Cuando los delitos son episodios sociales

Resumen

En este trabajo se estudia la percepción del delito desde la perspectiva de los episodios sociales. Los objetivos más importantes de nuestra investigación fueron: a) aislar y comparar las dimensiones que subyacen a la percepción del delito en tres grupos de sujetos: delincuentes institucionalizados, profesionales del sistema penal y grupo de personas no vinculadas al sistema penal; y b) ver si existen diferencias en la percepción de tres de los tipos de delitos establecidos en el Código Penal español. La muestra estuvo compuesta por un total de 272 sujetos, todos ellos varones, procedentes de los tres grupos en estudio. Las puntuaciones dadas por estos sujetos a 22 episodios delictivos fueron sometidas a escalamiento multidimensional. Se obtuvo un espacio multidimensional de cuatro dimensiones para cada uno de los grupos y se constataron diferencias entre ellos. Las puntuaciones de los episodios en cada dimensión permitieron discriminar de forma significativa entre los tres tipos de delitos. Los resultados se discuten integrando la perspectiva de los episodios sociales y la teoría de la atribución.     

Experiencing menopause in the UK: The interrelated narratives of normality,distress, and transformation

ABSTRACT

We investigated the experience and perspectives of menopause among 48 UK mothers through qualitative in-depth interviews. Interviews were analyzed thematically then explored using social science theories. Three interdependent narratives emerged: menopause as a normal, biological process, distinct from self and social transitions; menopause as struggle, an “idiom of distress” expressing upset, identity loss, shame, and social upheaval; and menopause as transformative and liberating, arising from biopsychic and relational changes. Some women followed a predictable “rite of passage” trajectory with transformation emerging from distress, but not all: Menopause arises from a complex interplay of personal predicament, somatic change, and sociocultural context.     

Predictors of stress and depressive mood in Portuguese middle-aged women

ABSTRACT

This cross-sectional study investigates the predictors of psychological symptoms—stress and depressive mood—in a sample of middle-aged women. A community sample of 1,003 women filled in the questionnaires and instruments, which included the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales and the Life Events Survey; sociodemographic, health, and menopause-related and lifestyle information was also collected. Structural equation modeling was used to build the model that had stress and depressive mood as dependent variables. Health status (both physical and psychological), recent life events, income and menopausal phase were significantly associated with the frequency of stress and depressive symptoms. Additionally, educational level and parity were also significant predictors of depressive mood. This study emphasizes that psychological symptoms occurrence in midlife depends not only on personal variables (such as health and menopausal status) but also on contextual ones (including recent stressful events) that can be a strong influence on how middle-aged women feel.     

Nourishing the Social Innovation Debate with the “Social Technology” South American Research Tradition

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Inspired by the South American research tradition known as “social technology,” this article proposes an...     

Continuous Utility Functions Through Scales

We present here a direct elementary construction of continuous utility functions on perfectly separable totally preordered sets that does not make use of the well-known Debreu’s open gap lemma. This new construction leans on the concept of a separating countable decreasing scale. Starting from a perfectly separable totally ordered structure, we give an explicit construction of a separating countable decreasing scale, from which we show how to get a continuous utility map.      

Addiction severity predictions using client network properties

By statistical analysis of client data it is shown how past or current network information together with other knowledge assesses treatment needs. The main findings are as follows. The client's previous exposure to addicts in the family has almost no influence on his or her present contacts with addicts in daily life. About 30% of the clients have experienced addicts both in family and among friends, about 30% have only family exposure, about 20% have neither kind of exposure, and about 20% have no family exposure but have current exposure to addicts. Exposure to addicts in family implies a higher risk of severe need for professional intervention than no such exposure. For the clients with no family exposure but with current exposure to addicts there is, somewhat surprisingly, a lower risk than for the other three categories of clients. This effect seems to be mainly because the psychiatric status of these clients is somewhat better than for those in the other three categories. The effect disappears if we look solely for drug addiction intervention needs; then there is a clear increase in relative treatment needs for the categories with previous or present addiction exposure compared to those without.     

Predictors of parenting stress in portuguese adolescents' adoptive parents

Parenting stress is related to the characteristics of both the child and the parents, as well as to parent–child interactions. In adoptive families, parenting stress has been identified as an indicator of the family's adjustment to adoption. The stress experienced by parents of adopted adolescents deserves special consideration, as adolescence is a critical period in the adoptees' developmental pathway. The present study aims to identify the adoptee, parents and family related predictors of the adoptive parents' parenting stress, exploring direct and indirect effects. Fifty Portuguese adolescents' adoptive parents participated in this study. Parenting stress was measured by the Stress Index for Parents of Adolescents, and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was used to evaluate the adoptees' (mal)adjustment, according to the parents' perspective. Variables related to the parents' experience of adoption were assessed resorting to the Parent's Interview about the Adoption Process. Results showed that parents' satisfaction and adoptees' adjustment were sequential mediators of the relationship between the parents' experience of family life and parenting stress. These findings provide new insights into adoption research in parenting stress, highlighting the importance of adoption‐related variables such as the parents' adoption experience within the family and family relationships.