Psychological Well‐being Among Older Adults: The Role of Partnership Status

Today's older adults are increasingly unmarried. Some are in cohabiting unions, others are dating, and many remain unpartnered. Unmarried older adults are at risk of poorer well‐being than married older adults, but it is unclear whether older cohabitors fare worse than or similar to their married counterparts; nor have well‐being differences among cohabitors, daters, and unpartnered persons been considered. Conceptualizing marital status as a continuum of social attachment, data from Waves I and II of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project are used to examine how older married, cohabiting, dating, and unpartnered individuals differ across multiple indicators of psychological well‐being. Among men, cohabitors appear to fare similarly to the married, and better than daters and the unpartnered. In contrast, there are few differences in psychological well‐being by partnership status for women.     

Determinants of the Rigor of State Protection Policies for Persons With Dementia in Assisted Living

Continued growth in the number of individuals with dementia residing in assisted living (AL) facilities raises concerns about their safety and protection. However, unlike federally regulated nursing facilities, AL facilities are state-regulated and there is a high degree of variation among policies designed to protect persons with dementia. Despite the important role these protection policies have in shaping the quality of life of persons with dementia residing in AL facilities, little is known about their formation. In this research, we examined the adoption of AL protection policies pertaining to staffing, the physical environment, and the use of chemical restraints. For each protection policy type, we modeled policy rigor using an innovative point-in-time approach, incorporating variables associated with state contextual, institutional, political, and external factors. We found that the rate of state AL protection policy adoptions remained steady over the study period, with staffing policies becoming less rigorous over time. Variables reflecting institutional policy making, including legislative professionalism and bureaucratic oversight, were associated with the rigor of state AL dementia protection policies. As we continue to evaluate the mechanisms contributing to the rigor of AL protection policies, it seems that organized advocacy efforts might expand their role in educating state policy makers about the importance of protecting persons with dementia residing in AL facilities and moving to advance appropriate policies.     

Almost separable matrices

An \(m\times n\) matrix \(\mathsf {A}\) with column supports \(\{S_i\}\) is k-separable if the disjunctions \(\bigcup _{i \in \mathcal {K}} S_i\) are all distinct over all sets \(\mathcal {K}\) of cardinality k. While a simple counting bound shows that \(m > k \log _2 n/k\) rows are required for a separable matrix to exist, in fact it is necessary for m to be about a factor of k more than this. In this paper, we consider a weaker definition of ‘almost k-separability’, which requires that the disjunctions are ‘mostly distinct’. We show using a random construction that these matrices exist with \(m = O(k \log n)\) rows, which is optimal for \(k = O(n^{1-\beta })\). Further, by calculating explicit constants, we show how almost separable matrices give new bounds on the rate of nonadaptive group testing.     

How LGBT College Students Perceive and Engage the Campus Religious and Spiritual Climate

The purpose of this study was to compare how students of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities perceive the campus religious and spiritual climate and engage in interfaith and spiritual activities during college. Using data from a national study of 13,776 students at 52 institutions that took part in the Campus Religious and Spiritual Climate Survey, results indicate significant variations in perceptions and engagement by sexual orientation and gender identity. In addition, worldview identity shapes the relationships between sexual orientation and gender identity and perceptions of and engagement on campus.     

The asymmetric environmental consequences of population change: an exploratory county-level study of land development in the USA, 2001-2011

In this exploratory study, we decompose population growth and decline into their constituent elements to examine how demographic change drives environmental change. Using the example of land development, the analysis integrates county-level measures of births, deaths, in-migration, and out-migration with data on built-up land area from the National Land Cover Database for the years 2001–2006 and then 2006–2011. Drawing from human ecology and environmental demography, we hypothesize that the components of population change will have asymmetric impacts on the construction of the built environment as a form of land development. Results from spatial error models, with a contemporaneous and a temporarily lagged dependent variable, show conditional support for these hypotheses. While each component of demographic change has a unique effect on the dependent variable, the rate at which births increase built-up land area is significantly greater than the rate at which deaths slow this process down.     

Intersecting Contexts: Understanding Rural Utah Veterans’ Experiences with Accessing VA Health Care

Since the passage of the Rural Veterans Care Act of 2006 research has focused on health care provider issues with less attention given to individual and contextual factors that contribute to the remaining service gap. Adopting the health care user's viewpoint, we focus on two questions: How do health care users perceive access to health care, and which contextual factors are relevant to explaining the failure of recent efforts to increase access by rural veterans? We collected detailed data through focus groups and individual interviews involving veterans and knowledgeable community members in four rural areas of Utah. Framing the analysis of interview data using the sociospatial approach reveals key dimensions of several contexts that affect rural veterans’ access to health care: the historical period of military service that influences attitudes toward use of Veterans Administration health care and access to specialists, regulations of regionally and locally organized insurance coverage that affects access to and coordination of health care, and local social aspects of rural communities that inform use of specific health care sources. These dimensions provide new insights into the conditions that contribute to variations in the vulnerability of rural Utah veterans.     

The Development Manager's Advisory System: A Knowledge-Based DSS Tool for Project Assessment*

This research investigates whether the knowledge-based decision support system (KBDSS) paradigm provides the necessary supporting structure and developmental framework for product development evaluation. To address the research questions posed in this study, it is necessary to develop and implement KBDSS's at specific decision points along the product development cycle. This paper describes the design, development, and implementation of a KBDSS to support a product development manager's decision concerning full-scale development of a new product. From the systems design perspective, this paper addresses the integration and innovative use of a variety of techniques for knowledge acquisition, modeling, and processing. The approach utilized obtains the benefits of normative modeling as well as the flexibility and developmental advantages of knowledge-based systems. Since its implementation, the system has been successfully used by a development manager to support his recommendation for an ongoing project. His complete satisfaction with this system served as the impetus for the design and development of a multi-expert system which was implemented at the strategic level.     

Are we all equally at home socializing online? Cyberasociality and evidence for an unequal distribution of disdain for digitally-mediated sociality

Online social media are an increasingly important arena of social interaction. This rapid transition to digitally mediated sociality is far from trivial in both the consequences it engenders and the tensions it generates. In this paper, we find that some people do not take as readily to accepting digitally mediated sociality as others, and that this mode of connectivity appears fulfilling and engaging to some while it appears hollow and vacant to others due to variations in a personality disposition which we dub ‘cyberasociality' which was defined as the inability or unwillingness of some people to relate to others via social media as they do when physically present by Tufekci [2010. Who acquires friends through social media and why? Rich get richer versus seek and ye shall find. Proceedings of the fourth international conference on weblogs and social media, Washington, DC]. Using two purposive samples of college students (n?=?410 and n?=?417 completed surveys), we develop a scale to test cyberasociality as a construct. We show that cyberasociality is neither a mere reflection of offline sociability nor a proxy for other well-studied traits such as extraversion or neuroticism, nor a simple reflection of Internet experience or cohort effects. We find that cyberasociality impacts how people use digital social tools more than whether they use them, and that the cyberasocial are less likely to use platforms for digitally mediated social interaction to broaden their social networks or to forge new social ties online while they are equally likely to use digital channels for utilitarian purposes such as coordinating plans or finding out about class assignments. Such differences in dispositions toward online sociality hint toward new wrinkles, advantages and disadvantages for consequences of variations in Internet use.     

Sincere but Naive: Methodological Queries Concerning the British Columbia Polygamy Reference Trial

Academics frequently serve as expert witnesses in legal cases, yet their role as transmitters of social scientific knowledge remains under‐examined. The present study analyzes the deployment of social science within British Columbia's polygamy reference trial where research is used to support the assertion that polygamy is inherently harmful to society. Within the trial record and the written decision, the protection of monogamy as an institution is performed in part through the marginalization of qualitative methodology and the concurrent privileging of quantitative studies that purportedly demonstrate widespread social harms associated with the practice of polygyny. Les universitaires servent souvent témoins experts dans les cas juridiques, mais leur rôle comme les transmetteurs de connaissance en sciences sociale restent sous‐examinés. La présente étude analyse le déploiement de sciences sociale dans l'essai de référence de polygamie de la Columbia britannique où la recherche est utilisée pour soutenir l'assertion que la polygamie est naturellement malfaisante pour la société. Dans le record de procès et la décision écrite la protection de monogamie comme une institution est exécutée partiellement par la marginalisation de méthodologie qualitative et le privilégier d'études quantitatives qui démontrent que la polygamie est intrinsèquement néfastes pour la société.