Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender Communities’ Readiness for Intimate Partner Violence Prevention

Efforts to address intimate partner violence (IPV) in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities often rely on identifying what service providers can do to better reach and serve these populations. However, assessing a community's readiness in response to the issue of IPV in LGBT communities locates the issue where outcry is most likely to occur. Utilizing the Community Readiness Model in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in two rural and two urban communities, this study revealed a low level of community readiness to address IPV. Only vague awareness of IPV exists in these sexual orientation, gender identity, and geographic communities. The study suggests specific next steps tailored to raise LGBT communities’ readiness to address IPV from within their own communities, starting at the current low level.     

Embracing Risk and Promise for Student Engagement: Incorporating Experiential Teaching Methods in a Community Psychology Course

This article is a narrative from the field about the redesign of a community psychology course to integrate a partnership with a community-based activism program. The narrative highlights risks and promise associated with the experience and aims to contribute to the literature on community-university partnerships as a mechanism for advancing student learning and civic engagement. A general thesis of this narrative is that embracing both the risks and promises of utilizing this pedagogical approach can help to sustain an instructor’s commitment to this approach.     

Independence in assisted living

The aims of this study were to understand the meaning of independence for residents of assisted living and to identify factors influencing the operationalization of independence in this setting. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 17 providers and 55 residents in 17 assisted-living facilities in Georgia. Data were analyzed by using the grounded theory method. Findings show that assisted-living residents retained a strong value for independence and that independence had multiple dimensions of meaning. Whereas independence in most cases was reduced to performing everyday activities of daily living (ADLs), the multidimensional nature of meaning allowed residents with significant disability both to continue to perceive themselves as independent and to find satisfaction in their remaining abilities. Resident self-care requires significant effort from both residents and providers, but it also has far-reaching potential to help residents maintain intact identities and may hold the key to extending their stay in the assisted-living facility (ALF) environment.     

Understanding the Challenges to Providing Disabilities Services and Rehabilitation in Rural Alaska: Where Do We Go From Here?

American Indians/Alaska Natives (AI/AN) suffer from some of the highest rates of health and mental health-related disabilities. Despite high rates of disabilities experienced among this population, services available to treat the disabilities are extremely limited, especially within the rural Alaska context. Additionally, limited research exists regarding the perceived barriers to receiving disability services, the importance of treating disabilities within one's own community, and individual and community-level strengths that exist to help cope with the lack of services. This article attempts to bring awareness to these issues, as well as propose tangible solutions to help mitigate the barriers.     

Making Sense of Muscle: The Body Experiences of Collegiate Women Athletes*

Using ethnographic research, this paper explores the experiences of elite women athletes on a Division‐I college soccer team. I draw on existing literature in the sociology of sport, sociology of the body, and interactionism to inform my analysis. With this approach, I illustrate the complicated relationship women athletes have with their bodies in relation to physical competition and dominant notions of femininity today. Key reference groups influenced the players’ self‐perceptions and encouraged the women to closely monitor their own appearances and actions. While undoubtedly affected by these inter‐actions as well as their place in the gender hierarchy, many women athletes subtly resisted notions of idealized bodies and constructed their own meanings about their bodies and experiences. Investigating the day‐to‐day body awareness and negotiations of women athletes reveals the gendered nuances of sport and the complicated relationship between cultural ideals and female embodiment.     

“They are the reason I come to work”: The meaning of resident–staff relationships in assisted living

This article aims to provide understanding of how direct care workers (DCWs) in assisted living facilities (ALFs) interpret their relationships with residents and to identify factors that influence the development, maintenance, quality, and meaning of these relationships. Qualitative methods were used to study two ALFs (35 and 75 beds) sequentially over seven months. Researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 5 administrative staff and 38 DCWs and conducted 243 h of participant observation during a total of 99 visits. Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Results showed that the emotional aspect of caregiving provides meaning to DCWs through both the satisfaction inherent in relationships and through the effect of relationships on care outcomes. Within the context of the wider community and society, multiple individual- and facility-level factors influence DCW strategies to create and manage relationships and carry out care tasks and ultimately find meaning in their work. These meanings affect their job satisfaction and retention.     

Hearing Impairment and Emotion Identification from Auditory and Visual Stimuli

In the present pilot study, the researchers investigated how people with impaired hearing identify emotions from auditory and visual stimuli, with people with normal hearing acting as their controls. Two separate experiments were conducted. The viewpoint was in the communication and social function of emotion perception. Professional actors of both genders produced emotional nonsense samples without linguistic content, samples in the Finnish language, and prolonged vowel samples. In Experiment 1, nine Cochlear implant users and nine controls participated in the listening test. In Experiment 2, nine users of a variety of hearing aids and nine controls participated in the perception test. The results of both experiments showed a statistically significant difference between the two testing groups, people with hearing impairment and people with normal hearing, in the emotion identification and valence perception from both auditory and visual stimuli. The results suggest that hearing aids and cochlear implants do not transfer well enough the nuances within emotions conveyed by the voice. The results also suggest difficulties in the visual perception among people with hearing impairment. This warrants further studies with larger samples.     

Planning for the American Dream: The College-Savings Behavior of Asian and Latino Foreign-Born Parents in the United States

Population Research and Policy Review - Rapid growth in the population of children of immigrants has occurred during an era of soaring college costs in the United States. Despite well-established...     

The Silent Classroom: The Impact of Smartphones and a Social Studies Teacher's Response

The accelerated ownership and usage of smartphones and social media presents multiple issues for educators. There is a relationship between smartphones and (a) academic achievement, (b) engagement, and (c) mental health. The purpose of this literature review is to investigate the impact of smartphones and social media on students and how curriculum can best prepare youth for democratic citizenship. The case studies included in this review span beyond the United States due to the insightful research that has been conducted in various locations across the globe. When reviewing the literature, a few themes emerged. First, students who struggle the most academically are the ones who benefit most from the absence of a smartphone. Second, students of color are spending more time on social media and due to the increased exposure to racial discrimination online, academic motivation is decreasing for many of these students. Third, many researchers encourage schools to develop policies to limit smartphone use in the classroom. Finally, it is evident that the social studies curriculum needs to be expanded to include digital citizenship, media literacy, and the potential negative impact of smartphones and social media on students.     

Attachment Style,Vagal Tone,and Empathy During Mother–Adolescent Interactions

We tested associations among empathic responsiveness, attachment style, and vagal tone (a physiologic index of emotion regulation) in 103 mother–adolescent dyads. Dyads discussed positive and negative topics and then separately reviewed a videotape of the interaction and rated their own and the other person's affect at one‐minute intervals. We used multilevel modeling to analyze the association between one's rating of the other person's affect and the other person's affect (empathic sensitivity), and the association between one's rating of the other person's affect and one's own affect (perceived concordance). Adolescents’ empathic responsiveness was predicted by attachment style, vagal tone, and interactions between them. Adolescents with the greatest empathic responsiveness had low levels of attachment insecurity and high levels of vagal tone.