A research method to explore midwives’ views of national maternity service reforms

Background

Priorities of the National Maternity Services Plan (NMSP) are a significant contrast to current standard hospital maternity service provision. This paper demonstrates the applicability of case study methods to explore the views of midwives during a period of midwifery reform.

A GENDERED CONTEXT OF OPPORTUNITY:

Current research has failed to examine how women's opportunities in the labor market, in combination with their human capital attributes, differentially affect the likelihood that they will live in poverty. This study overcomes this limitation by placing specific emphasis on the role that labor market opportunities play in contributing to, or reducing, women's and men's risk of poverty. In addition, differences in poverty risk by urban and rural labor market areas are examined, as labor market dynamics vary substantially by rurality. Using the PUMS-L and STF3C for 1990, logistic regression techniques are employed to address these issues. Our results indicate that women across all labor market contexts have a significantly higher risk of poverty than men, and incorporation of labor market characteristics fails to explain this higher risk. However, the economic opportunities available in the labor market play an important role in determining how an individual's credentials, family background, and work experience translate into poverty risk. While individual attributes play a smaller role in explaining rural women's likelihood of living in poverty, women in both urban and rural labor markets face more limited economic opportunities than their male counterparts. This suggests that a "gendered" context of opportunity remains a barrier for women's movement out of poverty in both urban and rural labor markets.     

Multimodal urgency coding: auditory, visual, and tactile parameters and their impact on perceived urgency

Through a series of investigations involving different levels of contextual fidelity we developed scales of perceived urgency for several dimensions of the auditory, visual, and tactile modalities. Psychophysical ratings of perceived urgency, annoyance, and acceptability as well as behavioral responses to signals in each modality were obtained and analyzed using Steven's Power Law to allow comparison across modalities. Obtained results and their implications for use as in-vehicle alerts and warnings are discussed.     

Language proficiency and health status: are bilingual immigrants healthier?

Bilingual immigrants appear to have a health advantage, and identifying the mechanisms responsible for this is of increasing interest to scholars and policy makers in the United States. Utilizing the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS; n = 3,264), we investigate the associations between English and native-language proficiency and usage and self-rated health for Asian and Latino U.S. immigrants from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. The findings demonstrate that across immigrant ethnic groups, being bilingual is associated with better self-rated physical and mental health relative to being proficient in only English or only a native language, and moreover, these associations are partially mediated by socioeconomic status and family support but not by acculturation, stress and discrimination, or health access and behaviors.     

Spillover in the Home: The Effects of Family Conflict on Parents' Behavior

Conflict with a spouse or child may generate spillover, defined as short‐term affective changes in parents that affect their behavior with other family members. In a diverse sample of 86 parents, this 56‐day diary study examined daily bidirectional spillover between conflict in the marital or parent–child dyad and parents' irritable, frictional behavior with their child or spouse, respectively. Tests of daily associations between conflict and parent behavior revealed robust spillover effects according to parent as well as spouse and child reports. Parents' daily negative mood and child externalizing behavior contributed to several but not all of these associations. Daily spillover findings were largely unaffected by parents' neuroticism, suggesting that parents' day‐to‐day fluctuations in negative mood, not average levels of negative affectivity, promoted spillover. Significant direct effects of conflict on parent behavior even when controlling for negative mood, however, implicate additional cognitive or social processes as contributors to conflict spillover in families.     

A Cross-species Comparison of Facial Morphology and Movement in Humans and Chimpanzees Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS)

A comparative perspective has remained central to the study of human facial expressions since Darwin’s [(1872/1998). The expression of the emotions in man and animals (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press] insightful observations on the presence and significance of cross-species continuities and species-unique phenomena. However, cross-species comparisons are often difficult to draw due to methodological limitations. We report the application of a common methodology, the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to examine facial movement across two species of hominoids, namely humans and chimpanzees. FACS [Ekman & Friesen (1978). Facial action coding system. CA: Consulting Psychology Press] has been employed to identify the repertoire of human facial movements. We demonstrate that FACS can be applied to other species, but highlight that any modifications must be based on both underlying anatomy and detailed observational analysis of movements. Here we describe the ChimpFACS and use it to compare the repertoire of facial movement in chimpanzees and humans. While the underlying mimetic musculature shows minimal differences, important differences in facial morphology impact upon the identification and detection of related surface appearance changes across these two species.

Latent Profiles of Residential Stepfamily Relationship Quality and Family Stability

Stepfamilies are an increasingly common context in which adults and children reside. Past research has examined family processes that promote family resilience, such as dyadic relationships marked by warmth, positive communication, satisfaction, and closeness. What remains less clear is whether various profiles of dyadic relationship quality within stepfamilies exist and operate to influence stepfamily stability. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we conducted a latent profile analysis of mother–child, stepfather–child, and stepcouple relationship quality among a sample of 1,646 adolescents residing in married and cohabiting mother–stepfather families. Results favor a 4-profile solution, labeled high-quality, high-quality couple relationship, high-quality parent–child relationships, and low-quality. The identified latent profiles displayed differences with respect to family stability, or rates of remaining an intact family system 1 year later.     

The Black catalyst to tweet: the role of discrimination experience,group identification,and racial agency in Black Americans’ instrumental use of Twitter

The strong presence of Blacks on Twitter has attracted scholarly attention, but few empirical studies have provided a clear, theory-driven answer to the question of how Blacks use Twitter. Drawing on the uses and gratifications framework and the rejection-identification model, we examined how discrimination experience, group identification, and racial agency influence Black Americans’ instrumental use of Twitter. An online survey conducted with a national adult sample of 323 Black American Twitter users showed that the experience of discrimination in everyday settings indirectly predicted three types of instrumental use of Twitter (information seeking, opinion expression, and social networking) through serial mediation of group identification and racial agency. The direct effects of discrimination experience on the three types of instrumental use were not significant, nor were the indirect effects of discrimination experience on instrumental use only through group identification and only through racial agency. These results indicate that Black Americans’ goal-driven, purposeful use of Twitter may be understood as a form of problem-focused coping with discrimination experience. The current findings also suggest that Black users’ identification with their racial group and desire to make a positive difference in the Black community constitute a pivotal mechanism underlying their instrumental use of Twitter.     

Rethinking the circuit of culture: How participatory culture has transformed cross-cultural communication

This paper explores the influence of digital communication ? and in particular social media ? on cross-cultural communication, based on the Circuit of Culture model. Scholarly literature supports the notion that social media has changed the speed at which we communicate, as well as removed traditional (geographical) boundaries around cross-cultural campaigns. Since the introduction of digital media, the role of the public relations practitioner has become more strategic in order to maintain relevance with even more diverse ? and dispersed ? audiences. Large scale campaigns, like the Human Rights Campaign to support Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) rights, have seen messages spread far beyond the country of origin, and with that, demonstrate the ability to affect advocacy campaigns in other countries. The authors argue that instead of acting as cultural intermediaries, public relations practitioners must become cultural curators, with the skills to create meaning from audiences, who are now content creators in their own rights, and encourage a true participatory environment that sees cultural values shared as part of an organic exchange process.