Psychiatric Non-institutionalisation: Whose Needs are Served?

This article outlines the social problems experienced by persons with a chronic psychiatric disability, and their families. The disabled person's lifestyle is characterised by poor social and vocational skills, poverty, inadequate accommodation and alienation. Many of these problems increase the dependence of the disabled person, emotionally and financially, on their family of origin. The author suggests that these social problems will only be ameliorated if family members are provided with active support and information, and if hospital and community services are integrated and complementary. The disabled person's quality of life can only be improved by accessible intensive social and vocational rehabilitation programs. As these issues are not being comprehensively addressed at the present time family self-help organisations such as the Association of Relatives and Friends of the Mentally III (ARAFMI) will need to politicise their plight.     

Gambling on casinos: A political economy of Australian developments

The proliferation of commercial casinos in Australia over the past decade has transfigured the face of Australian gambling. This paper examines the implications of the precarious relations that exist between casino operations and the regulatory structures established to control them. While Australian casinos share many of the general features and problems of casinos in the United States and Britain, the Australian approach to the selection and control of casinos and the types of corporate organizations licensed to operate casinos has been quite distinctive. The various State governments also have adopted distinctly regional responses based on different moral climates, political-economic calculations and market competition. However, in their haste to secure a share of the casino market, governments have welcomed the involvement of large corporations in Australian gambling. The power of these economic forces and changing environmental conditions present a challenge to the capacity of governments to determine gambling trends in the country.     

Researching Children: Methods and Ethics

The appropriateness and desirability of researching children have been issues of some debate. Children may be perceived as non-competent or vulnerable, and proxies have been used as children's representatives. Increasingly researchers are speaking to children directly. Why is this so and what are the methodological and ethical implications of researching children's views? In this paper the authors draw on their own experiences of researching children in the fields of child carers and the impact of the Child Support Act 1991. A number of social, political and legal trends are identified which form a background to the growing interest in children as potential and actual participants in the research process. The theoretical, methodological, ethical and practical issues involved are then identified and described, using examples from two separate studies conducted by the authors.     

Zusammenfassungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Testing the demand-control-support model among health-care professionals: A structural equation model

This paper reports a further empirical validation of the Demand-Control-Support Model (DCS model), which was developed by Johnson and colleagues (1988, 1989). Data were collected from a heterogeneous group of health-care professionals (nurses and nurses' aides; n = 249). Three major refinements were made to the validation of the DCS Model. First, all relationships in the model were estimated simultaneously by means of covariance structure modelling (LISREL 8). Second, the control dimension was refined substantially, using a psychometrically more sound assessment of the workers' autonomy. Third, the model was applied to the work of health-care professionals. The data did not confirm the assumption that both job strain and motivation are multiplicative functions of job demands, autonomy and social support. First, the results suggested that high levels of autonomy attenuate the increase of emotional exhaustion due to job demands. These results partially supported Karasek's Job Demand-Control Model (Karasek 1979). Second, high levels of social support proved to attenuate the increase of emotional exhaustion due to autonomy. Finally, the main effect of autonomy on job challenge implied that an increase in autonomy is accompanied by an increase in job challenge (and, consequently, job involvement). In addition, low job demands and a high amount of work-related support seem to reduce feelings of exhaustion and, consequently, health complaints.     

The Relationship between Economic Development and Social Welfare: A New Adjusted GDP Measure of Welfare

Existing literature focuses on the issue ofpreparation of social welfare measurements onthe basis of an unadjusted Gross DomesticProduct (GDP). This paper extends this methodto incorporate cost-benefit analysis ofeconomic growth in a growing economy incalculating the adjusted GDP, termed as thecost-benefit (CB)-adjusted GDP. This approachis empirically applied to Thailand. There arestark differences between GDP per capita and CBadjusted GDP per capita rates for this period.This paper concludes that GDP can be used as anindicator of social welfare if the GDPestimates are undertaken within a cost-benefitanalysis framework.