Bonding to Youth Clubs and Delinquency

Youth clubs and their relationship to delinquency has received surprisingly little attention in the literature. The applicability of social bonding theory, a prominent sociological theory of delinquency, to the experiences of youth in their clubs is the primary focus of this research. The reliability and validity analysis of indices specifically created to assess club bonding suggest the legitimacy of this approach. Belief in the rules and the regulations of the club is found to be negatively correlated with delinquency. Surprisingly, weekly involvement in the club is found to be positively associated with delinquency. Implications for practice and/or intervention are discussed.     

Poems, patients, and psychosocial nursing

1. Holism can prove just as elusive in psychosocial nursing as in any other specialty area. 2. Students in an undergraduate psychosocial nursing course used poetry to express the fullness of the situations in which they found themselves. 3. The poems touched a deeper and more complete sense of humanity than had been possible in other, more traditional, assignments.     

Strategic control: meshing critical success factors with the balanced scorecard

Companies operating in a fast-paced business climate must pay careful attention to non-financial performance indicators, which can be determined by both the Balanced Scorecard and Critical Success Factors. This paper analyses the relationship between the Balanced Scorecard and Critical Success Factors and devises a framework to bridge the two systems. The paper is based on a six-year research project of 15 companies in the Netherlands and some of the case studies illustrate how the integrated method can be employed across a variety of industries to provide a more adequate performance management system.     

Specific relationships between psychosocial job conditions and job-related stress: A three-level analytic approach

This cross-sectional questionnaire study presents a multi-level analysis on 2565 workers in 188 departments in 36 organizations in the Netherlands. A three-level model is used in which individual workers are nested within departments, which in turn are nested within organizations. Research questions concern (1) the amount and distribution of variance in job-related stress explained for the three levels in the study (individuals, departments, organizations), and (2) the specificity of relationships between psychosocial job demands and job-related stress in the three-level model. Well-being showed slightly more raw variance to be explained at supra-individual levels than strain. The full regression model explained about 35% of the total variance in both work-related strain and well-being. Psychosocial job conditions did not exceed the expected amount of 10 to 15% contribution to this explained variance. These results do not differ from comparable studies that do not use multi-level analysis. The variance distribution in the full model, however, showed unexplained variance to be located at the individual level for both strain and well-being, and at the departmental level only for well-being. This last finding shows a direction for possible improvement of work stress models. Specificity of relationships was also shown: psychological job demands were more strongly related to strain, whereas job content variables (i.e. job variety, job control) were more strongly related to well-being. Results also suggested that social support was more strongly associated with well-being than with strain. Well-being appeared to have a more widely varying range of predictors than strain.     

Co-Opting the Streets of Liverpool: Self-Organization and the Role of Local Authorities

ABSTRACT

Within the context of austerity politics, there is an increasing emphasis on regeneration initiatives that originate in civil society itself. While community-led contributions are supported by local authorities for their self-organisation and empowerment of communities, ownership of the planning process allows the local authority to retain power over the community, and subsequently co-opt initiatives in the interest of their own wider regeneration plans. However, given communities often lack resources, the involvement of the local authority is often necessary to ensure future development. This paper argues that this dynamic places community-led schemes at risk of co-optation, meaning plans are community-outsourced rather than facilitating the potential of self-organisation by communities.     

Theories on homosexuality among professional therapists

Current viewpoints on homosexuality among Dutch psychiatrists and psychologists in the period of 1945 to 1980 are discussed. In a detailed examination of these differing theories, a change in the approach to therapy with homosexual clients unfolds, incorporating more of a sociodynamic focus as compared to the psychodynamic concepts of earlier theorists.     

Administrative Reform Policy: The Challenges of Turning Symbols into Practice

Administrative reform policies are often characterized by a large number of reform symbols. While these are generally aimed at furthering the legitimacy of the political leadership, they can have the opposite effect and generate problems in implementing reform practice. This paper starts by discussing the theory of reform symbols and relates it to theories of instrumental, negotiation and cultural features of reforms. We illustrate this discussion by analyzing interview data collected among the central political and administrative elite in Norway. The analysis shows the relevance of reform symbols even in Norway, a country with a reluctant reform tradition and few incentives for reform. The respondents often perceived reform symbols as negative, something that creates problems for the political leadership in reconciling symbols with practice and leads it to engage in double-talk. Political and administrative leaders on different levels have differing attitudes towards administrative reform symbols, reflecting different roles and perspectives. The conclusion is that symbols are a main feature of administrative reform but also that reforms are not only symbols. Symbols matter, but turning symbols into practice is not an easy task to do.     

Social networks of old people in India: research and policy

This article presents a comparative analysis of the available research on the social networks of older persons in India. Most of this research has been done in North Indian cities. The research foci of the available studies include network size, core networks and beyond, life course changes in networks, impacts of residency in old-age homes, gender differences, and joint and nuclear family residence. This research is discussed in terms of its policy implications. Because the research demonstrates that social networks are important for the welfare of older Indians, one can conclude that social policy that encourages the maintenance of robust networks throughout the life course may be worth pursuing. One aspect of policy is discussed. The analysis of the relationship between social network and gender suggests that current policies that can be seen as supporting gender inequality in terms of property may have a negative impact on the networks of older women.     

Integration of Probabilistic Exposure Assessment and Probabilistic Hazard Characterization

A method is proposed for integrated probabilistic risk assessment where exposure assessment and hazard characterization are both included in a probabilistic way. The aim is to specify the probability that a random individual from a defined (sub)population will have an exposure high enough to cause a particular health effect of a predefined magnitude, the critical effect size ( CES ). The exposure level that results in exactly that CES in a particular person is that person's individual critical effect dose ( ICED ). Individuals in a population typically show variation, both in their individual exposure ( IEXP ) and in their ICED . Both the variation in IEXP and the variation in ICED are quantified in the form of probability distributions. Assuming independence between both distributions, they are combined (by Monte Carlo) into a distribution of the individual margin of exposure ( IMoE ). The proportion of the IMoE distribution below unity is the probability of critical exposure ( PoCE ) in the particular (sub)population. Uncertainties involved in the overall risk assessment (i.e., both regarding exposure and effect assessment) are quantified using Monte Carlo and bootstrap methods. This results in an uncertainty distribution for any statistic of interest, such as the probability of critical exposure ( PoCE ). The method is illustrated based on data for the case of dietary exposure to the organophosphate acephate. We present plots that concisely summarize the probabilistic results, retaining the distinction between variability and uncertainty. We show how the relative contributions from the various sources of uncertainty involved may be quantified.