Homelessness in Europe and the United States: A Comparison of Prevalence and Public Opinion

Random samples of 250–435 adults were interviewed by telephone in five different nations ( N = 1,546): Belgium, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the United States. The interview included questions on respondent attitudes, knowledge, and opinions regarding homelessness; respondents' own personal experiences with homelessness and homeless people; and demographic characteristics of the respondents. The highest rates for lifetime literal homelessness were found in the UK (7.7%) and United States (6.2%), with the lowest rate in Germany (2.4%), and intermediate rates in Italy (4.0%) and Belgium (3.4%). Less compassionate attitudes toward the homeless were also found on many dimensions in the United States and the UK. Possible explanations of these findings, drawn from various theoretical perspectives, and policy implications are provided .     

Authorship and publication practices: evaluation of the effect of responsible conduct of research instruction to postdoctoral trainees

We have studied postdoctoral trainees funded by NIH F32 fellowship awards in order to test the effectiveness of responsible conduct of research (RCR) education in the areas of authorship and publication practices. We used a 3-wave telephone and on-line survey design, conducted over a period of two years, in order to test for individual change before and after completing RCR education. Overall the responses of the subjects suggested a clear awareness of standards and practices in publication. However, our results failed to suggest that RCR education in this group significantly increased the level of ethically appropriate behavioral responses measured in the study. Similarly we saw no significant effect on increasing awareness of or attention to ethical guidelines about authorship and publication practices. Our interpretation of these null findings was influenced by the significant publication experience of our cohort of subjects. We forward possible explanations for these null findings in this context. Most importantly, we do not suggest that our results argue against continued instruction in RCR education. Instead, we believe our data reinforce the importance of careful articulation of course goals and objectives with attention to the background and experience of the student audience when developing RCR curricula.     

The ADHD treasure hunt: a group intervention using a social model approach to disability

ABSTRACT

This article describes the ADHD Treasure Hunt - a groupwork model that integrates the spirit of a social model of disability into therapeutic practice with parents and children. Following a discussion on the discourse and controversy over the nature and treatment of ADHD in Western society, we evaluate our intervention in terms of its usefulness in addressing a family’s sense of helplessness and frustration in the face of social interactions. The model also focuses on helping the families recognize the value of their own experiential knowledge. We examine the contributions of the model to current practice as well as offer future directions for its development.     

A Preliminary Look at Listening Development across the Life-Span

This article addresses the issue of listening behavior from a life-span developmental perspective. While communication scholars have begun to assess the impact of life stages on human communication needs and abilities, little work in listening behavior has focused on the effects of aging. The authors of this exploratory study developed a self-report listening questionnaire and administered it to five cohorts of pre-adolescent children, adolescents, young adults, older adults, and elderly in various geographic regions. Different cohorts provided differential accounts and perceptions regarding listening behaviors in particular and respective issues associated with listening development in general.     

The value of conducting door-to-door surveys

This paper argues that door-to-door surveys are a valuable tool for collecting information about health and the environment in urban areas in a manner consistent with community-based participatory research principles. We describe in detail how a door-to-door survey on food shopping and physical activity was conducted with the primary food shopper in 514 households on 30 randomly selected blocks in West and Southwest Philadelphia over seven weeks during the summer of 2010. We identify the elements of our door-to-door protocol that had benefits for the quality of the data collected, flow of data collection, the perceived safety of interviewers and residents, and that informed subsequent phases of this multimethod four-year study of urban food and physical activity environments. We conclude that door-to-door surveys are appropriate and valuable in certain research contexts, when spending time in a community, conducting observations and building relationships are central to the goals and success of a study.     

Ethno-cultural diversity in the experience of widowhood in later life: Chinese widows in Canada

This paper utilizes Helena Znaniecka Lopata's concept of life frameworks as a lens through which to understand the experience of widowhood amongst elderly Chinese immigrant women living in Toronto, Canada. While Lopata defined life frameworks as including social supports, social relations and social roles, for these widows, personal resources (framed in Chinese cultural context) were also important aspects of life frameworks. In-depth interviews with 20 widows contacted through a Chinese community center were conducted in Mandarin and Cantonese and then transcribed and interpreted through team-based qualitative analyses. These women ranged in age from 69 to 93 years and had been in Canada an average of 17 years, with over half of them widowed following immigration. Our analysis framed the widows' narratives in terms of four types of supports defined by Lopata: social, service, financial and emotional supports. They had fairly extensive social and service supports focused primarily around family and the Chinese community. Although norms of filial piety traditionally dictate sons as primary supports, daughters predominated as providers of supports to these widows. Interpreted from a life course perspective, financial supports were deemed sufficient, despite overall limited financial means. Emotional support was more nuanced and complex for these widows. Loneliness and feelings of social isolation were prevalent. Nevertheless, themes of acceptance and satisfaction dominated our findings, as did reciprocity and exchange. The narrative accounts of these widows depict a complexity of experience rooted in their biographies as Chinese women and as immigrants, rather than primarily in widowhood itself.     

ON THE FAULT LINE: RACE,CLASS AND THE US PATRIOT MOVEMENT

This paper analyses the identity politics of the US Patriot Movement and how it addresses the anxieties its primary constituency–working-class whites–have with globalization. White workers find themselves straddling an identity fault under globalization. By virtue of their class, they suffer exploitation within a capitalist system. By virtue of their race, they find themselves the beneficiaries of racial privileges. To analyse how a patriot politic addresses this dual positionality, a poststructuralist identity theory is employed, focusing on a subset of this literature known as whiteness studies. It is argued that discourses of patriotism keep patriots from addressing the economic basis of many of their grievances while buttressing notions of cultural/racial superiority through ‘safe’ nationalistic coding. The Patriot Movement in Central Kentucky is examined as a case study–in particular, its deployment of a patriot politic around two issues: calls to legalize industrial hemp and efforts to stop the designation of a biosphere reserve in the state. This paper's conclusions are situated within a current debate in whiteness studies between those calling for the abolition of whiteness and those calling for its reconstruction. The paper contends that disidentification is not a viable option without alternative categories to replace it. The willingness of Kentucky patriots to galvanize around a patriot politics despite realizing goals through it indicates that working-class whites are anxious for political categories of action in the new global era. Given that working-class whites are mobilizing around categories that code their race-based anxieties, however, reconstruction paradigms must also consider the reconstruction of categories–such as ‘patriot’–that currently work to divide workers along racial lines.