Sexual Risk‐Taking Among Recently Emancipated Female Foster Youth: Sexual Trauma and Failed Family Reunification Experiences

Foster youth evidence shows elevated rates of risk behaviors, including sexual risk‐taking (e.g., unprotected sex). Some studies have identified child maltreatment, particularly sexual abuse, as a risk for later sexual risk‐taking, but none have examined how child welfare placement experiences relate to youth's sexual risk‐taking. This study investigated relations among child maltreatment, child welfare placements, and sexual risk‐taking among 114 recently emancipated female foster youth. Sexual abuse and failed reunifications with parents were associated with greater sexual risk‐taking. Moreover, dissociative symptoms exacerbated the relation between sexual abuse and sexual risk‐taking. These findings highlight the need for greater consideration of risks associated with emancipated youth's sexual risk‐taking and for more research to understand how youth experience unsuccessful family reunifications.     

A systematic approach to smoking cessation activities in Danish shelters

Introduction: Shelter users have an alarmingly high smoking prevalence; our aim was to develop systematic smoking cessation activities in the shelters. Method: All available (n?=?13) shelters in Copenhagen were included. This Participatory Action Research had a development/test period and an implementation period for the revised intervention. Shelter-staff completed a questionnaire at baseline. Municipal smoking cessation counselors were trained to work with shelter users. Three types of on-site smoking cessation activities were developed and offered. Results: The estimated mean smoking prevalence in shelter users was 79%. Only two shelters ran smoking cessation activities prior to study start. All but one of the shelters implemented group-based intervention activities and approximately 13% of smokers signed-up; 26.6% of those who attended the first session were abstinent after approximately 12 weeks, as confirmed by staff. Conclusion: Smoking cessation activities in shelters are wanted by staff and shelter users, they are feasible and even very vulnerable persons are able to quit. Based on our experiences in Copenhagen shelters, we propose a systematic approach for future smoking cessation initiatives: smoking activities should be driven by the municipality, be pro-active, on-site, tailored and flexible, in addition, free nicotine therapy should be offered and trained smoking cessation counselors should be available.     

Cost-inclusive evaluation: a banquet of approaches for including costs, benefits, and cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses in your next evaluation

An introduction to the special issue on cost-inclusive evaluation, providing a brief history of the use of costs, benefits, cost-effectiveness, and cost-benefit analyses in the evaluation of human services. Two tables present brief glossaries of terms and analyses common in cost-inclusive program evaluation.     

Gender,Management and Market Discourse: The Case of Gender Quotas in the Swedish and Finnish Media

In this article we present a comparative study of media texts in Sweden and Finland, two societies traditionally viewed as Nordic welfare states. Focusing on the controversial question of introducing gender‐based quotas on the boards of companies, we analyse how representations of gender and management are affected in Sweden and Finland by contemporary market discourse. We argue that market discourse takes different forms in the two societal contexts and that the space for questioning and criticizing it from a gender equality perspective remains different. Our analysis thus complements recent contributions stressing that both societal particularities and transnational processes must be considered in studies of gender and management ( Calás and Smircich, 2006 ).     

Augmented informality: South Africa's backyard dwellings as a by-product of formal housing policies

Insufficient and inadequate housing for the urban poor has a long history in South Africa, as in other African cities. Nearly one-fifth of urban households in South Africa reside in an informal dwelling. While most live in informal settlements, significant proportions have erected informal structures (essentially ‘shacks’) in the backyard of another property, a distinctly South African phenomenon. Backyard dwellings have historically been overlooked by housing policies that focus on upgrading and/or eradicating informal settlements. Previously, backyard dwellers were perceived as marginalised, living in appalling conditions and exploited by cavalier landlords. However, the post-apartheid provision of state-funded housing for the poor has altered the nature of backyard housing, creating a new class of cash-poor homeowners who are dependent on income from backyard dwellers' rent, thus ensuring a more equitable power pendulum between landlord and tenant. This paper uses research conducted in a low-income state-subsidised housing settlement in Cape Town to explore the new dimensions of informal backyard housing, both for landlords and tenants, as a consequence of South Africa's formal housing policies.     

“Basically it's the Usual Whole Teen Girl Thing”: Stage‐of‐Life Categories on a Children and Young People's Helpline

This article explores the practices of membership categorization in the interactions of clients and counselors on a national Australian helpline (Kids Helpline [KHL]) for children and young persons. Our focus is on membership categories drawn from three membership category devices (MCDs): stage‐of‐life (SOL), age, and family. Analysis draws on data across different contact modalities—email and web‐counseling sessions—to examine how category‐generated features are relevantly occasioned, attended to, and managed by the parties in the course of interaction. This shows clients' use of MCDs in presenting their trouble and building a relevant case for their grievance. By examining counselors' subsequent receipts of the clients' complaints, we are able to trace some of the cultural knowledge that the clients' categorizations make relevant to the counselors. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates how the inherent flexibility of MCDs allows counselors to exploit these same categorial resources and to re‐specify the clients' trouble in a more positive fashion to accomplish counseling work. In explicating how taken‐for‐granted notions of the lifespan as well as of family relations are mobilized by participants in KHL's sessions, the findings contribute to previous studies of social interaction in counseling, and to research on social identity and categorization more broadly.     

教学管理新思维:信息化管理,而非管理信息化

文章通过分析信息化管理和管理信息化的差异,提出“信息化管理”的教学管理新思维,并介绍可以支撑信息化管理模式的“心块联动”操作模型和统一数据库的软件管理系统。     

Educational Support for Orphaned Children: What Can We Learn from the African Extended Family Structure?

This paper challenges the view that, in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the African extended family is no longer able to care for and support orphaned children. The paper is based on a qualitative case study conducted in a South African urban area on the lived experiences of orphaned children aged 9–14. Data were collected from the children, their teachers as well as their main caregivers. The study found that, despite the poverty facing the extended family, emotional support, family cohesion and support for learning can serve to meet the educational needs of orphaned children.     

Midwestern Women’s Farm Business Roles and Farm Business Financial Satisfaction: An Exploratory Study

The roles of women have been and remain central to the functioning of the family farm business. However, a gap in recent literature on farm women, in general, exists and research is limited regarding women’s farm business roles and their satisfaction with their farm business financial situation. The purpose of this study was to explore factors that impact farm women’s perceptions of farm business financial satisfaction. Results indicated that the importance of financial solvency and satisfaction with one’s farm role were positively associated with women’s farm business financial satisfaction. Holding a primary decision-making role was negatively associated with farm business financial satisfaction. Implications for educators, professionals who work with farm women, and researchers are discussed.     

Understanding and Reducing Inconsistency in Seatbelt‐Use Decisions: Findings from a Cardinal Decision Issue Perspective

This article has two aims. The first is to present results that partly explain why some automobile drivers choose to use their seatbelts only part time, thereby exposing themselves to unnecessary risk. The second is to offer and illustrate the “cardinal decision issue perspective”⁽¹⁾ as a tool for guiding research and development efforts that focus on complex real‐life decision behaviors that can entail wide varieties of risk, including but not limited to inconsistent seatbelt use. Each of 24 young male participants drove an instrumented vehicle equipped to record continuously seatbelt use as well as other driving data. After all trips were finished, each participant completed an interview designed to reconstruct how he made randomly selected seatbelt‐use decisions under specified conditions. The interview also examined whether and how drivers established “decision policies” regarding seatbelt use. Such policies were good predictors of inconsistent seatbelt use. Drivers who had previously adopted policies calling for consistent seatbelt use were significantly more likely than others to actually drive belted. Meta‐decisions about seatbelt policy adoption appeared to rest on factors such as whether the driver had ever been asked to consider selecting a policy. Whether a driver made an ad hoc, on‐the‐spot seatbelt‐use decision was associated with a perceived need to make such a decision. Finally, participants with full‐time policies were especially likely to deploy their seatbelts by default, without recognizing the need to decide about belt use on a trip‐by‐trip basis. We end with recommendations for reducing inconsistencies in seatbelt use in actual practice.