Longitudinal Relations Among Parental Emotional Expressivity and Sympathy and Prosocial Behavior in Adolescence

Concurrent and longitudinal relations among parental emotional expressivity, children's sympathy and children's prosocial behavior were assessed with correlations and structural equation modeling when the children were 55–97 months old (N = 214; M age = 73 months, SD = 9.59) and eight years later (N = 130; ages 150–195 months old, M = 171 months, SD = 10.01). Parent emotional expressivity (positive and negative) and children's sympathy were stable across time and early parent‐reported sympathy predicted adolescents' sympathy and prosocial behavior. Parents' positive expressivity was positively related to sympathy and prosocial behavior, but in adolescence, this was likely primarily because of consistency over time. Early observed parental negative expressivity was negatively related to adolescents' prosocial behavior. Reported negative expressivity in childhood was negatively related to boys' sympathy in childhood and positively related to girls' sympathy behavior in adolescence. The later relation remained significant when controlling for the stability of parental expressivity and sympathy, suggesting an emerging positive relation between the variables for girls.     

The cognition-sensitive approach to dementia. Parallels with the science of unitary human beings

1. Theory can provide practical guidelines for nursing interventions and research. 2. The Science of Unitary Human Beings, a grand theory, provides input into clarifying the Cognition-Sensitive Approach, a mid-range theory. 3. Cognition in the Alzheimer's disease process can be categorized hierarchically. 4. The Cognition-Sensitive Approach provides a theoretical base for holistic nursing interventions for people with Alzheimer's disease.     

Gambling participation in the U.S.--results from a national survey

Demographic patterns of gambling participation in the U.S. were examined. A national telephone survey was conducted with 2,630 representative U.S. residents aged 18 or older. The sample as weighted for analysis was 48% male, 12% black, and 11% Hispanic. Respondents were questioned on 15 types of gambling: how often they played and how much they won or lost. Eighty-two percent gambled in the past year. Lottery was the most commonly played game, while casino gambling accounted for the largest extent of gambling involvement. Men and women were equally likely to gamble in the past year, but men gambled more frequently and had larger wins and losses, particularly on sports betting and games of skill. Blacks were less likely to have gambled in the past year, but blacks who gambled did so more heavily than other racial groups. Blacks and Hispanics were more likely than average to be pathological gamblers. The rate of past year gambling declined with age, but extent of gambling involvement among gamblers did not vary with age. Rates of participation in most forms of gambling increased with socioeconomic status, but higher socioeconomic status gamblers had lower rates of pathological gambling, and lower extent of gambling involvement, particularly for lottery. New Englanders gambled more heavily than other Americans. Comparison with past studies showed an increase in overall gambling participation in the U.S., and large increases in rates of participation in lottery and casino gambling.     

Safety Risk Analysis of an Innovative Environmental Technology

The authors describe a decision and risk analysis performed for the cleanup of a large Department of Energy mixed-waste subsurface disposal area governed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). In a previous study, the authors worked with the site decision makers, state regulators, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional regulators to develop a CERCLA-based multiobjective decision analysis value model and used the model to perform a screening analysis of 28 remedial alternatives. The analysis results identified an innovative technology, in situ vitrification, with high effectiveness versus cost. Since this technology had not been used on this scale before, the major uncertainties were contaminant migration and pressure buildup. Pressure buildup was a safety concern due to the potential risks to worker safety. With the help of environmental technology experts remedial alternative changes were identified to mitigate the concerns about contaminant migration and pressure buildup. The analysis results showed that the probability of an event with a risk to worker safety had been significantly reduced. Based on these results, site decision makers have refocused their test program to examine in situ vitrification and have continued the use of the CERCLA-based decision analysis methodology to analyze remedial alternatives.     

The implications of adoption for donor offspring following donor-assisted conception

In this paper the authors, all experienced social workers with research and practice interests in assisted conception, review practices concerning access to genetic origins information in adoption, and consider to what extent these may be relevant for practice in donor‐assisted conception. The paper concludes with policy and practice recommendations that take account of the views of donor offspring and their desire for increased information about their genetic heritage.     

The Benefits of Educational Attainment for U.S. Adult Mortality: Are they Contingent on the Broader Environment?

The growing recognition that educational attainment is one of the strongest preventive factors for adult health and longevity has fueled an interest in educational attainment as a population health strategy. However, less attention has been given to identifying social, economic, and behavioral resources that may moderate the health and longevity benefits of education. We draw on theories of resource substitution and multiplication to examine the extent to which the education–mortality association is contingent on other resources (marriage, employment, income, healthy lifestyles). We use data on adults aged 30–84 in the 1997–2006 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality File and estimate discrete-time event history models stratified by gender (N = 146,558; deaths = 10,399). We find that the mortality benefits of education are generally largest for adults—especially women—who have other resources such as employment and marriage, supporting the theory of resource multiplication. Nonetheless, our results also imply that other resources can potentially attenuate the mortality disadvantages (advantages) associated with low (high) levels of education. The findings suggest that efforts to improve population health and longevity by raising education levels should be augmented with strategies that assure widespread access to social, economic, and behavioral resources.     

A macrodynamic analysis of changes in mortality indexes in the United States, 1946–75: Some preliminary results

This paper extends earlier research by Brenner and by Land and Felson on the specification and estimation of macrodynamic structural-equation models to explain changes in American mortality indexes as a function of exogenous changes in societal conditions (social, demographic, economic, and health care). After reviewing the record of annual changes in several general and cause — specific mortality indexes for the post-World War II United States, patterns of temporal covariation in the indexes are discussed and some tentative structural-equation models are described. Among other findings, these models indicate: (1) that changes in the age structure of the American population have substantial impacts on changes in mortality rates for diseases of the respiratory and circulatory systems as well as on deaths due to cirrhosis of the liver, accidents, and violence; (2) that the infective and parasitic diseases mortality rate is more closely related to per capita public health expenditures than to improvements in the general level of living in this post — war period; (3) that the business cycle, as indexed by the unemployment rate, has significant impacts on the cardiovascular, accident, and violence mortality rates; (4) that Brenner's finding of a positive association of an increase in the unemployment rate with an increase in cardiovascular diseases mortality two to three years later is partially mediated by an increase in per capita cigarette consumption during the economic recovery following a recession; (5) that an increase in the per capita level of cigarette consumption increases the respiratory systems mortality rate; (6) that both the general and the respiratory neoplasms mortality rates are more strongly affected by long-term moving averages of annual per capita levels of cigarette consumption than by single-years levels; (7) that the level of the degenerative diseases mortality rate is positively affected by an increase in per capita liquor consumption and negatively affected by an increase in health care utilization; (8) that the percentage of all vehicles traveling on highways at high speed is the exposure index most closely associated (of several that were studied) to the motor vehicle accident mortality rate; (9) that the levels of the maternal and infant mortality rates are positively related to an increase in the fertility rate (exposure) and negatively related to those advances in health care services associated with hospital births; (10) that the accuracy with which short-term changes in the crude mortality rate can be predicted from a knowledge of cause-specific mortality rates and how the latter are affected by societal conditions is effectively limited by the degree of accuracy of predictions of the respiratory diseases mortality rate because of its volatile influenza, pneumonia, and bronchitis component; and (11) that short-term changes in the life expectancy index can be somewhat more accurately predicted from such knowledge. Although most of these relationships have been noted before in mortality studies, only a small fraction have been studied in a macrodynamic structural-equation models context. These findings thus constitute a baseline of statistical evidence which can be explored in future research.