Ropes course training for youth in a rural setting: “At first I thought it was going to be boring ...”

Outdoor structured activities, such as Ropes Challenge Courses, are typically utilized as interventions for youth coming from urban settings. Evaluation of such programs is scanty at best. In this instance, the course experience is used as a prevention tool for high risk youth in a remote, rural setting of high unemployment, alcohol problems, and low income. The authors discuss the effectiveness of this approach, and the intended and unintended consequences for the rural community at large. The evaluation design relies on extensive qualitative methodology as well as quantitative methods to capture the unique nature of this rural project.     

Nurses and the dying: Symbolic interaction as a precipitator of dying “stages”

The impact of nurses' attitudes upon their communication with dying patients is examined from the symbolic interaction perspective. Data were obtained from participant observation in the intensive care and postintensive care units of a hospital and from in-depth interviewes with additional nurses. Characteristics of the situation, nurses, and patients were examined in terms of an Interpersonal Reactions Model. The strength of this model is its emphasis upon the effect unintended judgments may have on a patient's self-image. A stage in the dying process may simply be a response to the nonverbally communicated expectations of interactors with dying persons. This research focuses on the first stage of this model—the differential reaction of nurses to the varying characteristics of patients within the constraints of extra-care situations.This is a revision of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-South Sociological Association in Little Rock, Arkansas, in November, 1980.     

Strukturelle Kränkungen als Thema im Coaching

In this article hurts in the workplace are discussed, which are not aggressions of one person against another person. Rather they are effects of structural conditions in organizations or effects of legal processes in societies. The author presents three case studies with examples of such hurts and she postulates, that the Coach has to reflect political conditions in his work.     

Why social status matters for understanding the interrelationships between testosterone,economic risk‐taking,and gender

We conduct an extensive review of the literature on testosterone and economic risk‐taking behavior. In sum, there is evidence of a positive association between testosterone and economic risk taking, although it is unlikely to be a strong association given the abundance of null results. However, we argue that the existing literature may overstate the causal effects of testosterone on economic risk taking (or even report a spurious correlation) because this research has not considered the potentially confounding role of social status. Status could concurrently influence both testosterone and economic risk taking, given that testosterone is a social hormone with a reciprocal relationship with social status, and social status has been found to drive risk‐taking behavior. We also argue against using findings from this literature to make gender essentialist claims, primarily because social phenomena influence the size—and existence—of gender differences in economic risk‐taking behavior. We conclude with suggestions for future research.     

Einstellungen gegenüber ?lteren Besch?ftigten

The ??Beliefs About Older Workers Questionnaire?? (Hassell und Perrewe, Journal of Organizational Behavior 16(5):457?C468, 1995) was developed to analyze beliefs about older workers and comprises 27 questions. In this article we present a German version of the ??Beliefs About Older Workers Questionnaire??. We design two versions of the questionnaire, one for beliefs about older female and one for beliefs about older male workers. We report results of a study in which the German questionnaires for male and female workers were administered and tested for the first time. We observed neutral to slightly negative beliefs about older workers. The study identified impacts of the gender of subjects and objects on beliefs about older workers. However, these were rather small. Organizations could profit from instruments like the presented questionnaire to identify age stereotypes and the need for accordant measures. Repeated application of the questionnaire or simultaneous application in other organizational units or organizations would enable organizations to evaluate applied measures or to learn from good practice in other organizational units or organizations.     

Snake parasitism in an urban old-growth forest

Urban-associated changes can have immediate or long-term consequences on animal populations. Such changes may be assessed through parasite prevalence and abundance in wildlife hosts, as urbanization can influence parasitism and disease transmission in wildlife. Snakes are widespread and diverse vertebrates that often persist in urban environments; however, parasitism of snakes in urban environments has yet to be studied, leaving the roles of snakes in parasite transmission uncharacterized. Field ecology, microscopy, molecular techniques, and geographic information science (GIS) were integrated to characterize parasitism of snakes in an urban old-growth forest park. The species, sex, mass, length, location, and prevalence of ecto-, hemo-, and fecal parasites were determined for 34 snakes of 6 species. Ectoparasites (mite), hemoparasites (Hepatozoon spp.), and fecal parasites (Entamoeba spp., Trichomonas spp., Strongloides spp., and an unidentified helminth) were detected in snakes and 64.7?% of snakes were infected by at least one of these parasites. Parasite infections were generally not related to the sex, age, or body condition of snakes. The locations of infected snakes were used to produce risk maps indicating where parasite prevalence is predicted to be greatest. The analysis of these maps indicated that snakes with fecal parasites were closer than non-infected snakes to the edge of the forest. This study confirms that snakes may be important parasite hosts or reservoirs in parasite transmission pathways in urban environments and it provides an integrative multidisciplinary approach that may be used to monitor parasitism dynamics in other urban wildlife areas.