A pilot study combining Go4Life® materials with an interactive voice response system to promote physical activity in older women

ABSTRACT

Telephone-based interactive voice response (IVR) systems could be an effective tool for promotion of physical activity among older women. To test IVR feasibility, we enrolled 30 older women in a 10-week physical activity intervention designed around National Institute on Aging (NIA) Go4Life® educational materials with IVR coaching. Participants (mean age = 76 years) significantly increased physical activity by a mean 79 ± 116 (SD) minutes/week (p < .001). Participants reported that the Go4Life® materials, pedometer, and IVR coaching (70% reported easy technology) were useful tools for change. This pilot study demonstrates IVR acceptability as an evidence-based physical activity program for older women.     

A Gap in the Market

In an era of increasing globalization, women continue to be underrepresented and stereotyped in national, international and global news media. The problem is exacerbated when traditional geographic boundaries are crossed and the media in one country report on issues and events, particularly those that impact women, in another country. The question addressed in this article is how news organizations can best represent women and our diverse lives within this new global context. In an effort to bridge the local-global dichotomy, this article aims to make connections between macro-level theories of cultural globalization and micro-level theories of feminism. Three scenarios of cultural globalization, as proposed by Pieterse (2004), are extended to show their relationship with journalism, feminism, and story stances. The article shows how the clash of civilizations scenario relates to nationalistic news practices, patriarchal representations, and story stances that only include the voices of the dominant group. Similarly, it shows how the scenario of cultural homogenization relates to cultural imperialism, “global feminism,” and a story stance that homogenizes women's lives. Finally, it shows the relationships among cultural hybridization, glocalized journalism, transnational feminisms, and story stances that give voice to underrepresented groups.     

Living in Freedom and Hope: Editors' Introduction

Have radical discourses about children's sexual liberation/empowerment become normative technologies of neoliberal governmentality? How do we see sexualised representations of girls and what does the sexualised child look like? A contemporary consensus between media narratives and radical cultural critiques about the dangerous intolerance of child sexual abuse (CSA) moral panics suggests that the CSA moral panic discourse is caught up in the neoliberal “regulation of intolerance” (Brown 2006) through the governance of the gaze. Focusing on the 2008 Australian media event that erupted over Bill Henson's “art” photographs of naked girls, this article analyses how a perception that the images sexualised children was governed by experts as a reactionary and perverse CSA moral panic gaze. I argue that this form of governance depends on the exclusion of the political gaze of the survivor, a gaze that has been vital to a feminist critique of hetero-normative paedophilia. Re-claiming an affective feminist gaze involves thinking beyond the upwardly mobile discourse of CSA moral panic and through the occluded question of the sexual politics of paedophilia.     

Rejection Reactivity,Executive Function Skills,and Social Adjustment Problems of Inattentive and Hyperactive Kindergarteners

This study examined emotional reactivity to rejection and executive function (EF) skills as potential mediators of the social behavior problems of inattentive and hyperactive kindergarteners. Participants included 171 children, including 107 with clinical levels of ADHD symptoms, 23 with sub‐clinical levels of ADHD symptoms, and 41 typically developing children (63 percent male; 73 percent Caucasian, 11 percent African‐American, 4 percent Latino/Hispanic, 1 percent Asian, and 11 percent multiracial; M_age = 5.2 years). Inattention (but not hyperactivity) was uniquely associated with poor EF, social withdrawal, and aggression. In structural equation models, EF skills mediated the associations between inattention and both aggression and social withdrawal. Hyperactivity (but not inattention) was uniquely associated with rejection reactivity and each contributed uniquely to aggression. Findings suggest that difficulties with emotion regulation may warrant more attention in early interventions planned for children with high levels of ADHD symptoms.     

Supporting Adolescent Daughters as They Come of Age: Latina Mothers’ Reflections and Recommendations

The current project describes themes emerging from a set of focus groups with 20 Latina mothers (aged 25 to over 45) who reflected on the transition to adulthood for their daughters. As community stakeholders residing in a large city in the Southern USA, these mothers shared their perspectives and advice on supporting adolescent girls during the transition to adulthood. Qualitative coding revealed four key aspects of the transition that were important to these mothers: ethnic identity, involvement of others, communication with daughters, and individual personality characteristics. We discuss their reflections with regard to the development of more culturally relevant programs for Latina girls coming of age within the USA context.     

Do Job Control,Support, and Optimism Help Job Insecure Employees? A Three-Wave Study of Buffering Effects on Job Satisfaction,Vigor and Work-Family Enrichment

Job insecurity (threat of job loss) is widespread and becomes a permanent phenomenon for a lot of employees. Based on the response of 926 Finnish employees, this study investigated the direct lagged relationship between job insecurity, coping resources (job control, social support, and optimism), and employees’ work- (vigor at work and job satisfaction) and family-related outcomes (work-family enrichment). Particular interest was in the moderating role of job control, support, and optimism in the job insecurity–employee outcome relationship. Our analyses of three-wave longitudinal data, collected in 2008, 2009, and 2010, showed that job control was the strongest lagged buffer against job insecurity in relation to vigor at work. In addition, social support longitudinally buffered against the negative effects of job insecurity on job satisfaction and vigor at work. However, optimism did not function as a buffering factor in any of the tested models.     

Tibetan Fertility Transitions in China and South Asia

The own‐children method, an indirect technique, is used to estimate fertility rates for two populations of Tibetans during the 1980s and 1990s: a sample of rural villages in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and exiles living in India and Nepal. The analysis provides evidence that these two populations underwent remarkably similar fertility transitions in both timing and magnitude. In both cases total fertility rates declined from over six births per woman to below the level of replacement in a span of 15 years. The parallel nature of these fertility transitions is intriguing given that, although the populations share a common ethnic identity, they have lived under sharply differing political, economic, and social conditions since the 1960s.     

The structural context of social indicator differentials in Japanese prefectures 1965–75

This comparative analysis of the 45 Japanese prefectures shows that a set of 14 standard social indicators can be reduced, using factor analysis, to two principal factors: affluence and social pathology. Another factor analysis, this time conceptually guided, generated five indices of structural context, urban differentiation, cultural heritage, agricultural development, progressive industrialization, and Communist vote. As hypothesized, these five structural variables predict both social affluence and social pathology, but theoretical considerations required that the components of the social pathology factor be examined individually. Suicide rates were also examined separately, and although the structural dimensions show some capacity to account for the rates, the findings prompt an elaboration of the theory that brings it more closely in line with its Durkheimian antecedents.