Impairments and perceived competence in persons living with HIV/AIDS

Medical advances have transformed HIV/AIDS from a short-term terminal illness to a long-term chronic condition. Consequently, the disability experience of persons with HIV illness has shifted from issues related to physical well-being to those concerning performance of daily life activities and wider community participation. These changes have necessitated rehabilitation interventions for persons with HIV/AIDS to focus on issues related to enabling participation in all spheres of everyday activities. However, limited information is available on the impairments prevalent in the emergent population of people living with HIV/AIDS and on the impact of these impairments on the person's functional performance and participation in various occupations of daily living. The present study attempted to explore these issues as they are experienced by the emergent population of people living with HIV/AIDS. The purpose of the study was: (1) to explore occupational functioning across various activities, (2) to describe the various impairments prevalent in this population, and (3) to examine the impact of these impairments on the person's perceived occupational competence. Two instruments, the Sign and symptom checklist for persons with HIV disease and the Occupational Self-Assessment were administered to a sample of 35 individuals (Mean age=42.8 yrs.) living in supportive living facilities. Impairments most commonly identified by the participants included: fatigue; fear/worries; difficulty concentrating; muscle aches; and depression. The two primary areas of occupational functioning where participants reported experiencing moderate to severe difficulty included: managing finances and physically engaging in activities which were reported by 67.7% and 35.5% of the participants respectively. No statistically significant correlation was observed between various measures of impairments and the overall measure of perceived occupational competence for the sample of individuals living with HIV/AIDS included in this study.     

DEVELOPMENTAL ASPECTS OF THE COTHERAPY RELATIONSHIP*

Cotherapy has become an accepted albeit sometimes controversial approach to group and family therapy. Though many differing views of cotherapy have been expressed, most authors have emphasized the need for a cooperative, open and flexible relationship between cotherapists as being essential to facilitating growth for clients. In this paper, a model for the understanding of the development of the cotherapy relationship is proposed. Both developmental fixations and modes for enhancement of this relationship are discussed with particular reference to family therapy.     

A repeated observation approach for estimating the street homeless population

Risks of life on the street caused by inclement weather, harassment, and assault threaten the unsheltered homeless population. We address some challenges of enumerating the street homeless population by testing a novel capture-recapture (CR) estimation approach that models individuals' intermittent daytime visibility. We tested walking and vehicle-based variants of CR in downtown Toronto in March. Estimates that assume individual variability of sighting probabilities are most consistent with our knowledge of the homeless and achieve the most favorable confidence intervals, estimated detection probabilities, and coefficient of variation. Estimation bias from interobserver discrepancies, duplicate counting, and violation of the closed population assumption were minimized with uniform identification criteria, training, and sampling design. Bias caused by the social grouping of the homeless was small. Despite the limitations of visual identification, CR approaches as part of a multiple-method program can aid community responses to immediate needs on the street, especially during the harsh winter months.     

Beyond Guilt and Stigma: Changing Attitudes among Israeli Migrants in Canada

Over 60 years ago, the Jewish nationalist movement known as Zionism culminated in the creation of the State of Israel. Millions of Jews immigrated to Israel over the twentieth century, a process known as aliya (literally, “going up”). Yet over the years, thousands of Israelis have also chosen to leave Israel in a movement termed yerida (“going down”). As the term suggests, this reverse migration has been highly stigmatized. During the 1960s and 1970s, emigrants were publicly disparaged in the Israeli media for having abandoned a struggling state. Consequently, Israeli migrants suffered strong feelings of guilt that often, hampered their integration process abroad, a phenomenon observed as late as the 1990s. This paper, however, reveals that feelings of stigmatization have greatly decreased among Israeli migrants in recent years. The study is based on research that I conducted in 2008–2009, involving nine months of participant observation in Vancouver’s Israeli community and 34 in‐depth interviews. Unlike in previous studies, most of my informants expressed no feelings of guilt over having left Israel. Of those who did, most framed their guilt as a longing for family and friends rather than the patriotic longing for the land as expressed by previous generations. Previous studies have also found that Israelis harbour a “myth of return”– a continuously expressed desire to return to Israel and a reluctance to accept their stay abroad as permanent. However, I have not found that the myth of return is still strong today, despite the continued prevalence of a strong sense of Israeli identity among Israelis abroad. I suggest that these changing attitudes are the product of shifting ideals in Israeli society that have developed as the state of Israel has matured. This paper thus serves to update the outdated image of Israeli migrants as it exists in the prevailing literature.     

Motivation factors for participation in GLBT sports league

This study investigated those factors that motivate members of the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) community to participate in a GLBT sports league. Data from a survey of 1151 members of a Chicago GLBT sports association were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis to determine the variables that contributed most to explaining leisure motivation in this setting. Results showed that the intellectual and social factors were the primary factors in determining motivation in participation. Also contributing to determining motivation were competency mastery and stimulus avoidance. In addition, findings suggested there was no primary difference between male and female participants.     

The Validity of the Day Reconstruction Method in the German Socio-economic Panel Study

The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) is a useful tool for evaluating short-term changes in emotional experiences over a variety of daily situations. However, traditional method of collecting DRM data can be time-intensive for both researchers and participants. In this paper we provide evidence that a random-sampling approach to DRM assessment can provide useful data that are largely consistent with previous research that used the full version of the DRM. In a nationally representative sample of 2303 people, we demonstrate that (1) there is variability in emotional ratings of episodes that replicates what has been found in prior studies, (2) correlations with global measures are typically small in magnitude (<0.30), (3) correlations with personality are for the most part negligible, (4) correlations with global ratings of domain satisfaction are higher for domain-relevant situations, and (5) parents report more positive affect while providing care for their children when compared to other activities, and this effect can account for the observed differences in emotional experiences of parents and non-parents.     

DOES THE WOMEN,INFANTS, AND CHILDREN PROGRAM IMPROVE INFANT HEALTH OUTCOMES?

We reevaluate the causal impacts of prenatal participation in the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) supplemental nutrition program on birth outcomes by simultaneously accounting for self-selection into WIC and systematic underreporting of program participation. Combining survey data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort with administrative data from the USDA, we extend partial identification methods to reflect institutional details of the WIC program and validate WIC program participation for a mixture of positive and negative responses. Our preferred estimates imply that WIC increases the prevalence of normal birth weight by at least 4.8% and normal gestation duration by at least 3.7%. (JEL C14, C21, I12, I31, I38)     

STRUCTURING THE LEISURE MARKET—A MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS

The derivation of an empirically based classification scheme for the leisure market is discussed from both a substantive and methodological viewpoint. The substantive findings relate to the manner in which respondents structured relationships among 12 leisure activities and to the criteria they used in doing so. Based on the apparent structure, a number of activity types were identified. The methodological thrust of the article provides one example of how a variety of multivariate methods (multidimensional scaling, property fitting, cluster analysis and factor analysis) can be employed to form a system of complementary techniques aimed at providing an in-depth understanding of data and the phenomena they describe.     

Technological newness: An empirical study in the process industries

Technological change in product development is a crucial issue in the management of technology. The entire sweep of technological changes over the past hundred of years is, in essence, the sum of thousands of individual product development projects in thousands of firms. Yet the degree of technological change in individual development projects has not been extensively studied. This paper presents a four-dimensional characterization of technological newness for product development projects in the process industries in which product development is closely tied to process innovation. The characterization uses four dimensions of change that are required in the development of new products: chemistry, production equipment, fabrication technology and process control. Based on the framework of technological newness, the paper presents data collected on the degree of process change in a set of 20 product development projects conducted by a large manufacturer of advanced polymers. The data provide a clear demonstration of the value of the measurement framework, showing a strong relationship between the characterization of change and the project performance.