Older Women and Cosmetic Tattooing Experiences

Aging for the older women in the 21st century is more than medical issues. In this study, 62 women (ages 51–81+) obtained a total of 97 permanent makeup procedures. Procurement cues included self-improvement and friend's appearance, consistent with internal, external, and appearance perspectives of body image. Poor eyesight was also of concern (14/23%). Actual benefits included saving makeup time and money (external), while achieving personal goals (internal). This study seems to confirm that for these older women, body image remains important, especially qualities of the face. They did not shed their internal, external, nor appearance concerns associated with body image, as they aged.     

A Child Sexual Abuse Research Project: A Brief Endnote

There is a dearth of research on sexual abuse perpetrated by educators. Although the problem is receiving increasing attention, little emphasis has been placed on abuse directed at younger schoolchildren and on offenders’ accounts of this form of abuse. Here, we attempt to address this gap in knowledge by exploring the narratives of five convicted, imprisoned male child sexual abusers, each of whom worked with children in educational settings in the United Kingdom. We draw on four themes that emerged from detailed interviews with offenders, namely: the power of reputation, authority and control, the “front of invulnerability,” and disclosure of abuse. We conclude by considering the implications of our work for policy and practice.     

Participation and partnerships in research: Listening to the ideas and experiences of a parent-carer

This paper discusses the aims and compromises that ensued in the design of a project investigating the obstacles faced by migrants in professional occupations when they move between countries in the European Union. A qualitative approach was selected because of the virtual absence of statistical and empirical data on the mobility and barriers to skilled/qualified migrants in the EU, in specific professions. Central to the research design was a series of guided interviews with regulatory bodies, employers' representatives and native workers, and 60 semi-structured interviews with women migrants.     

EXPOSURE TO MARITAL AND FAMILY THERAPY IN MEDICAL SCHOOL: A STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Most marital and family therapists, both medically and nonmedically trained, regularly interact with physicians on a professional basis. Though some physicians receive specific training in marital and family therapy in their postgraduate residency programs, (notably those in psychiatry and family medicine), for many, the only academic exposure they receive to this field comes during a 6- to 10-week clinical clerkship in psychiatry during their third or fourth year of medical school. No study could be located which examined marital and family therapy training in undergraduate medical education. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the level of marital and family therapy training in medical school and to provide information concerning physicians who are not family therapists, and how much knowledge about the field they can be expected to have.     

Theoretical biases in judging eye movements

The effects of theoretical expectations upon judgments of direction of eye movement were examined. The results indicated that theoretically trained judges were less accurate than untrained judges when their theoretical expectations were violated. Theoretically induced observer bias does not appear to require highly inferential judgments as a condition for occurrence.     

RETHINKING THE POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVE: Excavating the Kantian System to Rebuild Social Theory

The postmodernism debate in the social sciences has been misunderstood as primarily an epistemological problem concerning method. The evolution of the postmodernism debate into the science wars has raised the same issues Critics blame postmodernism and science studies for epistemological relativism and hostility toward science, while supporters attempt to use postmodernism as a part of a project to replace positivism with interpretive methods. Both critics and supporters of postmodernism miss the most important aspect of the postmodern perspective: the attempt to break out of epistemology and the Kantian conceptual framework. Critics of postmodernism and science studies also mistakenly argue that postmodernism is the sole creation of the humanities. Many of the key concepts of the postmodern perspective, however, were developed through reflections on novel developments in the natural sciences. Because critics and supporters of postmodernism in the social sciences remain within a Kantian conceptual framework, the postmodern break from epistemology has been overlooked. A close reading of reflexive texts on the natural sciences rules out any claim that the post-modern perspective is simply a relativistic methodology that dislikes science. The pages below focus on key texts by Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour as an attempt to re-orient the postmodernism debate in the social sciences. A reexamination of these texts reveals how the postmodernism debate in the social sciences has mistakenly understood postmodernism as a problem of method and epistemology. Science studies represents the maturation of the postmodern perspective by building a non-epistemologically oriented social theory. The possibility of rebuilding social theory after the dismantling of epistemology is the unique halimark of science studies, the most recent development of the postmodern perspective.     

Book Review: Zhao LiQing and Carolyn Iyoya Irving (eds.), The Non-Profit Sector and Development,Hong Kong Press for Social Sciences,Hong Kong, 2001, 368 pp.

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Poverty Diagnostics Using Poor Data: Strengthening the Evidence Base for Pro-Poor Policy Making in Lesotho

Increasingly national statistical agencies are being called upon to provide high quality data on a regular basis, to be used by governments for evidence-based policy development. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) give impetus to this, and bring a prerequisite for comprehensive “poverty diagnosis”. Often the data that are required are not available, or are incomplete while the concepts that are to be used may be ambiguous or require adaptation to local conditions. The poverty analysis of Lesotho in this article represents a contribution towards the emerging culture of evidence-based policy-making in developing countries in that it explores changes in key poverty-related social indicators. Techniques for dealing with poor data are discussed and an approach to developing a poverty threshold adapted to the local conditions of Lesotho is described.