Why mentoring in the workplace works

Workplaces are ideal contexts for mentoring relationships between adults and older youth. To teach the competencies required in contemporary workplaces (many of which are equally useful in other settings), mentors need to use sophisticated teaching behaviors, which the authors characterize as reflective questioning and problem solving.     

Does perceived discrimination affect health? Longitudinal relationships between work discrimination and women's physical and emotional health

This study uses longitudinal data to examine the causal relationships between perceived work discrimination and women's physical and emotional health. Using data on 1,778 employed women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women, we investigate the structural and individual characteristics that predict later perceptions of discrimination and the effects of those perceptions on subsequent health. We find that perceptions of discrimination are influenced by job attitudes, prior experiences of discrimination, and work contexts, but prior health is not related to later perceptions. However, perceptions of discrimination do impact subsequent health, and these effects remain significant after controlling for prior emotional health, physical health limitations, discrimination, and job characteristics. Overall, the results provide even stronger support for the health impact of workplace discrimination and suggest a need for further longitudinal analyses of causes and consequences of perceived discrimination.     

Virtuelles Selbstcoaching — Konzept und erste Erfahrungen

Combining management consultation with psychotherapy in the early nineties, coaching is a real innovation. Its success story grounds on a huge market demand. Nevertheless, actual market observations revealed a declining success progress over the past years caused by two factors. The first one refers to economic reasons since coaching is a high-budget-product and focuses mainly on managers and important specialists. The second factor is a psychological one: many potential clients associate coaching with psychotherapy and therefore react with resistance. To continue the progress, it is necessary to overcome both restrictions. The solution is virtual self-coaching as an innovative combination of coaching and e-learning. It is an online-tool that guides the user through a well-defined path of problem solving questions. This is for many users attractive because of the low costs in combination with the fact that working with an online-tool is associated with further education and not therapy. Our tests have demonstrated that the program is useful for a big variety of different problems and that best results can be expected if virtual self-coaching is combined with telephone coaching.     

Technology transfer — and the U.S. space program

Using ten years of data in the structured technology transfer program of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration as a base, a rough model of the nature and significance of research and development and its movement as technology is presented. Painted in economic hues is the economic return of technology of 7·23 to 1 over an 18 year period, in technical terms—the nature of integrated circuit technology transfer and the public significance of technology transfer to the problems of rechargeable Cardiac Pacemakers. The distinction between natural technology diffusion and intended technology transfer is made to outline the movement of technology through the U.S. economy.     

Parental involvement laws, religion, and abortion rates

This article explores whether policy endogeneity partially explains the negative relationship generally reported between parentll involvement laws and abortion rates, since parental involvement laws are found to be negatively related to both teen and adult abortion rates. Since parental involvement laws may be more likely to be passed in jurisdictions with a higher level of antiabortion sentiment, both the law and anti-abortion sentiment may be responsible for lower abortion rates. To explore this possible interrelatedness, a religiosity level variable was used as a proxy for anti-abortion sentiment, since anti-abortion sentiment might affect abortion rates directly and indirectly through the greater likelihood of the enactment of parental involvement laws. The relationship of parental involvement laws and religiosity level to abortion rates was analyzed for teens and adults; regressions were estimated for four age groups: 15–19, 20–24, 25–29, and 30–34 years old. Residence county-level 1995 abortion rates were regressed against parental involvement laws and religiosity levels as well as several control county-level variables—restrictive public funding, unemployment rate, population density, percent of college graduates, extent of poverty, percent of married-couple families, and geographic region. The sample consisted of the 1,008 counties from the 17 states that reported abortion numbers by county and by age group. Using log transformations of the dependent variable abortion rates, log-linear weighted regression models were run for the four age groups. Parental involvement laws were highly statistically significantly related (p<0.1) to lower abortion rates for all four age groups; the coefficient was larger, however, when the religiosity level variable was excluded from the model. The coefficient for the religiosity level was highly statistically significant (p<01) for all four age groups when the parental involvement variable was excluded from the model; when the parental involvement variable was included in the model, the coefficient for the religiosity level decreased for all four age groups and was statistically significant for only three of the four age groups. Since the coefficients for both the religiosity level and the parental involvement law decrease when both variables are included, the negative relationship between parental involvement laws and abortion rates does seem to reflect some policy endogeneity so that the reported impact of parental involvement laws may be overstated. Her primary research interestes are gender-related, currently in the area of abortion rates.     

The journal readership survey

In the early part of last year the Editorial Board commissioned a study to investigate readers' attitudes to this journal. The journal is produced for a highly specialist audience, located in a wide spectrum of industries and institutions, with considerable diversity in their application of the planning function. The board was therefore concerned to discover the extent to which the journal satisfied the varied interests of readers and to identity any aspects of the content and presentation of the journal which could be improved in the future.     

“I've been independent for so damn long!”: Independence, masculinity and aging in a help seeking context

This paper draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 36 older men to examine how older men's understandings of independence relate to their help seeking behaviours and health service use. We argue that discourses of masculinity and successful aging are both represented in men's talk about independence. Recognising that these discourses are intertwined is important for understanding how older men seek help and use health services. We outline the practice and policy implications of viewing older men's help seeking behaviours in this way, and how it might be useful for promoting older men's health.