Challenging the courtesy bias interpretation of favorable clients' perceptions of family planning delivery

Favorable client perceptions of provider's interpersonal behavior in contraceptive delivery, documented in clinic exit questionnaires, appear to contradict results from qualitative evaluations and are attributed to clients' courtesy bias. In this study, trained simulated clients requested services from Ministry of Health providers in three countries. Providers excelled in courteousness/respect in Peru and Rwanda; in India, providers were less courteous and respectful when the simulated clients chose the pill. Privacy and two-way communication were less prevalent in all three countries. The findings challenge the courtesy bias interpretation. Global results from qualitative studies may have expressed the views of the minority of clients who are not treated well by providers.     

VISIBLY QUEER: Body Technologies and Sexual Politics

Queer body modification is a site for investigating the possibilities and limitations of agency in body practices. This article considers the use of new and recirculated body modification technologies—many of them modeled after practices of indigenous, non-Western groups—by members of gay, lesbian, and trasngendered communities. Through presenting and interpreting the interview-gathered narratives of six body modifiers, I describe body modification as a practice imbued with agency by subjects. By creating anomalous bodies that provoke shock and consternation, body modifiers not only underscore the body's symbolic significance as a site of public identity but also conceive it as a resource for opposing (hetero) dominant culture. Body modification, even though it tests social tolerance, is not guaranteed in its subversive effects. I approach the narratives from a perspective informed poststructuralism, and I understand body modifiers' agency as limited by and constituted within regulatory regimes of power, such as heteronormativity, pathologization, and colonialism. I describe how such deployments engage symbols embedded in historic systems of representation and thus raise important questions regarding agency.     

Mothers’ communicative cues and the development of infants’ helping: Linking participation and problem solving in the first year of life

There is an ongoing debate on the role of socialization in the development of infants’ helping. Although opportunities for the socialization of early helping are rare in problem solving (bystander intervention), there are many opportunities for socialization in participation (working alongside others), and infants’ experiences of participation could socialize problem solving indirectly. The present study links participation and problem solving conceptually by drawing on a Hebbian concept of indirect learning and through a study examining mothers’ communicative cues in both forms of helping. Forty mother-infant dyads engaged in two semi-structured helping tasks, a participation task and a problem-solving task at five, eight, and ten months of age. Mothers’ communicative cues and infants’ return of the object were examined using coding schemes adapted from prior research. Mothers used similar communicative cues (reaches, give-me gestures, and verbal requests) in both tasks, and more maternal scaffolding contributed to greater object handover. Infants showed higher object handover in participation tasks. The findings, framed in Tomasello's neo-Vygotskian account of prosocial development, offer a synthesis of the debate on the role of socialization where prosocial behavior emerges first between people, and then becomes individualized.     

Housing Implications of Individual Budget Home Care Models for Older Renters: An Australian Case Study

Policies and programs relating to successful aging in place are premised on the fact that older people's housing is stable and suitable. Home-based aged care delivery models such as individual budgets aim to deliver increased service flexibility, choice, and control for consumers. Little attention has been paid to the consequences of such models for older renters, who often have less stable housing and restricted rights to modify their accommodation. This article reports on a project in Australia that explored the delivery and receipt of individual budget style models of home-based aged care services to older renters.     

The impact of oral probiotics on vaginal Group B Streptococcal colonisation rates in pregnant women: A pilot randomised control study

Objective

To perform a pilot project to determine if this research design was appropriate to explore potential causal relationships between oral probiotic use and vaginal Group B Streptococcal (GBS) colonisation rates in pregnant women.

The indirect effect of perceived burdensomeness on the relationship between indices of social support and suicide ideation in college students

Objective: Research has demonstrated that a lack of social support is related to suicide risk. This study examines perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, of the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide, as mechanisms of the social support–suicide relationship in college students. Method: The study consisted of 207 students from a Midwestern university. Data were collected from 2007 to 2008. Two multiple mediation analyses were conducted to examine whether perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness mediated the relationship between indices of social support and suicide ideation. Results: Perceived burdensomeness mediated the relationships between perceived social support and suicide ideation (95% confidence interval [CI] ?.02 to ?.00, effect size = ?.01) and social connectedness and suicide ideation (95% CI ?.03 to ?.00, effect size = ?.03). Thwarted belongingness did not mediate either relationship. Conclusions: Results suggest that a lack of social support could lead to perceptions of being a burden on others, which could lead to suicide ideation.     

Understanding paid peer support in mental health

This study aimed to explore, articulate and expand on existing concepts of recovery and paid peer support within consumer-operated mental health organizations. Focus groups and interviews were conducted with 32 participants to identify elements of paid peer support work in two organizations in Queensland, Australia. Participants included peer-supported consumers, paid peer support workers, managers and other key stakeholders. Through a grounded theory analysis, eight categories of paid peer support were identified. For the most part, the categories aligned well with evidence in the literature. However, two of these categories, issues of power and the ‘dark side’ of peer support, have been relatively unexplored and understated in previous studies. These findings provide an expanded understanding of the role of paid peer support as part of the recovery process in mental health service delivery. The effective use of paid peer support workers can be enhanced through attention to the issues identified.     

An interdisciplinary approach to the development of professional identity through digital storytelling in health and social care and teacher education

The present article presents a study based on an interdisciplinary approach to research into reflection on identity construction. This multiple case study explores the narrative of professional identities in digital artefacts. It is aimed at exploring in what way digital storytelling can be used as a suitable pedagogical strategy for the construction of professional identity. The students involved in the innovative learning activity comprise two groups of Health and Social Care students in the UK, two groups of Primary Education student-teachers and one group of Secondary Education student-teachers in Spain. Thematic analysis is used to identify the topics addressed by students in exploring their professional identities, including values and the process of learning itself. Finally, the lessons learned from this interdisciplinary approach to reflection on identity and the implications these have not only for teaching and learning design but also for future collaborative research projects are set out in the discussion and conclusions.     

There are two sides to every story: young people’s perspectives of relationship issues on social media and adult responses

This paper reports on a recent research project undertaken in the UK that investigated how young people negotiate their identities and relationships online, including how they experience interventions by adults. Drawing on qualitative interviews with young people in two schools and a voluntary youth organisation in England, we argue that young people engage rather successfully in practices of self-governance. Our findings based on this sample of young people’s agentic practice and care for their peers challenge some dominant perceptions of young people’s online practices as risky and/or harmful to themselves and/or others. Furthermore we found a lack of evidence concerning the effectiveness of, and need for, interventions orientated around surveillance and zero tolerance.     

“Not Hiding,Not Shouting,Just Me”: Gay Men Negotiate Their Visual Identities

This study explored how British gay men make sense of their appearance and clothing practices and the pressures and concerns they attend to in discursively negotiating their visual identities. A convenience sample of 20 mostly young, White, and middle-class self-identified gay men responded to a qualitative survey on dress and appearance. The participants clearly understood the rules of compulsory heterosexuality and the risks of looking “too gay.” In the data, there was both a strong resistance to the notion of gay as a “master status” and an orientation to the “coming out” imperative in gay communities. The analysis revealed the overriding importance of discourses of authentic individuality for making sense of visual identity and the reported cultivation of appearance and clothing practices that communicate the message that: “I’m not hiding (too closeted), I’m not shouting (too gay), I’m just me (an authentic individual who just happens to be gay).”