Changing cultural and social environments: implications for older East Asian women

The world is aging and the trend is towards a global feminization of aging. In the Asia Pacific region, which already contains approximately 50% of the world's population over age 60, the number of older women exceeds that of older men in most countries. This article explores the changes that are occurring in East Asian social and cultural traditions for aging and discusses the implications of those changes for women who aged in that culture. In the traditional culture, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean families are influenced by values of family centrality and collective orientation to life that are mostly rooted in Confucian values and ethics. In those traditions, older women assume and maintain a valued status within the family and community through respected roles and productive contributions. However, various factors, such as migration to urban areas and demographic shifts, have precipitated modernization of these societies and alterations of traditional culture. These cultural shifts are relevant to the United States where, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, 71.0% of Asian and Pacific Islander-Americans over the age 65 are foreign-born. Immigration can prompt an immediate cultural shift and create a fast forward insight into the slower cultural evolution currently occurring in East Asian societies.     

Guiding the Next Generation of NIH Investigators in Responsible Conduct of Research: The Role of the Mentor

National Institutes of Health (NIH) K award recipients and their mentors were surveyed to investigate the role of the mentor. We found that a majority of mentors provided guidance in responsible research conduct (RCR), and that most of these relationships were deemed helpful. Mentors also responded that they played a greater importance in RCR training of their mentees than the mentees reported. Our results suggest both mentors and mentees report that mentors ideally should play a more important role in RCR training than was actually the case. For conflicting interests, subjects' protection, and misconduct, approximately 50% of K recipients found the mentor to be not at all important or only somewhat important for these areas of RCR training. We conclude the mentor's role is important but not optimal based on the results of our study cohort.     

The iterative proportional fitting algorithm for adjusted agreement in a non‐inferiority diagnostic clinical trial

In this paper, we describe a method of comparing agreement between two diagnostic contingency tables after adjustment to more clinically relevant marginal distributions using the iterative proportional fitting algorithm. When the categories of a contingency table represent mild, moderate, and severe outcomes, the majority of patients often are in the mild category. Because it is often of more interest to evaluate agreement when patients are uniformly distributed among categories, we present the primary results of two clinical trials with adjustment to this structure. We also describe the relationship between the sponsor's pre‐specified agreement measure for the observed contingency table and kappa for the adjusted table; and by either criterion, we then show that the agreement of the new diagnostic tool with the standard diagnostic tool is comparably non‐inferior to the agreement of the standard diagnostic tool with itself. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Group Work Camp as Nondeliberative Process

ABSTRACT

The article seeks to identify examples of several features of nondeliberative practice within the process of Group Work Camp, an experiential training program. Camp provides an alternative environment for learning, in which novice group workers can effectively deal with their anxiety about facilitating groups. Examples of specific features of nondeliberative process are identified, including “worker of the self” nondeliberative and deliberative process working in tandem, problem solving without awareness of a problem, casting the problem in manageable form, transforming nondeliberative experience into analog, shifting from artful to actional to analogic forms, and worker role.     

Has Income Segregation Really Increased? Bias and Bias Correction in Sample-Based Segregation Estimates

Several recent studies have concluded that residential segregation by income in the United States has increased in the decades since 1970, including a significant increase after 2000. Income segregation measures, however, are biased upward when based on sample data. This is a potential concern because the sampling rate of the American Community Survey (ACS)—from which post-2000 income segregation estimates are constructed—was lower than that of the earlier decennial censuses. Thus, the apparent increase in income segregation post-2000 may simply reflect larger upward bias in the estimates from the ACS, and the estimated trend may therefore be inaccurate. In this study, we first derive formulas describing the approximate sampling bias in two measures of segregation. Next, using Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the bias-corrected estimators eliminate virtually all of the bias in segregation estimates in most cases of practical interest, although the correction fails to eliminate bias in some cases when the population is unevenly distributed among geographic units and the average within-unit samples are very small. We then use the bias-corrected estimators to produce unbiased estimates of the trends in income segregation over the last four decades in large U.S. metropolitan areas. Using these corrected estimates, we replicate the central analyses in four prior studies on income segregation. We find that the primary conclusions from these studies remain unchanged, although the true increase in income segregation among families after 2000 was only half as large as that reported in earlier work. Despite this revision, our replications confirm that income segregation has increased sharply in recent decades among families with children and that income inequality is a strong and consistent predictor of income segregation.     

Fatalistic Beliefs and Migration Behaviors: A Study of Ideational Demography in Nepal

Population Research and Policy Review - We investigate influences of fatalistic beliefs on domestic and international migration in Nepal, positing that fatalistic beliefs may affect decisions to...     

Transplanting institutional innovation: comparing the success of NGOs and missionary Protestantism in sub-Saharan Africa

Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as carriers of transnational institutional innovation, this article compares their successes and failures at creating self-sustaining institutions in distant societies. Missionary Protestantism and NGOs are similar in that they attempt to establish formal organizations outside kinship, lineage, and ethnic forms of solidarity. Focusing on institutions as ways to create collective capacities that organize social life, we trace the route whereby Protestant missionaries established congregational religion in Africa and identify social practices that made this enterprise successful but are comparatively absent in current NGO attempts to transform organizational life. Largely ignored by sociologists interested in institutional transformation, the history of congregational religion offers valuable sociological lessons about the conditions for radical institutional innovation. Its success was rooted first, in colonial missionaries’ ability to enforce new ways of life on small exemplary communities; second, in local adaptations (African prophetic movements, Pentecostalism) that deepened and widened the social reach of congregational principles; and third in the incentives Protestantism created for propagating the congregational form.

     

Building theory in public relations: Interorganizational relationships as a public relations paradigm

ABSTRACT

This article suggests that agreement on a paradigm focus for public relations scholarship would greatly enhance the probability of productive theory development. The author argues, influenced by Thomas Kuhn, that until those who call themselves public relations scholars come to agreement on the focus of public relations research and theory development, there may be much activity we call research in public relations, but there will not be much theory development.     

A media framing analysis of a U.S. presidential advisor: Alternative flacks

Political public relations became headline news when Kellyanne Conway, Advisor to U.S. President Trump, described provable falsehoods as alternative facts. Other memorable/misstatements became part of the cultural zeitgeist even as journalists continued to interview her. Public relations professionals are inextricably connected to the journalists who shape public opinion. The author therefore conducted a qualitative framing analysis to understand how journalists framed her occupational role and job performance. Articles from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal revealed that journalists assigned Advocacy and Gendered framing for her occupational role. Analysis also indicated that journalists alternately depicted her performance as adequate, unreliable, and manipulative. The author considers implications of findings for public relations professionals.