Stress and coping of adults and young adults in economically uncertain rural areas

This paper discusses the degree and type of stress experienced by adults and young adults, coping strategies used, and their family, financial, and community satisfaction in economically distressed rural counties. Data were analyzed from questionnaires completed by 447 adults and 118 young adults. Results indicate greater perceived stress, use of some less effective coping strategies, and less satisfaction among young adults. Both groups indicate similar numbers of stressful events and a generally positive perception of community social services.Dorothy Z. Price received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University. She is a Professor, Department of Child & Family Studies, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2010. Research interests include decision-making and consumer behavior.Lonnie J. Dunlap, M.A. is a Graduate Research Assistant, Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program, Department of Child & Family Studies, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2010. Research interests include work and family interactions and career development.     

The NAS Risk Paradigm as a Medium for Communication

Many journalists, public interest groups and other recipients of risk assessment information are familiar with the National Academy of Sciences risk assessment paradigm. From time to time, paradigm concepts appear in news features or community group discussions on environmental issues. With knowledge of the paradigm common to scientists, journalists, and other interested parties, the paradigm is a potentially important medium for communication between risk scientists, journalists, and the public. Specifically, the paradigm offers widely-accepted organizing principles for presenting risk information, a common language for addressing a variety of issues and concepts, and a flexible analytical system that accommodates the diversity of scientific information and policy perspectives that characterize the risk assessment process. In addition, the paradigm outlines important relationships and distinctions between risk assessment and risk management. Informed and creative use of these features of the paradigm can guide and simplify interviews between journalists or community groups and their expert sources, clarify presentation of risk information, and promote collaboration between risk scientists, journalists, and others to assure complete, objective and fair comment on risk issues of interest to the public.     

Mind the gap: The role of leadership in multiteam system collective cognition

The increasing prevalence of team-based organizations places a premium on leadership that will “mind the gap” and enable smooth synchronization of activities across multiple distinct teams. Prior work shows that leaders can be trained to directly facilitate between-team coordination processes. Yet, relatively little is known about the intervening psychological mechanisms that enable between-team coordination. Here, we advance multiteam-interaction mental models—cognitive structures containing knowledge of appropriate between-team activities—as one mechanism that facilitates coordination among multiple teams. We use leader and team cognition data gathered in DeChurch and Marks' (2006) MTS study to test these ideas. Results reveal leaders' multiteam-interaction mental model accuracy “transfers” to teams through strategic communication, and leader strategic communication enables between-team coordination by promoting accuracy in followers' mental models. This study highlights the importance of leadership for developing collective cognition that allows teams to “scale up” from small stand-alone teams to larger and more complex systems.     

Social Justice and the Reform of Social Security

There have been massive increases over the years in expenditure on the public services loosely grouped together as the “welfare state”, but widespread dissatisfaction persists. This article is a critique of the proposals for reform presented in the Report of the Commission on Social Justice, set up by the late John Smith. The report contains a sweeping condemnation of existing arrangements and puts forward a series of recommendations ranging from the health service to decentralization in government and from employment policy to benefits for the elderly. As was perhaps inevitable, some are more precisely presented than others. An important example of the more fully specified proposals is one to establish what would, in effect, be a means-tested “pension guarantee”but with “means”so defined as to exclude capital and with much improved “disregards”. Another is the endorsement of the proposals to extend social insurance to part-time workers—a proposal which raises some controversial issues. There is much in this report that deserves close attention, and it is, therefore, all the more unfortunate that its proposals are not presented in the form of a quantified plan for social policy. Even for the first five years or so of the fifteen the Commission has in mind, there is no attempt at quantification. The importance of economic growth is rightly stressed, but “faster growth”can become a panacea that obscures the need for choice, not only between private and public expenditure but also between the various components of public policy itself.     

Inter-agency conflict: an ethnographic study

An ethnographic study using observation and in-depth interviewing of professionals from different organizations, intensively 'shadowed' a small number of alleged child abuse cases as they moved through the service system. A high level of inter-agency conflict was observed and common sources of conflict were: gatekeeping disputes; dispositional disputes; and domain disputes. Dynamics relating to the displacement of hostility on to other agencies in cases in which all the professionals involved felt impo-tent to protect vulnerable children, were also observed. These findings provide some fresh insights and hypotheses into the com-plexity of inter-agency interaction in the field of child protection.