Keeping in touch: Ecological factors related to foster care visitation

Visitation, assumed to be important for children in foster care, has not been studied in sufficent detail. In the present study, patterns and characteristics of home and foster family visitation and telephone contact are described in a national sample of children in foster care in Israel (n=590). Relations between child, biological and foster family characteristics are explored by type of contact and foster placement. Parent-child contact is most strongly related to foster family characteristics and relations with the biological family. Patterns differ for relative and nonrelative foster families.Dr. Oyserman is on sabbatical leave     

Elder abuse: factors related to perceptions of severity and likelihood of reporting

This study examined factors that affect assessments of abuse as depicted in scenarios in which a caregiving daughter abuses her elderly mother through over-medication. College students (N = 239) read scenarios that varied in terms of the past quality of the caregiver/elder relationship and whether or not the elder adult was depicted as suffering from dementia. The role of the participants' own family caregiving experiences also was explored. Results from a factorial ANOVA showed that individuals who perceived the relationship as difficult and whose parents had served as caregivers rated the behavior in the scenario as more abusive and were more willing to notify authorities than participants in other conditions. Results are discussed with a focus on educating families and those working with elderly populations.     

Organizational factors related to occupational accidents in construction

The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of organizational factors on occupational accident causation. A field study was undertaken and focused on the phase of concreting the floors of a residential block in a building project in Brazil. The methodological approach was based on the analysis of carpenters' work practices and of the workers' accounts of minor falls. Observations were noted on work practices over this stage. Furthermore, interviews were conducted with the workers hired by the subcontractors and with professionals working for the main contractor. The results show that falls were related to the introduction of new building technology and its use by the workforce. The production planning and organization of activities by the subcontracted firms also led to temporary demands that were additional determining factors for falls on site. The work analysis reveals the need to consider organizational factors in prevention practices.     

Perceived inflation: The role of product accessibility and attitudes towards inflation

Little is known about the psychological mechanisms underlying judgments of perceived inflation as empirical evidence is sparse. In two studies, we investigated two factors that are expected to play a significant role in global judgments of perceived inflation: product accessibility and attitudes towards inflation. In Study 1 (N = 253), primed participants retrieved five products whose prices had increased (or decreased) in the past year before expressing a judgment of past inflation (versus non-primed participants with no retrieval task). In Study 2 (N = 101) participants were merely exposed to a series of products, and asked to estimate their frequency of purchase, before judging past inflation. In one condition, the prices of the majority of products had actually increased in the last year, while in another condition they had decreased. In both studies, attitudes towards inflation were also measured. Product priming consistently affected inflation judgments in the direction of an assimilation effect. Also, more negative attitudes towards inflation were associated with higher judgments of perceived inflation. Path analysis confirmed that both product accessibility and attitudes are potential bases for judgments of perceived inflation. These findings suggest that multiple psychological influences may underlie global judgments of perceived inflation.     

Subjective Economic Status in Adolescence: Determinants and Associations with Mental Health in the Norwegian Youth@Hordaland Study

We aimed to identify factors associated with perceived economic well-being (PEWB), and examine its association with symptoms of depression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. In the Norwegian youth@hordaland study, 9166 16–19-year-olds provided information on perceived economic well-being and relevant covariates. Information about families’ income-to-needs was obtained from tax return forms. Adolescents in households with a low income-to-needs ratio, with non-working parents, and in single-parent households were more likely to report poor PEWB. Adolescents with poor PEWB reported more symptoms of depression and ADHD, also after adjusting for covariates, including income-to-needs. There was a significant indirect effect of income-to-needs on mental health problems though PEWB. The current study demonstrates the role of PEWB as a contributor in the pathway from social inequalities to disparities in mental health.     

International Transitions: Generating Subjective Sense and Subjective Configuration in Relation to the Development of Identity

This article provides an in-depth examination of the emerging identity of a 5-year-old child during her international transition from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia. Observations of the child’s everyday life at home and school, alongside interviews with the child’s mother and teacher, enabled an understanding of the dynamic relation between past, current, and future events. The process of forming a new friendship foregrounded shared motives, emotions, and actions that ameliorated a transitional crisis and supported the child during this international transition.     

Understanding factors related to nonsmoking intention among college students

Abstract

Objective: While cigarette smoking in the United States has declined, the age range of smoking initiation has risen to include young adults. This study investigated the relationship of Theory of Planned Behavior constructs (TPB; attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control [PBC]) to nonsmoking intention among college students. Participants: Participants were 619 students at a Southeastern US university (69.8% female, 70.8% ≤ age 21, and 73.5% white). Methods: Students were recruited by email in March 2013 to participate in an online TPB-based questionnaire. Results: Future-oriented attitudes and PBC predicted higher nonsmoking intention; subjective norms did not. Moderator analyses indicated injunctive norms were more influential for occasional smokers and PBC was less influential. Conclusions: Findings suggest TPB is useful in predicting nonsmoking intention, but differentially for nonsmokers and occasional smokers. Future work should consider the health-related utility of future-oriented attitudes toward nonhealth domains and the differing beliefs of occasional smokers.     

From social control to financial economics: the linked ecologies of economics and business in twentieth century America

This article draws on historical material to examine the co-evolution of economic science and business education over the course of the twentieth century, showing that fields evolve not only through internal struggles but also through struggles taking place in adjacent fields. More specifically, we argue that the scientific strategies of business schools played an essential—if largely invisible and poorly understood—role in major transformations in the organization and substantive direction of social-scientific knowledge, and specifically economic knowledge, in twentieth century America. We use the Wharton School as an illustration of the earliest trends and dilemmas (ca. 1900–1930), when business schools found themselves caught between their business connections and their striving for moral legitimacy in higher education. Next, we look at the creation of the Carnegie Tech Graduate School of Industrial Administration after World War II. This episode illustrates the increasingly successful claims of social scientists, backed by philanthropic foundations, on business education and the growing appeal of “scientific” approaches to decision-making and management. Finally, we argue that the rise of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago from the 1960s onwards (and its closely related cousin at the University of Rochester) marks the decisive ascendancy of economics, and particularly financial economics, in business education over the other behavioral disciplines. We document the key role of these institutions in diffusing “Chicago-style” economic approaches—offering support for deregulatory policies and popularizing narrowly financial understandings of the firm—that sociologists have described as characteristic of the modern neo liberal regime.     

Job factors related to musculoskeletal symptoms among nursing personnel--a review

The study aimed to conduct a literature review as a step of the development of a new questionnaire about the nursing workers' perception of job factors that may lead to musculoskeletal symptoms. An information synthesis was achieved by collecting data from studies that fitted the search criteria. The results showed that despite the existence of several job factors related to musculoskeletal symptoms, no specific questionnaire that evaluates this relationship was found. Therefore, this literature review presents important topics for developing the first questionnaire to analyze work activities that may contribute to pain and discomfort among nursing personnel.     

Exploring the factors related to endorsing gambling as an escape

Research suggests there is a strong relationship between gambling severity and endorsing gambling as an escape. The present study investigated what factors were related to endorsing gambling as an escape. In Experiment 1, 149 university students completed a questionnaire designed to measure the contingencies maintaining one's gambling and a measure of executive function. Endorsing gambling as an escape was predicted by executive function associated with affect (empathy). In Experiment 2, 269 university students completed a questionnaire of the contingencies maintaining one's gambling and two measures related to affect (current affective state and pattern of emotion regulation). Impulse control related to dealing with negative emotions was unique in predicting gambling as an escape. The results suggest that endorsing gambling as an escape is related to emotion regulation both at a neurological and cognitive level, which is potentially informative for those interested in identifying, preventing and treating problem gambling.     

Psychosocial factors related to job stress and women in management

This literature review explores women in management and how the psychosocial factors they face in the workplace affect their job-related stress level. The psychosocial factors identified include tokenism, sexual harassment and discrimination, work-family conflict, and workload. Various studies are cited and solutions to decrease job-related stress level are included.     

Competing for love: Applying sexual economics theory to mating contests

Sexual economics theory analyzes the onset of heterosexual sex as a marketplace deal in which the woman is the seller and the man is the buyer, with the price paid in nonsexual resources. We extend that theory to analyze same-gender contests in that marketplace, and to elaborate the idea that what the woman sells is not just sex but exclusive access to her sexual charms. Women compete on sex appeal and on the promise of exclusiveness (faithfulness), with the goal of getting a man who will provide material resources. Men compete to amass material resources, with the goal of getting a good sex partner. Female competition includes showing off her sexual charms, offering sex at a lower price than rivals, seeking to improve her physical assets (e.g., by dieting), and use of informational warfare to sully rivals’ reputations while defending her own reputation against malicious gossip. We review evidence of these patterns, including evidence that female body dissatisfaction and pathological eating patterns increase when women perceive an unfavorable sex ratio (i.e., shortage of eligible men). Men compete in groups to amass resources, so men see other men not just as sexual rivals but also as coalition partners. Male homophobia is often not about sex but rather invokes the stereotype that a homosexual man will not be an effective coalition partner. Misunderstandings about whether sex or exclusivity is the central commitment can complicate marital adjustment for couples.     

From preference to happiness: Towards a more complete welfare economics

Welfare economics is incomplete as it analyzes preference without going on to analyze welfare (or happiness) which is the ultimate objective. Preference and welfare may differ due to imperfect knowledge, imperfect rationality, and/or a concern for the welfare of others (non-affective altruism). Imperfection in knowledge and rationality has a biological basis and the resulting accumulation instinct amplifies with advertising-fostered consumerism to result in a systematic materialistic bias, as supported by recent evidence on happiness and quality of life. Such a bias, in combination with relative-income effects, environmental disruption effects, and over-estimation of the excess burden of taxation, results in the over-spending on private consumption and under-provision of public goods, and may make economic growth welfare-reducing. A cost-benefit analysis aiming even just at preference maximization should offset the excess burden of financing for public projects by the indirect effect through the relative-income effect and by the environmental disruption effect. A cost-benefit analysis aiming at welfare maximization should, in addition, adjust the marginal consumption benefits of public projects upward by a proportion determined by the proportionate excess of marginal utility over marginal welfare of consumption. The environmental disruption effects have also to be similarly adjusted upward. However, the productive contributions of public projects should not be so adjusted.  Welfare economics has achieved much, though still with long-standing weaknesses (e.g., the inability to make non-Pareto comparisons due to the unwillingness or difficulties in making interpersonal comparisons of cardinal utilities). It is not the intention of this paper either to survey the achievements or to remedy the weaknesses. Rather, it is argued that welfare economics is too narrow in focus and should be expanded in a number of aspects to make the analysis more complete and hence more useful. Some of the aspects discussed below have long been known but largely ignored in welfare economic analysis. Some are less well known and controversial points which are nevertheless important for welfare. Received: 22 January 2001/Accepted: 3 April 2002 This paper is revised from the keynote paper of the same title at the Conference on `Economics and the Pursuit of Happiness', Nuffield College, Oxford 2000, and combined with the paper `Towards a welfarist cost-benefit analysis' presented at American Economic Association Meeting, New Orleans, 2001. The paper was revised during my visit to the Division of Applied Economics, Nanyang University, Singapore. I am also grateful to Maurice Salles and two anonymous referees of this journal for helpful comments.     

Reconciling normative and behavioural economics: the problems to be solved

We review the problem of reconciling normative and behavioural economics. In conventional welfare economics, individuals’ preferences are assumed to be coherent, and the satisfaction of those preferences is the normative criterion; but this approach breaks down if preferences are incoherent. Traditionally, the preference-satisfaction criterion has been interpreted in three conceptually different ways, emphasising respectively the normative value of happiness, self-assessed well-being, and freedom. If individuals’ preferences are incoherent, these interpretations diverge, leading to fundamentally different strategies for dealing with the reconciliation problem, and new questions are raised about whether normative economics should be addressed to governments or individuals.     

A study of factors related to rural job preference among prospective nursing graduates

Four hundred and thirty prospective nursing graduates from ten schools and five colleges in India were studied to identify factors related to their preferences for work in urban or rural areas. Seventy per cent expressed a preference for urban work. Significant factors related to rural preferences were: religion and background (rural or urban); type of educational institution (government or non-government); and living in a rural setting during community nursing experience. Of the personal, professional and socio-cultural factors related to rural work preference, the most significant were: accomodation, sanitation and safe water; job availability for spouse, security, and school for children. Of the personal and professional factors, the most important were: continuing education opportunities, job satisfaction, and intellectual stimulation.