks

ABSTRACT

This chapter recommends respondent-driven sampling (RDS) and peer-driven intervention (PDI) as new strategies for improving safe motherhood and women's health in countries where women have limited access to information and communication technology. Strategies for measuring and promoting mothers' social support networks could be applied to enrich communication about reproductive health and safe motherhood, especially in countries where women's low social status leads to child marriage, low educational attainment/illiteracy, and limited access to modern information and communication technology. By using RDS to study communities and social network structures, outreach workers can educate women via women's social support groups, enhancing and broadening the use of modern information and communication technologies. RDS is a strategy that allows researchers to identify and focus on distinct groups within a community. PDI uses a two-step intervention where respondents are educated by outreach workers and previous participants (members of social support groups). Limitations of these approaches are also discussed.     

Lesbian,gay, bisexual,and transgender families and health

Research consistently demonstrates that family relationships are key determinants of health, but most research on health and families focuses on a heterosexual and cisgender context. Sexual and gender identities often are overlooked or erased in family and health research. We present an overview of the current state of research on LGBT families and health, using a life course approach and pointing to the ways that LGBT people's experiences of families occur within a broader social structural context, with implications for their health and the health of their family members. We focus on parenthood, parent–child ties, intimate relationships, and caregiving. We also identify two theoretical obstacles for studies of LGBT families and health as well as important research areas for moving forward, such as the inclusion of non‐binary and queer identities in our studies of family and health. Incorporation of LGBT and other queer families and family forms into our health research interrogates assumptions within family and health research and offers insight into how to move the field forward.     

Parent Management Training, Relationships with Agency Staff, and Child Mental Health: Urban Foster Parents' Perspectives

Many foster parents are ill prepared to meet the behavioral needs of children placed in their homes. Research suggests they lack training in evidence-based behavioral interventions and feel unsupported by child welfare professionals. Given the complex needs of foster children and increased rates of placement disruption for foster children with behavior problems, implementation of effective interventions is essential. However, little is known about foster parents' receptivity to these types of interventions. In this qualitative study, we examine urban foster parents' perceptions of the specific elements of parent management training (PMT), an evidence-based treatment for disruptive behaviors that teaches parents to improve desired behaviors and decrease oppositional behaviors by rewarding positive behaviors (positive reinforcement) and responding to negative behaviors with mild, consistent punishments such as timeout or a privilege removal. We present data from four focus groups (N = 38). While the questions focused on parent's perceptions of PMT, responses often related to parent interactions with agency staff. Four strong themes emerged from the data. First, foster parents discussed a need for more support and training in how to address children's behaviors, but also had concerns that some PMT discipline techniques would be ineffective based on their past experiences with foster children. Second, they described how staff communication skills and allegations of child abuse could affect parents' motivation to continue fostering. Third, they expressed a need for more detailed information about children's histories and visits with biological families as the lack of information contributed to difficulty in meeting foster children's needs. They suggested that joint training of foster parents and staff in the intervention could improve their ability to work together to support the child's positive behaviors. Finally, parents reported little involvement in child mental health services and doubted the effectiveness of the mental health services their foster children received.     

“These Aren’t Very Good Times”: Financial Uncertainty Experienced by Romantic Partners in the Wake of an Economic Downturn

In the wake of the economic downturn, economic uncertainty is roughly double that of the past 23 years. Research indicates married couples are uncertain about finances and financial uncertainty can adversely affect individual and relational outcomes, yet little is known about the nature of financial uncertainty and how it is manifested. Thus, this investigation relied on face-to-face interviews to uncover the financial uncertainty experienced by 40 individuals in married or cohabiting relationships. The study found financial uncertainty was largely universal regardless of participant age, marital or socioeconomic status, sex, or family background. Five types of financial uncertainty emerged from the interviews: (1) economic uncertainty; (2) management uncertainty; (3) personal uncertainty; (4) communication uncertainty; and (5) chronic uncertainty, underscoring the importance of financial communication.     

TOOLS AND TOYS : Communicating gendered positions towards technology

With the rising importance of technology in the information and knowledge society, the gender-technology relationship is ever more important when thinking about gender equality. Gender researchers have shown not only that the use and design of technologies is gendered, but that people also position themselves in relation to technology, based on certain gendered assumptions about technology in societies. This article looks at how people working in quintessential information and knowledge society professions, namely information communication technology (ICT) work, position themselves in relation to technology. Using a social constructivist framework and a discourse analysis, it shows how gender differences are achieved in communication: men tend to describe technology as a toy, while women tend to describe technology as a tool. In some instances this pattern is broken, which opens up the opportunity to rethink the gender binary. This article argues that the way in which people position themselves in relation to technology continues to be gendered, which may threaten gender equality in the information and knowledge society, and it also indicates that there is the possibility of change.     

Everyday Health Communication Experiences of College Students

Objective: The authors examined college students' day-to-day health communication experiences. Participants: A convenience sample of 109 midwestern university students participated in the study. Methods: The participants completed health communication diaries for 2 weeks, generating 2,185 records. Frequent health topics included nutrition and diet, minor health concerns, risky health practices, and body fitness. Results: Approximately 27% of health communication experiences involved the proactive seeking of health-related information or advice. Interpersonal venues (face-to-face, telephone, and e-mail) were evident in about 75% of the records, which were dominated by exchanges with friends and family members. The authors found modest interactions of topic, channel, and purpose. Conclusions: Congruent with the uses and gratifications theory, the authors found that satisfaction with and perceived impact of health communication experiences varied by topic, channel, relationship, and purpose.     

‘Exercise is medicine’: Understanding the exercise beliefs and practices of older Chinese women immigrants in British Columbia, Canada

In this paper we examine how Western biomedical beliefs around exercise and related health practices compare and contrast with traditional Chinese medicine's (TCM) conceptions of health and exercise in a globalizing society, and how these narratives about health and physical activity are understood and taken up by 15 aging Chinese immigrant women (aged 65+) living in the multicultural city of Vancouver. Drawing upon theoretical work around the body and society to guide our analysis (including the ideas of Bourdieu and Foucault), we outline how the participants in our project take a pragmatic approach to their use of medicine, combining TCM with Western biomedicine in creative ways. However, understandings of the body are underpinned, we argue, by Eastern narratives of the ‘oneness’ of mind-body and the need for ‘balance’ in order to achieve health. Towards this end, we found that many of the participants view (and use) traditional Chinese body practices as an extension of TCM, a technique to help them achieve balance. We conclude that the neoliberal narrative of personal responsibility for health does not fuel the exercise practices of many of the participants, but rather that they perceive exercise as a pleasurable activity that improves their levels of happiness (and balance) and enhances their lives.     

Reaching Beyond the Net: Political Circuits and Participation in Toronto's G20 Protests

Using a survey of 359 participants in the 2010 protests against the G20 in Toronto, this paper examines the effects and effectiveness of the different communication media in informing diverse participants about the protest. It finds that the communication networks that surrounded the G20 summit protest in Toronto in 2010 were dense and interconnected. Drawing on Tilly's ‘political circuits’, the survey shows that activists at the core of these networks used a combination of online and offline modes of communication, while those outside of that core were reliant on fewer channels of information about the protests. These included people of colour, people who are not part of student networks, less educated people and people less involved in existing social movements. Using logistic regression models, we demonstrate that the digital divide may be less important than the structure and means of communication that make up the political circuits of a movement. Based on these models, we argue that communication modes such as social networking sites and the mainstream media may be important tools for bridging the gap between core and peripheral participants.