Gender,Contraceptive Attitudes,and Condom Use in Adolescent Romantic Relationships: A Dyadic Approach

Although sexual risk behavior occurs in a dyadic context, most studies of adolescent sexual behavior focus on individuals. This study uses couple data (N = 488 couples) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine how partners' contraceptive attitudes correlate over time and whether male or female partners' attitudes are better predictors of condom use. Net of their own prior attitudes, partners' prior attitudes predicted both male and female adolescents' Wave 2 attitudes. This association was stronger for female than for male adolescents, suggesting that female attitudes were influenced more by males' prior attitudes than vice versa. When entered together, only male adolescents' attitudes predicted dyadic condom use. Findings suggest that male partners may have greater influence on adolescent contraceptive decisions and that prevention programs should emphasize the relational context of sexual behavior.     

The Challenges in Developing an Online Applied Statistics Program: Lessons Learned at Penn State University

Numerous professional fields have an increasing need for individuals trained in statistics and other quantitative analysis techniques. Today there exists great potential to fulfill this need by providing opportunities through online learning. However, to provide a high-quality education for returning adult professionals seeking advanced degrees in applied statistics online, many challenges need to be overcome. Based on our experience developing Penn State University’s online program in applied statistics, we discuss the evolution of the program’s curriculum, recruitment and development of online faculty, and meeting the requirements of students as important areas that require consideration in the development of an online program. We also highlight program evaluation strategies employed to ensure innovation and improvement in online education as cornerstones to a program’s success.     

Self-care among school-aged children of immigrants

The present study uses data from the National Household Education Surveys Program to examine the unsupervised time (“self-care”) experienced by children in immigrant families. We argue that traditional models of self-care are insufficient for understanding self-care among immigrant families and should be expanded to capture the unique characteristics of this population. Considering the high rates of poverty, limited English proficiency, and unique cultural norms of immigrant parents, children of immigrants may be especially at-risk for self-care. Interestingly, results demonstrate that immigrant parents are not more likely to leave their children unsupervised than native-born parents, however the context surrounding self-care appears to differ, as immigrant children are more likely to be caring for a sibling during self-care. Additionally, we find that within immigrant families, boys and children of parents who speak a non-English language at home are more likely to be in self-care. These findings underscore the importance of examining parental nativity status in research on child care arrangements, as patterns and contextual factors associated with self-care may depend on the immigrant status of the parent.     

Women’s Off-Farm Work Participation and Son Preference in Rural China

Population Research and Policy Review - China is a rapidly growing country, where a considerable amount of rural female labor has shifted from agricultural to nonagricultural sectors. Meanwhile, a...     

Local Authorities Unemployment Strategies

If a "co-ordinated strategy to reduce the major problem of unemployment" is needed, as Leaper claimed in previous volume, there remains the question of how to develop such a strategy. Central governmental agencies like the MSC have major programmes, but other consequences of high unemployment have to be dealt with by local authorities. Four case studies of attempts made by local authorities in this regard are then examined. The most prominent features in their strategies are: information giving, training provision, job creation and channelling funding from other agencies or internal co-ordinated funding. The new strategies have involved changes in management and liaison, in policy review and affirmation.     

Old People Living Alone—Is Organized Observation Necessary?

A survey of 192 old people was carried out to assess the need for a paid daily visitor as a means of ensuring prompt help in cases of illness or accident. The survey found evidence of a comprehensive network of care from neighbours for the elderly people living near them. Neighbour observation and support made a daily Street Visitor Scheme superfluous.     

Family budgets and public money: spending fostering payments

In this second of two papers based on a study of payment issues within foster care, the focus is on expenditure. It is argued that the hybrid public/private nature of fostering gives rise to contradictory pressures for carers, including the status of maintenance payments as both part of family budgets and a form of delegated public expenditure. For example, carers are required in principle both to spend fixed amounts upon foster children and to treat them in like fashion to their own children. In this paper, the issue of ‘like treatment’ is explored, along with the significance of payment for ‘children who foster’ and for relationships between carers and foster children. Also examined are the challenges presented by differences between carers’ material circumstances and those of birth families, especially when reunification is planned. Overall, the paper seeks to show how the handling of expenditure becomes closely entwined with inter‐personal dynamics within foster care.     

Affective and aesthetic dimensions of contemporary social movements in South West England

The paper examines contemporary social movement activity within South West England. It is argued that much social movement analysis has been too nation‐state orientated, that it has too readily framed diverse contemporary practices within a narrow, politically reductive and instrumentally rational frame. Increasingly, aesthetic and affective dimensions of everyday life must be examined if any coherent theoretical account of such activity is to be offered. Altering relations between states and their citizens in a global age and the emergence of an extended civil society are linked to a weakening of the capacity of nation states to manage identity formation. A series of excursuses link theoretical analysis of the expressive dimensions of the region's social movement activity, to these more extended global transformations.     

The derivation of a brief Student Nurse Stress Index

The lack of an adequate measure of perceived sources of stress for student nurses led to the construction of the Student Nurse Stress Index (SNSI). Responses from 235 first-year student nurses to 35 items from the Beck and Srivastava Stress Inventory (Beck, and Srivastava, 1991), and 15 new items, were subjected to exploratory factor analysis using principal components analysis and oblimin rotation. A reliable 22-variable solution with a simple oblique structure including Academic load, Clinical sources, Interface worries, and Personal problems factors was obtained in this initial sample, and confirmed at an exploratory level in a further independent validation sample of 188 first-year students. Confirmatory factor analysis established the four-factor model in the first sample, but required that three variables load onto more than one factor. This more complex four-factor model was confirmed using independent data from the validation sample, and the total invariance of factor loadings and factor covariances of this more complex four-factor model was established in both data sets simultaneously using multi-sample techniques. The SNSI shows cross-sample factor congruence, good internal reliabilities, and concurrent and discriminant validity across a range of reporting conditions.     

An Attentional Application of Socioemotional Selectivity Theory in College Students

Socioemotional selectivity theory posits that emotions become increasingly salient as individuals approach endings. Recent findings have linked the theory with biases in information processing in the context of aging. However, these studies all confounded advancing age and the motivational impact of endings. This study represented an attempt to disentangle the effects of large age differences from those of endings on the processing of emotional information by investigating differences in attention to emotional stimuli between college seniors and college first‐years. Seniors represented a group approaching the social ending of graduation from college and first‐years served as a comparison group not facing an ending. Following recent findings in the literature on aging, it was hypothesized that seniors would selectively avoid negative images in an effort to better regulate their emotions in the face of this social ending. First‐years were found to spend a significantly larger portion of their time viewing sad faces than did seniors. Seniors also exhibited significantly higher levels of positive affect than did first‐years. These findings are discussed within the context of emotion regulation in the face of impending endings across the lifespan.