Resource use of rural low-income families caring for children with disabilities

The Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, Pub.L. 104-193 (PRWORA) was passed creating the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. Since the passage of PRWORA, many families were able to leave the welfare rolls while those remaining on welfare were likely composed of families facing barriers to leaving, such as caring for children with disabilities. This project addresses the gaps in knowledge regarding low-income families caring for children with disabilities by conducting qualitative research investigating the resources used by these families to find and keep employment and child care. The study used a sample from a research project entitled ‘Rural Families Speak’ and examined the data of 26 families caring for children with disabilities. Analysis resulted in policy recommendations for increasing the efficacy of the programs designed to help these families.     

Statistical Inference for Stochastic Dominance and for the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality

We derive the asymptotic sampling distribution of various estimators frequently used to order distributions in terms of poverty, welfare, and inequality. This includes estimators of most of the poverty indices currently in use, as well as estimators of the curves used to infer stochastic dominance of any order. These curves can be used to determine whether poverty, inequality, or social welfare is greater in one distribution than in another for general classes of indices and for ranges of possible poverty lines. We also derive the sampling distribution of the maximal poverty lines up to which we may confidently assert that poverty is greater in one distribution than in another. The sampling distribution of convenient dual estimators for the measurement of poverty is also established. The statistical results are established for deterministic or stochastic poverty lines as well as for paired or independent samples of incomes. Our results are briefly illustrated using data for four countries drawn from the Luxembourg Income Study data bases.     

Intersecting discourses on race and sexuality: compounded colonization among LGBTTQ American Indians/Alaska Natives

This article examines discourses on race and sexuality in scientific literature during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in context of U.S. settler colonialism. It uses a theoretical and methodological intersectional perspective to identify rhetorical strategies deployed in discursive representations salient to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Two-Spirit, and queer American Indians and Alaska Natives. These representations reflect a context of compounded colonization, a historical configuration of co-constituting discourses based on cultural and ideological assumptions that invidiously marked a social group with consequential, continued effects. Hence, language is a vector of power and a critical vehicle in the project of decolonization.     

Patricia Hill Collins's Black Sexual Politics and the Genealogy of the Strong Black Woman

Increasingly, as Black Sexual Politics nears its ending, a shift in tone and level of intensity makes a reader aware that Collins's analysis of interlocking social institutions and media representations is aimed not just at informing, but at liberating, individual African American readers—that she wishes to give African American men and women the tools to resist the internalization of racist sexual ideology and denigrating gender roles. The texts that I examine here—by young Black feminist writers Veronica Chambers, Joan Morgan, and Kimberley Springer, along with a response to their work from Sheila Radford-Hill—continue Collins's deconstructive work on Black gender stereotypes by focusing on the Strong Black Woman role. These autobiographical/theoretical texts not only provide a historical context for the role's origins and development, but also add a psychological and emotional dimension: they tell us what it means to individual African American women to live up to the gender role requirements of Strong Black Woman. Juxtaposed through my analysis, these texts provide a kind of dialogue that moves, in the spirit of Collins' earlier pioneering work on standpoint theory, toward a collective standpoint on the Strong Black Woman gender role and its psychic and emotional costs.     

Social Relationships,Well‐Being,and Career Commitment: Exploring Cross‐Domain Effects of Social Relationships

Cette étude explore dans quelle mesure les relations sociales dans divers domaines de la vie sont liées au bien‐être en général ainsi qu'aux exigences de carrière. Cette étude cherche à savoir si les effets de l'interaction des relations sociales sont nuisibles ou bénéfiques et s'ils mesurent les effets du stress sur un ou plusieurs domaines de la vie. Analysant des données d'enquête recueillies auprès de 1,436 avocats mariés de l'Ouest canadien. Les résultats suggèrent que la spécificité de domaine ne détermine pas forcément la nécessité de documenter les effets des interactions. Les résultats Ils suggèrent aussi que les ressources de soutien ou les activités intégratives ne sont pas forcément toutes bénéfiques et qu'au contraire, elles pourraient nuire au bien‐être ainsi qu'à l'engagement de carrière. This study explores the extent to which social relationships in different life domains are related to overall well‐being and career commitment. This study investigates whether the interaction effects of social relationships are harmful or beneficial, as well as whether they moderate the effects of strain within the same domain or across domains. Survey data were analyzed from 1,436 married lawyers in Western Canada. The results suggest that domain specificity is not necessarily a key to documenting interaction effects. They also suggest that not all support resources or integrative activities are necessarily beneficial and instead may be detrimental to individuals' well‐being and career commitment.     

The Social Relationships and Social Support of Aging Mothers Whose Adult Daughters Are Mentally Ill

Guided by a conceptual framework highlighting multiple facets of social relationships and social support, this study examined the extent to which aging mothers of adult daughters with a serious mental illness were socially integrated with members of their network. It further examined the relational content of these mothers’ social ties as tangible or intangible support and the nature of their supportive exchanges with network members, particularly their adult daughters with mental illness. A structured face-to-face interview was conducted with 22 aging mothers of these adult daughters. Two methods of analysis were used to analyze data: counting and content analysis. Findings showed aging mothers of daughters with mental illness were socially integrated with relatives and nonrelatives, evidenced relational content of tangible and intangible support in their social ties and engaged in bidirectional and asymmetrical support exchanges with network members, including their daughters with mental illness. These findings suggest that social resources in the form of social relationships and support are embedded in the networks of aging mothers who have adult daughters with serious mental illness. Practitioners should assess support contributions to the aging mothers of adult daughters with serious mental illness from a wide range of social relationships including their daughters.     

“No strings attached”: A qualitative exploration of gay and bisexual men’s motivations for and attitudes toward engaging in casual sex while on vacation

Prior quantitative research with gay and bisexual men (GBM) has documented high rates of sexual risk behavior during recreational travel. Although some associations are known (e.g., substance use at the tourist destination is associated with sexual risk), less is known about GBM’s motivations for travel and the cognitive and attitudinal factors that influence their sexual behavior while vacationing. In the present study, we conducted qualitative interviews with 46 GBM recruited from three popular gay tourist destinations. Using the Health Belief Model (HBM) as a guiding theoretical framework, the findings of the study revealed that the gay-friendly, tropical, relaxing environments resulted in men letting their guard down and engaging in more risk than when they are at home. Various barriers such as peer pressure and substance use affect GBM’s ability to engage in healthier behaviors while traveling, with condom negotiation and HIV status disclosure as additional issues that impact the sex practices of this population. Results highlight the applicability of HBM constructs to provide insight for intervention development for this population.     

An Examination of Listening Concepts in the Healthcare Context: Differences Among Nurses,Physicians, and Administrators

This study explores the perceived conceptualizations of listening in a healthcare context. The review of literature focusing on communication and listening in healthcare supports the belief that listening is an essential element in patient satisfaction. This study sought to determine which activities physicians, nurses and healthcare administrators perceive as similar or identical to listening. A survey of 203 health care professionals, using a web-based version of the Imhof-Janusik Listening Concepts Inventory (Imhof and Janusik, 2006 Imhof, M. and Janusik, L. A. 2006. Development and validation of the Imhof-Janusik listening concepts inventory to measure listening conceptualization differences between cultures. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 35(2): 79–98. [Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) was completed. The results suggest the listening conceptualizations vary among physicians, nurses, and administrators with administrators exhibiting the most flexibility in their conceptualization of listening. It is concluded that these conceptualizations may play a critical role in the behaviors displayed by nurses, physicians and hospital administrators.