CONSTRUCTING A HEALTH AND SOCIAL INDICATOR FRAMEWORK FOR INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY HEALTH RESEARCH

Health and social indicators that capture the distinct historical, social, and cultural contexts of Indigenous communities can play an important role in informing the planning and delivery of community interventions. There is currently considerable interest in cataloguing and vetting meaningful community-level health and social indicators that could be applied to research and health promotion activities in Indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, inclusive of conventional indicators as well as measures developed specifically for use in or with Indigenous communities. To avoid haphazard selection of indicators, and to assure the comprehensiveness and relevance of any given set of indicators, a framework that can accommodate and conceptually classify indicators representing a full range of domains is required. We report here on the development of a conceptual framework, by which Indigenous community indicators, and more general community-level social indicators, can be sorted, catalogued, and systematically classified within four hierarchical levels. The indicator framework was developed across Canada, Australia and New Zealand in consultation with academic researchers and Indigenous community stakeholders, building from established health and social indicator systems. The Indigenous indicator framework permits Indigenous communities, public health researchers, and funding agencies to compare and select the most appropriate indicators for application in specific contexts from the multitude of existing indicators.     

The Crafting of Care: Rationality,Gender and Social Relations in Educational Decision-Making

This article examines discourses on care and the way they operate within four education case conferences. It examines the multiple subject positions afforded to participants in the meetings, and the constitutive aspects of language associated with discourses on care. The paper covers the following domains. Firstly, caring is explored as a specific form of gendered activity within dominant constructions of the family and organizations in contemporary Western (white, heterosexual) society. Secondly, caring is examined as a relationship and a discursive category rather than as an individual attribute. The implications this has for the participants’ identities and roles in the context of the education case conferences are explored. Thirdly, some examples of the way caring operates in specific case conferences are discussed. I conclude by suggesting that caring is employed by women professionals in the meetings discussed, as a way of mystifying differences. In some instances, it seems to function as a coping rhetorical strategy (see Davis 1994), which places a burden of responsibility onto women professionals and may project failure onto mothers and pupils within the meetings.     

Transitions to Caregiving,Gender, and Psychological Well‐Being: A Prospective U.S. National Study

Guided by a life course perspective, this study examined the effects of transitioning into caregiving activity for a child, spouse, parent, other relative, or nonkin associate on nine dimensions of psychological well‐being. Data came from adults ages 19–95, who were noncaregiver primary respondents in the National Survey of Families and Households in 1987–88 and who were followed up longitudinally in 1992–93 (N= 8,286). Results from multivariate regression models confirmed that the transition to caregiving for primary kin (i.e., a child, spouse, or biological parent) was associated with an increase in depressive symptoms. However in selected instances, caregiving was associated with beneficial effects (e.g., women who began to provide nonresidential care to a biological parent reported more purpose in life than noncaregiving women). Evidence regarding gender differences was inconsistent, varying across caregiving role relationship types.     

Feelings About Fracking: Using the Affect Heuristic to Understand Opposition to Coal Seam Gas Production

The rapid expansion of coal seam gas (CSG) extraction across Australia has polarized public opinion about the risks, benefits, and the future of the industry. We conducted a randomized controlled experiment to assess the impact of CSG messaging on opposition to the CSG industry. Residents of a major Australian city (N = 549), aged between 21 and 87 years, were randomly assigned to view one of three brief video messages (pro‐CSG, anti‐CSG, or a neutral control) sourced from the Internet. They then completed measures assessing CSG affective associations, perceived risks and benefits of CSG, and degree of opposition to the CSG industry. A subsample of 317 participants also completed the measures of affect, risks, benefits, and opposition two weeks following the initial message presentation. Message type significantly predicted message effects in a pattern consistent with the affect heuristic model, although overall, the message effects were modest in magnitude. Respondents who viewed the anti‐CSG video (relative to the control) reported more negative affective responses to CSG, perceived higher risks, fewer benefits, and greater opposition to the CSG industry. Those who viewed the pro‐CSG video (relative to the control) reported stronger positive affective responses to CSG, perceived more CSG benefits and fewer risks, and expressed less opposition to the industry. The effects persisted over a two‐week interval for the anti‐CSG message, but not for the pro‐CSG message. Our findings suggest that people's risk perceptions and views about the acceptability of CSG are malleable by messaging that targets affective pathways.     

Gender and Disability in Male‐Dominated Occupations: A Social Relational Model

Evidence from male‐dominated sectors points to high levels of disability and the disabling nature of working environments. However, research of this nature assumes a medical model of disability that does not account for the social construction of disability or the lived experiences of disabled employees. Using data from seven focus groups (n = 44) and semi‐structured interviews with professional transport employees with life‐long hidden ‘impairments’, including dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, ADD/ADHD and Asperger syndrome (n = 22), this paper explores the lived experiences of men and women working in a sector traditionally dominated by men, the transport industry. Key themes include homosociality, public–private divide and the impact of changing work practices. Further, the data revealed how those with hidden ‘impairments’ in part construct their identities in relation to both non‐disabled colleagues and those considered stereotypically representing disability (wheelchair users). This study furthers understandings of the relationality of gender and disability in the workplace, and the lived experiences of disabled employees.     

“Armed Now with Hope …”: The Construction of the Subjectivity of Students within Integration

Students who are integrated into the regular system have traditionally been constructed in a variety of ways that reflect the philosophies and the policies (both stated and implied) of the relevant educational systems. Within these systems though, students have also constructed views of their own subjectivity, yet their perspectives and perceptions students have seldom been considered. Progressive integration policies, such as that in Victoria, Australia, have attempted to change the way students integrated into the regular education system are constructed. Such constructions however, may still be largely incongruent with the ways students construct themselves. This paper explores the integration policy in Victoria over the last decade, and in order to gain greater insight into the way students are constructed, and construct themselves, by and within the policy, draws on the poetry and diaries of a teenager who has been integrated into the regular school system.     

Fairness and reputation effects in a provision point contributions process

This article reports on an investigation of how issues of fairness and reputation affect individual contributions in a group decision-making setting. In the context of a threshold public goods provision experiment, treatments were performed to determine how individuals react to limited and unlimited information about the contributions of other group members. Experimental results show that revealing anonymous information about individual contribution behavior caused a concern about equity, which led to decreased average contributions and a higher variance in contributions. These effects were partially offset when individual-specific contribution information was displayed. In their conclusion, the authors discuss how the results apply to different fundraising environments.     

Unemployment classifications and subjective well-being

Further research on the impact of unemployment on workers and their families requires greater refinement and more precise measurement of the concept. While previous studies have indicated the effects of unemployment on a wide range of variables, such as health and well-being, many of these studies suffer from imprecision by conceptualizing unemployment too narrowly and by using too strict a dichotomy between currently employed and currently unemployed workers. This research effort attempts to broaden and refine the concept of unemployment by defining it in terms of two job dimensions: current employment status and previous job loss. Using this conceptualization, the authors find that current unemployment after other job losses may have more devastating effects on well-being than losing one's job for the first time. Similarly, among the currently employed, those who have lost jobs in the past may experience more emotional difficulties than those who have never lost their jobs.     

Linked Lives: Adult Children's Problems and Their Parents' Psychological and Relational Well-Being

This study examined associations between adult children's cumulative problems and their parents' psychological and relational well-being, as well as whether such associations are similar for married and single parents. Regression models were estimated using data from 1,188 parents in the 1995 National Survey of Midlife in the United States whose youngest child was at least 19 years old. Participants reporting children with more problems indicated moderately poorer levels of well-being across all outcomes examined. Single parents reporting more problems indicated less positive affect than a comparable group of married parents, but married parents reporting more problems indicated poorer parent-child relationship quality. Findings are congruent with the family life course perspective, conceptualizing parents and children as occupying mutually influential developmental trajectories.