Childbirth As Negotiated Reality*

This paper will describe birth as a social as well as a physiological event, a process which is socially constructed and socially defined. The ways in which the medical establishment controls the birth experience, creating it as a medical event, will be presented. The role of childbirth education is presented here as supporting the medical model and preparing the pregnant woman and her mate for their roles in the institutional birth. We will briefly consider an alternative, non-medical approach to birth.     

Normative,Preferential, and Belief Modes in Adolescent Prejudice*

The concept of attitude often subsumes normative, preferential, and belief components; some attitude scales are composed of items exhibiting two or more of these modalities. Beliefs may, in turn, be classified as reports, stereotypes, consequences, and intentions. This article shows that attitude questions in different modes have differing origins and implications, and that it is an error to continue to use an attitude concept and attitude scales that are modally ambiguous. As well, it is an error to use factor analyses and lack of co-scalability as the only criteria for assessing modality differences within attitude scales. In support of this argument we show that adolescents respond differently to attitude questions concerning school integration that are phrased in the normative, preferential, and belief modes, although these same questions are also found to co-scale. A distinction is made between two ways of learning attitudes: through personal experience and through information from others. On the basis of this distinction, parallel results were predicted and found for preferences and intentions. These differed from results that we predicted and found for norms and stereotypes.     

Preceptorship: a shared journey between practice & education

Creative new approaches must be developed to attract new graduate and transitioning nurses to psychiatric-mental health nursing. In this article, we present a collaborative nurse preceptor program between a clinical practice agency and a university college of nursing faculty group. The preceptorship was designed to facilitate recruitment and retention of new graduate and transitioning nurses into a community-based, psychiatric-mental health agency. This process could be applied in any practice setting to address issues of recruitment and retention. Over the course of more than 2 years, the program has resulted in a 70% retention rate of new and transitioning nurses in the agency; of particular note is the 100% retention of new baccalaureate graduates. This program has positively affected the agency, the nurse preceptors, and the new graduate and transitioning nurse preceptees. We describe the collaborative development and implementation of the preceptor program designed to enhance recruitment and retention of new graduate nurses and nurses transitioning from other specialty areas into community-based psychiatric-mental health nursing practice.     

Stimulant medication use, misuse, and abuse in an undergraduate and graduate student sample

In this study, the authors investigated the characteristics of use, misuse, and abuse of stimulant medication (primarily methylphenidate and variants) among students at a northeastern US university. Researchers sent an invitation to take an Internet survey to student e-mail addresses and passed 150 paper surveys in undergraduate classes, analyzing 1,025 (975 electronically) returned surveys. Sixteen percent of respondents reported abusing or misusing stimulant medication. Ninety-six percent of respondents who specified a medication preferred to abuse or misuse Ritalin. Men and women reported similar use patterns. Most respondents who abused or misused stimulant medication swallowed pills; 40% used intranasally. Reasons for abusing or misusing stimulant medication included improving attention, partying, reducing hyperactivity, and improving grades. Consistent with previous studies, results suggest that abuse of stimulant medication is a concern on college campuses. The results point to various reasons for and methods of abusing and misusing stimulant medication that may direct future research, prevention, and intervention.     

2008 North American Serials Interest Group Conference: Taking the Sting out of Serials!

Abstract

The twelfth annual MOBIUS Conference was held June 7–9, 2011, at the Holiday Inn Executive Center in Columbia, Missouri. The MOBIUS consortium of Missouri is currently composed of fifty-nine academic libraries, two public libraries, and the Missouri State Library. The conference offered various opportunities, including a keynote address by Meredith Farkas and a networking dessert session on the first night. The second day featured six concurrent sessions, each having six different presentations, along with delicious food, generous door prizes, and the chance to meet with vendors. The third day consisted of four different four-hour post-conference training sessions. Presentations are available for download from the conference Web site.¹     

A Semiparametric Bayesian Model for Circular-Linear Regression

Circular data are observations that are represented as points on a unit circle. Times of day and directions of wind are two such examples. In this work, we present a Bayesian approach to regress a circular variable on a linear predictor. The regression coefficients are assumed to have a nonparametric distribution with a Dirichlet process prior. The semiparametric Bayesian approach gives added flexibility to the model and is useful especially when the likelihood surface is ill behaved. Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques are used to fit the proposed model and to generate predictions. The method is illustrated using an environmental data set.     

Gender,marital status,and body weight in older U.S. adults

Marital terminations are life transitions that may lead to changes in diet, activity, and body weight. This investigation examined how marital status was associated with relative body weight, underweight, overweight, and obesity among men and women in the United States using cross-sectional nationally representative data from the 1992 HRS cohort age 51–61 and the 1993 AHEAD cohort age 70 and older. Results in the HRS cohort revealed that even when adjusting for demographic and behavioral variables, widowed women were significantly more likely to be obese than married women, while men who were never married, divorced, or separated were more likely to be underweight. Results in the AHEAD cohort showed few significant associations between marital status and weight for either men or women when demographics were controlled. Clear gender variations appeared to exist in how marriage is related to body weight among unmarried older adults, with widows in their 50s being obese and divorced/separated/never married men being underweight. However, marital status differences in weight were not present among much older adults of either gender. Jeffery Sobal is a asociologist who is an associate professor at the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. He has studied food systems, food choice, and is currently examining social aspects of body weight and obesity, particularly marriage and body weight. Barbara S. Rauschenbach is a sociologist who is a research associate in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. She has studied food insecurity and food assistance, and is currently examining marital status and body weight.