Repelling the “Rutter”: Social Differentiation Among Rural Teenagers

This paper examines low‐income white rural teenagers' management of race and class‐based inequality. It analyzes how these teenagers constructed boundaries to distinguish themselves from outsiders, but also to distinguish themselves from the local abject category of “rutter.” The findings reveal hidden interconnections between race and class in interactional practice, and highlight local processes of differentiation through which actors attempt to deflect stigma and attain credibility. The paper discusses how interactional mechanisms such as “internal othering” and “stigma‐theory” bolster race and class credibility, but reproduce inequality.     

Raising awareness of psychosocial factors in the occurrence of low back symptoms in developing countries

Although there is strong evidence that single physical, psychosocial and organisational risk factors are each independent predictors of low back symptoms (LBS), little is known about their combination/interaction, particularly in those working in developing countries. A total of 1294 Indonesian coal mining industry workers reported information about physical, psychosocial, and organisational factors using self-reported questionnaires and were placed into one of four combination exposure groups: 1) high physical (working with bent trunk; whole body vibration exposure; lifting) and high psychosocial (high effort; low reward; work stress), 2) high physical and low psychosocial, 3) low physical and high psychosocial, and 4) low physical and low psychosocial (as the reference group). The odds of LBS in the high physical and high psychosocial group was 5.15 times (95% confidence interval 2.69-9.86) that of the reference group. Psychosocial factors played a more important role than physical factors in increasing the likelihood of reporting LBS. Permanent and night shift workers were more likely to report LBS. These findings imply that efforts to reduce LBS in this workplace should address both psychosocial and physical factors but psychosocial factors should be the priority, with a special focus on permanent and night shift workers.     

Development in youth enterprises

Business enterprises run by youth can create jobs and teach the principles of free enterprise but also convey skills that can be used by employees in large companies, as well as political activists and entrepreneurs. Research is needed to test the efficacy of this approach and identify its key components.     

Semantic analysis of natural language processing in a study of nurse mobility in the Northern Territory,Australia

In lieu of diverse consequences in the demand and supply of health care professionals such as nurses and midwives in Australia and the world, a firm understanding of the characteristics of staff mobility and the factors influencing their retention could lead to achieving enhanced service delivery, greater job satisfaction, and the establishment of a more stable and robust workforce. The research reported in this paper attempts to shed light on qualitative aspects of mobility in health care professional staff in the Northern Territory of Australia. It builds upon an existing survey study of the quantitative factors that determine why nurses and midwives come to the Northern Territory, why some stay and why many leave, by analysing additional qualitative textual responses of participants using semantic network approaches to natural language processing. Our results illustrate the methodological and policy significance of semantic approaches to knowledge acquisition and representation, especially in complementing findings of traditional survey analysis techniques, and in analysing the broader social settings, effects and consequences of staff retention and mobility.     

Marital Status,Spousal Characteristics,and the Use of Preventive Care

In this article, we investigated the effects of marriage and spousal characteristics on the use of preventive care. We accounted for the endogeneity of marriage by combining propensity score estimation techniques with marriage transitions observed in longitudinal data. Results indicated that marriage increases the probability of dental check-ups and physical examinations for both sexes and mammograms and Pap smears for women. Next, we examined whether spousal characteristics affect the use of preventive care. Spousal education, income, health conditions, and preferences for risk and health care all affected use of preventive care in expected directions. Taken together, we conclude that marriage increases the use of preventive care; however, the net marital effect masks a heterogeneity that results from the characteristics of the spouse an individual marries.     

Unemployment,Reemployment, and Health Insurance Status Among Older Workers in the Flexible Labor Market

As employment becomes more precarious, and spells of displacement become more common across the labor market, many individuals are forced to make decisions about the speed at which they seek reemployment and the types of employment they will seek. Using repeated cross‐sectional data from various years of the Displaced Worker Supplement of the Current Population Survey, we examine the degree to which employer‐provided health insurance and organizational provision of advanced layoff warning helped workers—particularly those from earlier birth cohorts—navigate the labor market during a period of growing employment flexibility. Our results indicate that workers from older cohorts, rather than older chronological ages, suffered more from displacement in terms of longer unemployment spells and declines in job quality upon reemployment. Workers able to obtain a job with health insurance had shorter unemployment durations, while those displaced from jobs with health insurance remained unemployed for longer periods of time. Advance notice appears to reduce some of the disproportionately negative effects of displacement for older workers, perhaps by easing the shock of a psychological contract breach. Our findings point to the importance of historical and cultural factors in shaping labor market outcomes.     

Friends in Old Age

Psychoanalysis has long recognized the vital role that relationships between people play in human development and in the maintenance of sense of well being throughout life. While the internalization of representations of significant others and their interactions with each other, the achievement of object constancy, makes it possible to gain support from the realization that we live in the minds of others and they in ours’, it is “not enough.” We need people “in the flesh” from “cradle to grave.” Unfortunately, this need is more difficult to meet in our later years. Parents, siblings, mates, love partners die. Children move away. No longer do we have daily contact with our work colleagues. Old friends are lost, never to be replaced, making the ability to form and maintain additional friendships as well as the opportunity to do so critical in the life of the elderly. This paper considers the roles that friends play in old age, the developmental achievements that contribute to the capacity for friendship, some of the factors that may impede doing so, and finally the ways in which psychoanalytic treatment may foster an individual’s ability to be a friend and make friends.