Making it real: using standardized patients to bring case studies to life

With increases in the overall number of individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nurse educators must provide experiences that help nursing students learn how to better communicate and care for individuals with this disorder. This article describes how two learning strategies-case studies and standardized patients-were combined to facilitate the development of therapeutic communication and assessment skills. Two case studies on PTSD were written, and actors were trained to portray the individuals in the case studies. Fourteen baccalaureate nursing students enrolled in a senior-level psychiatric nursing clinical course participated in this pilot alternative learning activity. This article describes the learning activity and presents student evaluations of the assignment.     

Challenging the Myth of Urban Regeneration: Raising the Profile of Problem Gambling with a Media Campaign

This paper is an examination of discourses challenging the myth of ‘gambling’ as a form of urban regeneration in Great Britain. The focus is primarily on the Daily Mail, which has continually waged a successful media campaign to “Kill the Casino Bill” and constructed a powerful public condemnation of gambling as regenerative. From an analysis of 156 gambling articles from January 2004 to December 2010 common and recurring themes emerged to dismiss gambling as a form of regeneration. These were gambling as immoral, criminal and pathological. These helped shaped discourses around which the debate on gambling was framed and structured.     

Why does class matter? Policy attitudes,mechanisms, and the case of the Nordic countries

In most democracies, classes tend to vary with respect to an array of attitudes and behaviours, and differences are large within a number of European polities. What mechanisms lie behind these differences? Do they relate primarily to individuals’ material interests, as assumed by traditional class theories, or instead, to socialization and self-selection factors? This paper seeks to extend theory and research through an analysis of mechanisms behind class differences in policy attitudes. Our focus is on the Nordic countries, where class differences are extensive and well-documented in past scholarship. We take advantage of high-quality European Social Survey data for Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Analyzing three policy arenas and the 9-category European Socio-economic Classification scheme (ESeC), we find evidence that class-related factors help to explain cleavages in attitudes. Comparisons with the more detailed, 103-category International Standard Classification of Occupation scheme (ISCO) suggest that these factors explain less “micro-class” occupational variation. Results shed new light on mechanisms behind class differences, and the empirical foundations of established class theories. These and other implications are discussed in the conclusion.     

Residential Instability,Family Support,and Parent–Child Relationships Among Ethnically Diverse Urban Families

From a social disorganization standpoint, neighborhood residential instability potentially brings negative consequences to parent–child relationship qualities, but family social support and racial/ethnic identity may modify this association. Using data (n = 3,116) from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, this study examines associations between neighborhood residential instability and parent–child warmth and conflict, whether family social support moderates associations between residential instability and parent–child relationships, and variation by race/ethnicity. Multilevel models reveal that residential instability undermines parent–child relationship qualities, particularly for non‐White individuals. Family support is a protective factor for families in less stable neighborhoods and specifically buffers the association between neighborhood residential instability and reduced parent–child warmth. Among Hispanics, family support mitigates the association between residential instability and heightened parent–child conflict. Findings highlight residential instability as a detriment to parent–child relationships; families in unstable neighborhoods may benefit from family social support.     

Out of Step? Voters and Social Issues in U.S. Presidential Elections

Recent political commentary has argued that the Republican Party is “out of step” with voters on social issues, costing Republicans the 2012 presidential election. This dramatic claim is deserving of scrutiny in its own right and also for the way it offers new perspective on long‐standing controversies concerning the role of social issues in U.S. national elections. We present results that seek to advance established scholarship on electoral politics as well as journalistic claims concerning the rising importance of social issues for elections. Using data from the American National Election Study, we find that social issues mattered to voters in presidential elections from 1992 through 2012. The influence of social issues on voter choice rivals those of attitudes toward defense spending and government provision. We find further evidence that liberalizing trends in social issue opinion consistently benefited Democratic candidates in presidential elections. We consider the relevance of these results for scholarship on voter choice and elections, noting further implications for commentary on the 2012 presidential election.     

Racial/Ethnic Intermarried Couples and Marital Interaction: Marital Issues and Problem Solving

Abstract

Throughout history interracial/interethnic marriages have been considered an extreme deviation from the marital norm and thus inappropriate by the standards of mainstream society and minority communities. Even today, societal views of intermarried couples often remain negative in nature. This negative perception is frequently sustained by the assumption that intermarried couples experience race / ethnic-based differences in social, moral, and living standards that result in marriages that are fraught with conflict and instability. The mate selection literature however, would suggest that intermarried couples are not socially deficient, but are similar to those who marry within their racial / ethnic group. This research is intended to fill a gap in the literature by exploring the interpersonal, interactive aspects of interracial/interethnic marriages. In particular, this study evaluates intermarried couples as they interact during videotaped sessions of cooperative problem solving to determine if they are similar to, or distinct from, intramarried couples. Data from two aspects of the marital interaction are presented: the types of marital problems encountered and the manner in which couples attempt to resolve these issues. Findings show that while race/ethnicity did not emerge as an issue for intermarried couples, they were confronting different marital issues than intramarried couples. In addition, intermarrieds often employ different interactional styles than intramarrieds when dealing with their marital issues.     

The green leaves of love: Japanese romantic heroines,authentic femininity,and dialect1

How is ‘authentic’ linguistic femininity in Japan manifested in popular texts? We analyze the dialogue of female characters in Wakaba, a 2005 Japanese drama set in two very different parts of ‘regional’ Japan – Miyazaki and Kobe. Through this analysis, we examine two contradictory discourses circulated through popular media. The first is that linguistic femininity is based in Standard Japanese – a surprisingly persistent ideology despite a current trend to examine cases in which language ideology and practice do not match. Other studies reflect another dominant discourse, that of the ‘authentic’ dialect speaker, who expresses local alignment by using dialect forms outside the bounds of ideologically modern linguistic forms. The tension between acting linguistically feminine and ‘authentically’ local raises some interesting questions for Japanese language and gender studies, including studies of gendered representations: are women who are speakers of regional dialects authentically ‘feminine’? Can they be? Do some dialects express femininity better than others?