Teaching Note—BSW Students’ Experiences With an MBSR Assignment and the Five Facets of Mindfulness

BSW students appear to be under increasing levels of stress. In response to concerns about students’ well-being, we developed a three-credit-hour self-care elective. This article explores students’ participation in the primary assignment of the course, a modified version of mindfulness-based stress reduction. We also present empirical findings of an exploratory study examining students’ mindfulness and their subjective experiences with the assignment. Results support the usefulness of mindfulness-based stress reduction assignments in supporting BSW students’ well-being. This kind of assignment may also contribute to the development of the first social work competency, “demonstrate ethical and professional behavior,” (Council on Social Work Education, 2015, p. 7) through an increase in self-reflective and self-regulation skills.     

Infant Mortality Rate as a Measure of a Country’s Health: A Robust Method to Improve Reliability and Comparability

Researchers and policymakers often rely on the infant mortality rate as an indicator of a country’s health. Despite arguments about its relevance, uniform measurement of infant mortality is necessary to guarantee its use as a valid measure of population health. Using important socioeconomic indicators, we develop a novel method to adjust country-specific reported infant mortality figures. We conclude that an augmented measure of mortality that includes both infant and late fetal deaths should be considered when assessing levels of social welfare in a country. In addition, mortality statistics that exhibit a substantially high ratio of late fetal to early neonatal deaths should be more closely scrutinized.     

Changing a Leopard's Spots: A New Research Direction for Organizational Culture in the Operations Management Field

Operations Management (OM) research on organizational culture has to change to be able to inform practice. Currently, organizational culture research in OM is largely confined to narrow topical and methodological niches and culture is most frequently used as an explanatory variable in quantitative, survey‐based research. We argue that the relegation of culture to this niche is due to self‐imposed methodological blinders that hobble the OM field. We then present four research imperatives to reinvigorate organizational culture research within our field. We urge OM scholars to view culture as a dynamic concept that can be influenced, to adopt alternative methods, to use non‐traditional data sources, and to rethink assumptions about dependent variables. We also identify gaps in the current knowledge and new research questions for the OM domain. We conclude that the field of OM could greatly expand its understanding of organizational culture and in so doing greatly improve business practice, but that to do so will require a change in the culture of the operations management research community.     

Healing from childhood sexual abuse: a theoretical model

Childhood sexual abuse is a prevalent social and health care problem. The processes by which individuals heal from childhood sexual abuse are not clearly understood. The purpose of this study was to develop a theoretical model to describe how adults heal from childhood sexual abuse. Community recruitment for an ongoing broader project on sexual violence throughout the lifespan, referred to as the Sexual Violence Study, yielded a subsample of 48 women and 47 men who had experienced childhood sexual abuse. During semistructured, open-ended interviews, they were asked to describe their experiences with healing from childhood sexual abuse and other victimization throughout their lives. Constructivist grounded theory methods were used with these data to develop constructs and hypotheses about healing. For the Sexual Violence Study, frameworks were developed to describe the participants' life patterns, parenting experiences, disclosures about sexual violence, spirituality, and altruism. Several analytic techniques were used to synthesize the findings of these frameworks to develop an overarching theoretical model that describes healing from childhood sexual abuse. The model includes four stages of healing, five domains of functioning, and six enabling factors that facilitate movement from one stage to the next. The findings indicate that healing is a complex and dynamic trajectory. The model can be used to alert clinicians to a variety of processes and enabling factors that facilitate healing in several domains and to guide discussions on important issues related to healing from childhood sexual abuse.     

Variations in the gender composition of immigrant populations: how they matter

This paper estimates and interprets empirical shifts in the gender composition of immigrants to add to scholarship about the gendering of international migrations over time. We map shifts in gender ratios using micro-level data that permit us to create age-standardized estimates among adult foreign born stock living in the United States since 1850 and in 26 other nations worldwide since 1960. We examine regional and national variations in these shifts, and ask whether and how the gendered composition of foreigners from diverse origins in the United States – the nation that has received the largest populations of migrants for over a century – differs from other nations that receive large numbers of immigrants. We also examine recent variations in gender ratios among immigrants living in six regional destination countries. Results show substantial variation in the gender composition of foreign-born populations, and they offer a starting point for examining causes and consequences in future research.     

Regional Variations in the Realignment of American Politics, 1944–2004*

Objective. Perennial questions in electoral studies are what constitutes realignment, and when and where do realignments occur? Using the concepts of critical and secular realignments as a framework, we model change in the end product of realignment, election outcomes. We test for secular and critical changes in partisan strength across six geographic regions of the United States, focusing on office‐holding data at both the federal and state legislative level. Methods. Using an interrupted time‐series model, we examine evidence for secular realignment and posit five critical interventions that have affected American politics since World War II. Results. Our findings suggest that there are elements of both critical and secular realignments at work with different patterns in each region, and that different regions have been affected by a variety of elections associated with critical events since 1944. Conclusions. The collapse of Republican hegemony in the Northeast and Pacific West has gone largely unnoticed, buried in the intense examination of the growth of the Republican Party in the American South. The 1994 election is the most prominent in terms of its impact on seat holding by the parties at both the state and national level, and constitutes a realigning election.     

Forging ahead: Linking health and behavior to improve quality of life in older people

This chapter will focus on conceptual and methodological issues related to health promotion/disability prevention for older people. The first section will begin with a discussion of why older people, as compared to younger persons, are not traditionally seen as targets of health promotion efforts. In recent years several national working groups have been established to examine how older people's health and functioning can be improved. Their objectives and recommendations for older Americans will be reviewed. The second section will address the conceptual framework underlying health and behavior research supported by the National Institute on Aging. The movement from correlational studies to studies of basic mechanisms linking health and behaviour will be discussed, with particular attention to interactions with aging processes. Examples of health and behavior research representing these processes will be presented as well as methodological issues in the measurement of health and functional outcomes for older people. Measurement of quality of life in the cognitively impaired is seen as especially difficult. The third section will review several common themes emanating from these research studies. These include attention to a life course perspective, variability in aging processes, alternative research approaches, and intervention strategies for both initiating and maintaining recommended behavioral changes. A fourth section will review current areas of investigation at the National Institute of Aging. Successful intervention strategies in both community and institutional settings will to presented. These include: (1) a comprehensive behavioral and environmental falls prevention program which has been shown to reduce falls in the community; (2) a health education program to increase older women's use of cancer-related health practices; and (3) behavioral strategies for reducing incontinence in nursing homes. A new NIA initiative on special care units for persons with dementia will also be discussed. The fifth and final section will deal with issues involved in the translation of research into policy and practice. Approaches for increasing the relevance of research to policymakers will be discussed.     

The Effects of Gender on Charge Reduction

Studies of criminal justice processing of adults commonly report that females are accorded more lenient treatment than are males. These results have given rise to theories that chivalry and male paternalism cause gender discrimination. This study examines the relationship between gender and charge reduction in the criminal justice process. Analyses focus on (1) the extent to which gender affects charge reduction independent of other social and legal variables, and (2) whether gender operates indirectly through variables that are correlated with it. The data are drawn from one judicial district in Florida using information from presentence reports. Using a variety of measures, we find no evidence that there is differential treatment by gender in charge reduction considerations.