The Effects of a Web-Based Intervention on College Students' Knowledge of Human Papillomavirus and Attitudes toward Vaccination

ABSTRACT

Research suggests that college students know relatively little about human papillomavirus (HPV), and that educational interventions increase knowledge of HPV. However, to date, there are no published studies testing the effects of computer-based education on attitudes toward being vaccinated in this population. The present study of 119 college students explored the effect of a web-based intervention on participants' knowledge of HPV and attitudes toward HPV vaccination. Participants were randomized to a web-based, self-administered HPV educational intervention or to a control group. Knowledge and attitudes were assessed at baseline, after the completion of the intervention, and at one-month follow-up. At baseline, women knew more than men about risks and symptoms of HPV. At immediate and long-term follow-up, the intervention group had better knowledge of HPV and more positive attitudes toward HPV vaccination than the control group. There were some gender differences in response to the intervention; increases in knowledge of HPV were greater in men, while changes in attitudes toward vaccination were larger in women.     

The Second Closet: A Qualitative Study of HIV Stigma Among Seropositive Gay Men in a Southern U.S. City

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Stigma connected with HIV/AIDS has decreased considerably since the early epidemic yet affects those living with HIV in many ways. Little research, particularly qualitative research, concerning HIV stigma from the perspective of gay men has emerged. The present qualitative study aimed to fill this evidence gap by examining how HIV stigma is perceived and experienced by gay men who have become HIV-infected and how they respond to this stigma. Methods: Thematic analysis of 19 gay men's narratives identified six main themes. Results: Encountering HIV stigmatization was common and was linked to the physical stigmata identifying respondents as HIV-positive. Overwhelmingly, they found stigmatization to be most intensely felt within gay communities. One profound theme was internalized HIV stigma, referring to respondents’ internalized negative feelings about their HIV status. A related theme was the closeted nature of HIV. Lastly, regarding how the men dealt with the HIV diagnosis and experiences of HIV stigma, a theme of adaptation became clear. Conclusions: Although exploratory, the results can serve as a beginning framework for understanding and assisting seropositive gay men who experience HIV stigma. The findings are important because it is realistic to expect that in a climate in which HIV has become increasingly invisible and closeted and in which infections are on the rise, gay and bisexual men will be increasingly affected and infected by HIV.     

Social Work Students' Attitudes toward Homosexuality and Their Knowledge and Attitudes toward Homosexual Parenting as an Alternative Family Unit: An Australian Study

Attitudes have become increasingly more accepting toward homosexuality, yet negative attitudes toward homosexual parents continue. There appears to be no research specifically examining Australian social work students' attitudes towards homosexuality and homosexual parenting. This article reports on a study of final year social work students in the undergraduate social work programme at one university in the State of Victoria. This study investigated student attitudes to homosexuality, and their knowledge and attitudes toward homosexual parenting as an alternative family unit via the administration of a questionnaire containing a number of scales and questions, some in response to a case vignette involving couples of different sexual orientations (lesbian, gay and heterosexual). It was found that most of the students had liberal attitudes toward homosexuality and homosexual parenting, and had high levels of knowledge about homosexual parenting. Students were generally favourable towards all three couples in the vignettes, but rated lesbian parents followed by gay parents most highly. It was found that the inclusion of the topic of homosexuality within the social work curriculum was extremely minimal. These findings are discussed within the context of previous research. The implications of the findings for curriculum development and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Running on Empty: The Operating Reserves of U.S. Nonprofit Organizations

Operating reserves allow nonprofit organizations to smooth out imbalances between revenues and expenses, helping to maintain program output in the presence of fiscal shocks. We know surprisingly little about why nonprofits might save operating reserves and what factors explain variation between organizations' savings behavior. Findings suggest that operating reserves are reduced in the presence of concentrated public funds, access to debt, fixed assets, and endowment. However, size is not an important predictor, indicating that the lack of reserves is not limited to small nonprofit organizations but is instead a sectorwide issue. Significant numbers of nonprofits maintain no operating reserves at all. One potential explanation is that organizations discount the benefits of reserves because they are evaluated on spending, focusing instead on the “benefits of costs.” This preference for spending over reserving may also help explain the general lack of liquidity in the sector beyond operating reserves alone.     

High stakes: U.S. nonprofit organizations and the U.S. standing abroad

This research sought to explain the agency of U.S.-based nonprofit nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the U.S. standing abroad, and explore the NGO role in the U.S. public diplomacy. A multiple-case study method was used to look at five 501(c)(3) organizations that receive predominantly private funding and operate globally. The data gathered from in-person interviews and corporate documentation were compared between cases, and synthesized across cases using the theory-building technique. While U.S. standing affects American NGOs’ practices and discourses, American NGOs’ behavior might have a bearing on the attitudes, perceptions, and opinions of international publics about the United States. Both the NGO-owned state identities and American NGOs’ reputation for autonomy and freedom of expression enhance the U.S. public diplomacy efforts.     

Personal and Professional Knowledge of and Experience With Suicide and Suicide Prevention Among Stakeholders in Clinical and Community Practice

Community-dwelling veterans at risk for suicide may be in contact with a variety of providers in agency-based settings that offer health and human services. The study aim is to describe the perspective of agency-based clinical and community providers who may come into contact with veterans in need of suicide prevention services and to examine the nature of their personal and professional relationships to individuals at risk for suicide among this sample.

This study reports on qualitative data from a sample of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) and community providers serving veterans and military families in one Midwestern state (N = 70). Providers completed a survey assessing exposure to suicide, including contact with and relationship to someone suicidal, and organizational characteristics of the providers’ employing agencies. Semi-structured interview questions probed for the nature of how they would react with suicidal individuals. Most providers (94%) had some prior contact with someone who was suicidal, and nearly three quarters (77%) knew someone who had died by suicide. Providers reported powerful emotional responses of sadness and remorse to suicidal experiences. While these providers interact with veterans and military families as part of their jobs, they may have their own history of being exposed to suicide, both professionally and personally.     

Attitudes Towards Food Safety and the Environment: A Comparison of Conswners in Japan and the U.S.1

Abstract Numerous studies have demonstrated dwindling consumer confidence in the safety of the food supply and growing interest in purchasing "safe" foods. However, this research has painted no consistent picture of those concerned about food safety, nor has it investigated the relationship between environmental and food safety attitudes. A mail survey of Japanese and the United States consumers is used to evalulate whether selected environmental attitudes can explain food safety concerns and behavior. Findings indicate high concern about food safety in both countries, but income, age, education, and attitudes about the impacts of fossil fuel use explain little of the variance. Instead, that concern appears to be prompted largely by an interest in obtaining a healthy diet. It is also noted that Japanese consumers are more concerned about both food safety and the impacts of fossil fuel use, perhaps because of Japan's lack of natural resources and high food import levels.     

A Study of Attitudes Towards Gays and Lesbians in the State of Utah,U.S.A.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine Utahans' attitudes towards gay and lesbian people and their civil rights. Utah politics are dominated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) and the Republican Party, with membership typically shared by the two. However, Mormon sociocultural values are also distinctively pro-family and companionate. We wondered to what extent caring, warmth, and inclusiveness toward family members mitigated against the doctrinaire injunction to reject homosexuality and, if necessary, to reject family members who were homosexual.

We found that proponents of gay and lesbian civil rights were likely to be personally familiar with gays and lesbians, to have empathetic attitudes about gay and lesbian youth and being out, and to possess a commitment to legal rights for gay and lesbian individuals and families. Opponents of gay and lesbian civil rights were driven by moralistic imperatives about sexuality and the roots of sexual behavior, made a sharp distinction between what they perceived as social privileges and legally mandated rights and were not likely to have had much direct contact with gay and lesbian people. Our results suggest that Utahans indeed appear to be torn, or at best ambivalent, about the religious mandate to condemn homosexuality while at the same time prizing family ties and relationships above other values. For the same reasons, political actions directed at obtaining specific legal rights for gays and lesbians appear to have more support than expected, especially in the realms of partner benefits, employment discrimination, health benefits, and private freedoms. Legal marriage, however, is soundly rejected as a possibility, especially in view of the belief that marriage is sacred and exclusively for heterosexuals.     

An Exploratory Study on Attitudes Toward Persons with Disabilities Among U.S. and Japanese Social Work Students

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study was conducted to understand and compare attitudes among social work students in the United States and Japan toward people with disabilities. The Modified Issues in Disabilities Scale (MIDS), designed to measure attitudes toward people with physical disabilities, was implemented on convenient samples of 92 U.S. and 73 Japanese social work students. The findings suggest that social work students in both countries hold moderately positive attitudes. Other similarities as well as differences among the sampled students from the two countries, and their implications to social work education, will be discussed in this paper.     

Youth Participation in U.S. Contexts: Student Voice Without a National Mandate

Unlike the United Kingdom and other nations that mandate youth participation to some degree, U.S. policies instead tend to inhibit child participation rather than encourage it. Given these policy contexts, it can be challenging to locate spaces where robust opportunities for democratic participation and student voice exist. We use this article as an opportunity to examine the disciplinary, philosophical and methodological approaches that have framed youth participation in youth contexts. We conclude by identifying critical issues of citizenship and belonging that must be considered in participatory research.     

Ownership patterns and centralization: A China and U.S. comparison

The paper examines the relationships between ownership and decision-making patterns in small business organizations in China and the United States. We also consider organizational size and the culture-free/culture-bound argument. The U.S. data (a sample of 540 enterprises) were collected by questionnaire in 1988; the Chinese data (a sample of 53 enterprises) by a converted and translated questionnaire based on the U.S. version and interviews in 1989. Findings indicate that the Chinese organizations with various forms of ownerships are more centralized than their U.S. counterparts, which is consistent with the culture-bound perspective. On the other side of the coin, findings suggest that in both China and United States, organizational centralization of decision making decreases with increasing size, although to different degree, which appears to support the culture-free argument.     

Defense Industry Restructuring: Trends in European and U.S. Defense Companies

The national defense industries have recognized that world circumstances have changed and consequently some radical changes are also required in their own structures. Increased concentration of defense production indicates that the central defense-industrial policy dilemma between the benefits of economies of scale and the benefits of competition has gradually been resolved in favor of scale economies. This article analyses the restructuring underway from a political-business perspective. It compares the different forms of corporate linkage ranging from full merger and takeover via less dramatic ties associated with strategic alliances and minority shareholdings to joint ventures. In particular, it explores these approaches from the perspective of their suitability to restructuring in the politically sensitive defense industry when the process spans national boundaries. The structure of the analysis involves an assessment of the progress of the U.S. defense industry and identification of the drives for change and the underlying dynamics of this industry. This gives a platform for a parallel analysis of pressures and changes among the European defense industry, leading to an analysis of how U.S. and European companies are placed regarding the industrial trends towards globalization.     

The U.S. Health System and Immigration: An Institutional Interpretation1

We examine the institutions that comprise the U.S. health system and their relationship to a surging immigrant population. The clash between the system and this human flow originates in the large number of immigrants who are unauthorized, poor, and uninsured and, hence, unable to access a system largely based on ability to pay. Basic concepts from sociological theory are brought to bear on the analysis of this clash and its consequences. Data from a recently completed study of health institutions in three areas of the United States are used as an empirical basis to illustrate various aspects of this complex relation. Implications of our results for theory and future health policy are discussed.     

Cohabitation and U.S. Adult Mortality: An Examination by Gender and Race

This study is the first to explore the relationship between cohabitation and U.S. adult mortality using a nationally representative sample. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey‐Longitudinal Mortality Follow‐up files 1997–2004 (N = 193,851), the authors found that divorced, widowed, and never‐married White men had higher mortality rates than cohabiting White men, and never‐married Black men had higher mortality rates than cohabiting Black men. In contrast, the mortality rates of nonmarried White and Black women were not different from those of their cohabiting counterparts. The results also revealed that mortality rates of married White men and women were lower than their cohabiting counterparts and that these mortality differences tended to decrease with age. The authors found no significant mortality differences when they compared married Black men or women to their cohabiting counterparts. The identified mortality differences were partially—but not fully—explained by income, psychological, or health behavior differences across groups.     

How culture influences foreign trade: evidence from the U.S. and China

Using a gravity model of trade and the U.S. and Chinese panel data, I present evidence that supports the views that linguistic links have become more important in foreign trade than geographical proximity and that linguistic influence on trade is more significant in China than in the U.S. The estimated result based on a broad panel of economies shows little overall relation between religious similarity and foreign trade in both the U.S. and China. But there is an indication that the religious dissimilarity tends to retard foreign trade with poor countries and regions and to encourage foreign trade with richer places. I also found that, although religious retardation on foreign trade is more significant in China than in the U.S., religious dissimilarity tends to retard the US export more than that of China; by contrast, it tends to retard the Chinese import more than that of the U.S. At last, the socio-economic implications of the estimated results are discussed.     

Poverty identity and preference for challenge: Evidence from the U.S. and India

One’s personal identity can play an important role in decision-making. We propose that a key identity that shapes behavior among poor populations is conceptualizing oneself as financially insecure, which we term “poverty identity.” Two experiments suggest that this identity can influence one’s propensity to engage in challenging tasks. We first demonstrate in a lab experiment with students that making financial insecurity temporarily salient can reduce preference for challenging tasks. Subsequently, in a lab-in-field experiment conducted in Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, India, we show that a verbal self-affirmation intervention involving simple, one-on-one conversations with each individual can counteract the effects of persistent identity salience for the poor by fostering greater preference for more challenging labor tasks. We suggest that the persistence of scarcity can make poverty a continually salient characteristic by which the truly impoverished define who they are. Further, we outline an identity-based theoretical framework that explains behavior among people who temporarily feel poor but also suggests that similar perturbations in identity salience may have a negligible impact on behavior among the very poor. These findings have important implications for models of identity and policy design aimed at improving well-being for disadvantaged populations.     

Prevention of family maltreatment in the U.S. Air Force: A systematic review of research on active-duty military personnel

ABSTRACT

Systematic review procedures are used to empirically evaluate the “implicit” logic model that guides the Air Force Family Advocacy Program’s secondary prevention efforts of family maltreatment among active-duty Air Force members. Searches of seven electronic databases and manual searches of 10 journals yielded 586 peer-reviewed articles published in 2000 or later. This review synthesizes the findings of 23 quantitative studies meeting inclusion criteria, including the prediction of some form of family maltreatment among U.S. active-duty military members. Based on review results, we identify critical success variables that function as family protective factors to decrease the likelihood of family maltreatment. These modifiable variables include formal supports, such as ecosystem supports from installation and unit leaders; informal supports, such as the social support of fellow service members and their families; and safe, stable, and nurturing family processes. The results generally align with the implicit logic model but suggest the model should be extended to include intrapersonal vulnerabilities and assets as well as contextual risks and assets. In addition to informing secondary prevention efforts in the Air Force, this novel use of systematic review procedures offers a strategy for evaluating logic models in other areas of prevention research, practice, or policy.     

#FamiliesBelongTogether: Facts and Fictions of Race and Family in U.S. Immigration Policy

Family reunification is widely seen as a relatively stable feature of the contemporary U.S. immigration regime protected by the nation’s liberal democratic institutions and humanitarian values. Drawing on critical scholarship that situates immigration policies in racial nation‐building projects, this article explores the development of U.S. family‐based admission policies from 1965 to the early 2000s. I bring attention to the role of racial family logics in the changing character and meaning of these policies. Racial family logics reflect the emergent and contested ways in which families are both idealized and institutionally organized in relation to the state, the economy, and other social institutions to support racial projects. A normative conception of “the family” as a white, heterosexual, male wage earner, nuclear household unit informed the 1965 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act and its emphasis on family‐based admissions. However, by the 1990s, the landscape of immigration, race, and family in the United States had shifted quite dramatically. The family‐based admissions system was now associated with immigrants from Asia and Latin America rather than Europe. The “browning” of the system was accompanied by its incorporation into racialized projects of state discipline, surveillance, and control over those deemed “undeserving” in relation to neoliberal values of self‐reliant and self‐regulating families.     

Organizational Structure and Innovation in U.K. Voluntary Social Welfare Organizations: Applying the Aston Measures

This paper discusses the methodological issues involved in assessing the impact of organizational structure upon the innovative capacity of voluntary organizations. It reports the use of a specific methodological tool—the Aston measures—as an approach to these issues. In addition to the empirical findings reported, this paper argues for these measures as a useful addition to the methodological tool kit of voluntary sector researchers.