“Maintaining Connections but Wanting More”: The Continuity of Familial Relationships Among Assisted-Living Residents

Social support is a key component of well-being for older adults, particularly for those who have moved from independent living to assisted living involving a transformation of roles, relationships, and responsibilities. Twenty-nine assisted-living facility residents were interviewed to understand the perceived continuity of relationships with family and friends. An inductive approach to thematic analysis revealed 1 main theme and 3 subthemes. The main theme that emerged was: maintaining connections but wanting more. Residents appreciated maintaining connections with family and friends, but often expressed feelings of discontentment with the continuity of former relationships. The subthemes included: appreciating family and friends, waiting for more, and losing control. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Creating and inhabiting virtual places: Indian immigrants in cyberspace

The Internet is often appropriated by groups seeking to preserve, develop and celebrate their identities across space. Using an online survey of a group of immigrants to the United States from India as well as their American-born children, this article reveals that the Internet is utilised for overcoming separation at intra- and international scales, for creating a variety of transboundary networks and for constructing a sense of identity in virtual place. Yet the results also suggest that those individuals who use websites related to Indian culture, society, politics, history and news are distinct ‘communicationally defined’ sub-populations with regard to sex, generation and citizenship status. Indeed, ‘indices of traditionalism’ demonstrate key differences in the types of users of these virtual places.     

The benefits of a nap during prolonged work and wakefulness

Abstract

Prolonged work scenarios with demands for sustained performance are increasingly common. Because sleep loss inevitably compromises functioning in such situations, napping has been proposed as a countermeasure. The optimal timing of the nap relative to its benefits for performance and mood is not known, however. To address this issue, 41 healthy adults were permitted a two-hour nap at one of five times during a 56-hour period of intermittent work, with no other sleep. Naps were placed 12 hours apart, near the circadian peak (P) or trough (T), and were preceded by 6(P), 18(T), 30(P), 42(T), or 54(P) hours of wakefulness. Work test bouts occurred every few hours and consisted of a variety of psychomotor and cognitive tasks as well as mood scales completed at the beginning, middle and end of each bout. A total of eight performance and 24 mood parameters were derived from the bouts and compared between groups at all test points prior to and following the naps. An estimate of the extent to which each nap condition differed from the control (P54) condition was derived by totalling the proportion of test points that yielded statistically significant results relative to the total number of tests conducted both before and after naps.

Although all performance and most mood parameters displayed a circadian-modulated deterioration as the protocol progressed, a nap appeared to attentuate the extent of this change in all performance parameters but not in mood parameters. Overall, the timing of the nap across days and within the circadian cycle was irrelevant to its effect on performance, suggesting that it diminished the intrusion of sleepiness into behavioural functioning, even though subjects were phenomenally unaware of this benefit.     

DETERMINANTS OF TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION: PEER EFFECTS IN MENSTRUAL CUP TAKE‐UP

We estimate the role of peer effects in technology adoption using data from a randomized distribution of menstrual cups in Nepal. Using individual randomization, we estimate causal effects of peer exposure on adoption. We find strong evidence of peer effects: two months after distribution, one additional friend with access to the menstrual cup increases usage by 18.6 percentage points. Using the fact that we observe both trial and usage of the product over time, we examine the mechanisms that drive peer effects. We show evidence that peers impact learning how to use the technology, but find less evidence that peers impact an individual desire to use the menstrual cup.     

Behavioral Mimicry and Interaction Expectations Influence Affect in Interracial Interactions

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - The current research tested how expectations and mimicry in an interracial interaction influence positive and negative affect. Existing research suggests that...     

The mediating effect of civic community on social growth: The importance of reciprocity

This paper examines the effects of economic structural change on community social capital. The content of 156 interviews in Southern communities entrenched in the offshore oil economy, were used to investigate the consequences of industrial and civic restructuring on the social structure and social ties among local residents. The central finding is that population turnover and in-migration of workers demanded by a rapidly expanding economy enhances the density of weak tie networks within the community. However, the activation of these weak ties is highly dependent upon perceptions of future reciprocity from newcomers to the community by the entrenched members. Weak ties are important because they serve as a foundation for community members engaging in collective problem solving. Civic and social institutions can mediate the negative effects of rapid community growth shown. When newcomers are not integrated into the community, it may lead to exploitation and exclusion due to stigmatic labels.     

Animal Abuse as a Sentinel for Human Violence: A Critique

It has been suggested that acts of violence against human and nonhuman animals share commonalities, and that animal abuse is a sentinel for current or future violence toward people. The popular and professional acceptance of strong connections between types of violence is beginning to be used to justify social work interventions and to influence legal decision making, and so requires greater scrutiny. Examination of the limited pool of empirical data suggests that animal abuse is relatively common among men, with violent offenders having an increased probability of reporting prior animal abuse—with the majority of violent offenders not reporting any animal abuse. Causal explanations for "the link," such as empathy impairment or conduct disorder, suffer from a lack of validating research and, based on research into interhuman violence, the assumption that violence has a predominant, single underlying cause must be questioned. An (over)emphasis on the danger that animal abusers pose to humans serves to assist in achieving a consensus that animal abuse is a serious issue, but potentially at the cost of failing to focus on the most common types of abuse, and the most effective strategies for reducing its occurrence. Nothing in this review and discussion should be taken as minimizing the importance of animals as frequent victims of violence, or the co-occurrence of abuse types in "at-risk" households. However, given the weakness of the underlying data, emphasizing the indiscriminate dangerousness of all animal abusers may have unforeseen and unwanted consequences.     

Little cash to large households: Cash transfers and children's care in disadvantaged families in Ghana

Social protection is widely considered to have a positive effect on children, including supporting improvements in nutritional, educational and health outcomes. Much less is known, however, about the impact of interventions on children's care. This article considers the impact of a social cash transfer targeted at poor households – Ghana's Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme – on child well‐being, quality of care and preventing children's separation from their parents as perceived by programme and non‐programme beneficiaries in a context of vulnerability, large households and widespread informal kinship care. Findings suggest that cash transfers can improve both material and non‐material aspects of well‐being and contribute to the quality of care and have the potential to prevent children's separation from their parents. At the same time, not all children appear to benefit equally, with non‐biological children being disadvantaged. The combination of large household sizes with programme design and implementation challenges, including low transfer amounts, a cap on the maximum number of eligible household members and poor sensitization and follow‐up, undermine the positive role that cash transfers can play.     

Nonverbal Decoding Skills and Relationship Well-Being in Adults

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relation between nonverbal decoding skills and relationship well-being. Sixty college students were administered tests of their abilities to identify the affective meanings in facial expressions and tones of voice. The students also completed self-report measures of relationship well-being and depression. Correlational analyses indicated that errors in decoding facial expressions and tones of voice were associated with less relationship well-being and greater depression. Hierarchical regression revealed that nonverbal decoding accuracy was significantly related to relationship well-being even after controlling for depression.