Bunk Bed Injuries in College Students

Abstract

We surveyed 1,431 college seniors to investigate the frequency and severity of injury after falls from bed. This data was analyzed along with data obtained from both the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the armed forces. We found that falls from bed are common in young adults and that injuries are more likely to occur with falls from bunk or loft beds than from standard beds (p = 0.025). Falls were most common when students were climbing out of bed or were startled awake. Alcohol use was implicated in 36% of the falls. We recommend that the heights of nonstandard beds for students be lowered, that alarms and phones be placed within easy reach, and that sturdy, fixed devices be used to descend. Intoxicated individuals should be placed on standard beds or lower.     

Variables Affecting Readiness to Benefit From Career Interventions

This article identifies and briefly describes the broad range of variables that may influence clients’ readiness to benefit from career interventions. The article also discusses consequences of low readiness for effective use of career interventions and addresses implications for practice as well as for future research. Variables contributing to low readiness for effective use of career interventions include personal characteristics and circumstances; knowledge of self, options, and decision making; and prior experience with career interventions. Consequences of low readiness for using career interventions include premature disengagement, negative perception of skills and interests, selective acquisition of incomplete information, premature choice foreclosure, protracted exploration, dependent decision‐making style, and poor evaluation of options.     

Research Notes

In the summer of 1995, a required MSW course was taught simultaneously to two sections of students at the University of Georgia, 11 on the main campus and 9 at a branch campus. Each section was alternately taught using live instruction or distance learning (two-way interactive television). At the conclusion of the course, students evaluated each method of teaching using Biner’s (1993) instrument for measuring attitudes toward televised courses. Live instruction was rated significantly higher than distance learning. Although distance learning technology has potential for augmenting social work educational resources, it has not yet demonstrated comparable outcomes in terms of student learning.     

Student Debates in Policy Courses

This article examines the use of student debates to promote substantive knowledge and policy practice skills. The authors present a pedagogical rationale for student debates, describe the incorporation of debates into a child welfare policy course, and report the results of an evaluation. Students demonstrated significantly greater increases in self-reported knowledge of course topics when they participated in debates than when they observed debates or learned through standard forms of instruction. The majority of students reported satisfaction with the debates, reported that participation improved their policy skills and knowledge, and rated the educational value of debates higher than traditional assignments.     

Introduction: Queering Later Life

Summary

The field of sexual trauma developed from the sociopolitical movements of the feminist, rape, and child protection movements. As thinking in the field developed, however, it has been difficult to integrate the perspective of the male survivor of sexual trauma into these perspectives. Gay men, in particular, have been notably absent from the literature, except when their abuse history is discussed as an etiology for their sexuality. It is clear that gay men suffer violence and oppression in the form of homophobia—an abuse with a sexual focus. Integrating the experience of gay men who have suffered trauma into perspectives regarding sexual trauma offers a possibility to enhance understanding about, as well as prevention efforts against, the sexual abuse of children. This includes expanding definitions and vocabulary regarding sexual trauma, as well as recognizing the impact on mental health professionals of working with survivors of sexual trauma.     

Conference reports

The lack of women engaging themselves in science has been thoroughly discussed in feminist and nonfeminist science studies. It has remained a mystery why so few female students take professional careers as scientists. Though more and more female students enroll in physics studies, for example, they seem to disappear before they reach academic positions. Instead of discussing this as a query of gender inequality in this article, I discuss the more general issues of inclusion and exclusion in communities of practices. I argue that selection mechanisms in a group of students can be connected to their premises for engaging themselves in an activity. As students have different embodied experiences, they also have different premises for engaging themselves. What seems like the same practice can, in fact, be analyzed as practices belonging to different activities. This approach might bring us a small step further in the discussions of the relations between gender and science.