Development of a Short-Form Scale of Public Attitudes Toward Homelessness

Nationwide, demographic changes have led to an increased awareness of the impact of cultural diversity on the delivery of medical and psychological care. Due to the over-representation of minority and socially stigmatized groups among those affected by HIV, understanding the effects of psychosocial, linguistic and cultural membership or treatment relationships is crucial. In the psychological treatment of HIV-infected patients, psychotherapists can enhance the lives of their patients and support their involvement and compliance with medical treatment planning Case studies are presented in which psychotherapy helped resolve difficulties in the medical care of three HIV-positive women that were due to cultural misunderstanding between doctors and patients.     

Gender,Parental Control,and Risk Preferences: Evidence from Japanese College Students

Power-control theory, in its original formulation, links patriarchal family structures to parental control, and then to gender differences in risk preference. In previous studies, most of which have been conducted in North America, direct tests of the links have shown that parental control is a key mediating variable explaining the relationship between gender and risk preferences for those raised in patriarchal families. With data from a sample of college students in Japan, the present study tests the hypothesis that the tendency for females to have a lower affinity for risks, globally defined, than males is attributable to different patterns of parental control imposed on daughters compared to sons. We have found that female students have a significantly lower penchant for risk than males, but that such a difference cannot be explained by gender differences in the intensity of instrumental kinds of parental controls, neither mothers' nor fathers' supervision and surveillance.     

Readjustment Issues of the Returned Vietnam Veteran

In this year 2000 A.D. many younger readers will not remember socialworkers. I was reminded of them recently when I met Emeritus Professor Sir Lawrence Brennan on a space bus in which he was returning from his work at Lunar University. Like me, he is now an historian, but half-way through the twentieth century he was a social worker in Australia, a fact he confided with an intriguing mixture of pride and embarrassment.     

An overview,Editor's Note

Abstract

Current relational theory is very consonant with traditional social work perspectives, particularly the importance of relationships and of the environment. Further, it is now possible theoretically to describe the manner in which human interactions and the environment are fundamental to identity using the concept of identity complexity. This article examines these ideas, showing the roots of the current developments in cognitive and constructionist theory as well as in psychoanalytic ideas.     

Race and Ethnic Self-Identification Influences on Physical and Mental Health Statuses Among Blacks

We examine if commonly used distress measures, rates of psychiatric disorders, and chronic health conditions are affected by alternate measures of race-ethnicity for African Americans and Caribbean blacks. We examined two alternative self-identification measures to investigate if their influence might differ. A study on national household probability sample of non-institutionalized African Americans (n = 3,570) and blacks from Caribbean countries, who now live in the United States (n = 1,621), was conducted between February 2001 and June 2003, using a slightly modified version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. The method used to measure black race and ethnicity has influence on physical and mental health outcomes. The distributions of depressive symptoms are not affected, while the distributions of DSM IV disorders and chronic health conditions vary by race and ethnic self-identifications among the African American and Caribbean black populations. There are serious implications of using alternate measures of race-ethnicity on the distribution of physical and mental health morbidity among African Americans and Caribbean blacks. The conceptualization and assessment of race-ethnicity should be carefully considered when studying mental and physical health statuses and service needs in the American black population.     

Workers' Compensation and Family and Medical Leave Act Claim Contagion

At $60 billion per year, the workers' compensation system has come under increased scrutiny as firms, insurers, and researchers study the dynamics of claim filing. The Family and Medical Leave Act also covers most workers, and there has been very little research concerning the effects of FMLA legislation on employment. One hitherto neglected research area in both workers' compensation and FMLA is claim contagion. That is, as a claim is filed within a workgroup, does this increase the likelihood that others within the same workgroup will also file claims? We find the answer to be yes. We also find that this contagion effect is subject to diminishing returns to scale, however, in the sense that the claims probability increases at a decreasing rate as fellow employees' claims frequency increases. We argue that this is consistent with a model in which workers learn about filing a workers' compensation or FMLA claim from other workers.