Personal Versus Collective Quality of Life And South Africans' Evaluations of Democratic Government

In this paper, we examine the political consequences of quality of life, focusing on the link between perceived well-being and people's support for democratic government. We make two key distinctions. First of all, with regard to quality of life, we distinguish between assessments of personal, or household, quality of life, and assessments of collective (national, community) quality of life. Secondly, we follow David Easton in distinguishing between specific support (attitudes about specific leaders, parties and policies) and diffuse support (attitudes toward the political system in general). We find that personal quality of life is only weakly and inconsistently connected to specific or diffuse support. Perceptions of collective quality of life, however, are strongly related to both specific and diffuse support. Thus, South Africans are holding their government accountable to their perceptions of national well-being. Of greater concern, however, is that they also appear to be holding the democratic system accountable to such developments. Teaching people to distinguish between their evaluations of a specific government and their evaluations of the larger system of democratic government appears to be a key challenge confronting the development of a democratic political culture in South Africa.     

Bangladeshi families living in hardship: findings from research using a life-history approach

Whilst there are many commonalities in the experience of living in hardship, there are also many ways in which the experience of poverty varies. This paper draws on findings from life-history interviews about parenting and children's well-being which were undertaken with 70 low-income households including nine Bangladeshi families living in London. The paper explores the ways in which the experience of Bangladeshi families was similar to and different from the sample as a whole, discusses the intersection of culture, class, gender and ethnicity in the experience of living in poverty and how this impacted on parents' ability to access support. The findings show the many and complex ways poverty impacts on families' lives and suggest that many of the barriers for Bangladeshi families' to accessing services that have previously been identified still exist. The findings highlight the importance of social workers having the space to reflect on and develop their own practice in order to avoid oversimplistic assumptions about the experiences of Bangladeshi families and the need for home-visiting services so practitioners can develop relationships and build the confidence of the most socially excluded parents.     

Through the Ages: Developing Relationships Between the Young and the Old

This article evaluates a program between students at a primary school and aged care residents. The aim of the program was to increase respect and appreciation between the groups. Visiting programs between children and the elderly are well documented, and assumes that the contact will benefit both groups. However the research is contradictory. To ensure that this program was achieving its goals, pre-post test data using the Children’s Perceptions of Aging and Elderly test was collected. Significant improvements in attitude were seen in two items. Overall, there was an improvement in attitude in 12 of the 18 instrument items.     

Conceptualizing Childbearing Ambivalence: A Social and Dynamic Perspective

Childbearing ambivalence is often conceptualized as a state of conflicting desires about having a child that is characteristic of particular individuals or life stages. This study proposes that childbearing ambivalence is dynamic and situational, resulting from the multiple sociocultural frames surrounding childbearing. Using eight waves of prospective data from a population‐based sample of young adults in Malawi, results show that 41% of women and 48% of men are ambivalent about childbearing at some point in the 2.5‐year study. There is limited evidence that ambivalence is related to individual sociodemographic or psychosocial characteristics aside from gender; rather, ambivalence is tied to life course markers such as school enrollment and age. In addition, life course transitions and changes in relationships, health, and economic factors are associated with the onset of ambivalence, supporting the theory that ambivalence is a dynamic state that men and women frequently pass through as their lives and circumstances change.     

Beginnings and endings; Is there a way out of psychiatric services?

An historical and conceptual overview of psychiatric rehabilitation services is presented as a challenge to the appropriateness of traditional community based psychiatric services which isolate people from the community. The position is taken that the goal of psychiatric rehabilitation services should be to link people to normal community services and support systems. The problems which can arise from treating people in a separate psychiatric system are illustrated by tracing the development of a supported employment program through periods of high employment and high unemployment.     

Knowledge,Attitudes, and Informational Behaviors of College Students in Regard to the Human Papillomavirus

Abstract

Objective: To assess students’ human papillomavirus (HPV) knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Participants/ Methods: Students (N = 1,282) at a large, public university in the Northeast United States completed a questionnaire during February 2008 assessing HPV knowledge, prevalence, transmission, cervical cancer risk and stigma; sexual behavior, vaccination status, as well as past and preferred sources of information about HPV and sexual health. Results: A majority of respondents know of HPV. However, understanding was insufficient in several important areas. Overwhelmingly, respondents heard about HPV via television commercials yet preferred to obtain sexual health information from physicians. Hearing about HPV on a TV commercial was associated with increased knowledge. More knowledge of HPV was associated with less stigma. Men exhibit a higher level of stigma and less knowledge than women. Conclusions: Publicly funded health campaigns aimed at increasing knowledge about HPV are overdue and necessary. This is especially true for efforts targeting young adults about this extremely common sexually transmitted infection (STI).     

Feasibility of a Telephone Follow-Up on Use of Emergency Contraceptive Pills in a College Health Center

Abstract

The authors examined the feasibility and effectiveness of a telephone follow-up procedure on use of emergency contraceptive pills (ECP) at a college health center. They made 264 telephone calls to the 97 women who had received ECPs during one 16-week academic semester and were successful in reaching 65 (67%) of the women, who responded with information about their experiences with ECPs. The women demonstrated a high rate of adherence to the medical regimen and reported very few side effects from ECPs; a majority said that ECPs did not affect their ability to carry out daily activities. On weighing the relative absence of problems following ECP distribution against the time, effort, and cost required to reach just over two thirds of the women, the researchers concluded that an ECP telephone follow-up procedure was neither cost-effective nor particularly useful.     

Ethnic jokes and social change: The case of the Welsh

Ethnic minorities and immigrants in most societies tend to become the subject of jokes told by the dominant majority. The Welsh, England's nearest neighbouring people, an aboriginal remnant of the autochthonous inhabitants of Britain have been the subject of English jokes for well over 400 years. When under the Tudors, a dynasty with a Welsh name and a tinge of Welsh descent, Wales was merged with England both legally and politically by the Act of Union of 1536, the Welsh became England's oldest and most prominent ethnic minority and significant numbers of them migrated from their peripheral homeland to the more central areas of England.’ At this point jokes about the Welsh began to proliferate¹ based on a well‐defined comic stereotype, though one that was to change significantly over time. This article traces the history and assesses the character of these jokes     

Comparative Study of Predictive Computational Models for Nanoparticle‐Induced Cytotoxicity

With the increasing use of nanomaterials incorporated into consumer products, there is a need for developing approaches to establish “quantitative structure‐activity relationships” (QSARs). These relationships could be used to predict various biological responses after exposure to nanomaterials for the purposes of risk analysis. This risk analysis is applicable to manufacturers of nanomaterials in an effort to determine potential hazards. Because metal oxide materials are some of the most widely applicable and studied nanoparticle types for incorporation into cosmetics, food packaging, and paints and coatings, we focused on comparing different approaches for establishing QSARs for this class of materials. Metal oxide nanoparticles are believed, by some, to cause alterations in cellular function due to their size and/or surface area. Others have said that these nanomaterials, because of the oxidized state of the metal, do not induce stress in biological tests systems. This controversy highlights the need to systematically develop structure‐activity relationships (i.e., the relationship between physicochemical features to the cellular responses) and tools for predicting potential biological effects after a metal oxide nanomaterial exposure. Here, we attempt to identify a set of properties of two specific metal oxide nanomaterials—TiO₂ and ZnO—that could be used to characterize and predict the induced cellular membrane damage of immortalized human lung epithelial cells. We adopt a mathematical modeling approach that uses the engineered nanomaterial size characterized as a dry nanopowder and the nanomaterial behavior in ultrapure water, phosphate buffer, and cell culture media to predict nanomaterial‐induced cellular membrane damage (via lactate dehydrogenase release). Results of these studies provide insights on how engineered nanomaterial features influence cellular responses and thereby outline possible approaches for developing and applying predictive computational models for biological responses caused by exposure to nanomaterials.