The Family Economic Strain Scale: Development and Evaluation of the Instrument with Single- and Two-Parent Families

The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument to measure economic strain in single-parent and two-parent families. The Family Economic Strain Scale (FESS) originally contains 25 items. Thirteen items is adapted from previous research and 12 are developed for the study. The FESS is pilot tested using data from a sample of 59 single-mother, 12 single-father, and 164 two-parent families. Factor analysis reveals that the instrument contained one 13-itein dimension that is highly reliable (.92). The construct validity of the measure is evaluated using three hypotheses and data from a second study involving 30 single-mother, 30 single-father, and 30 two-parent families. ANOVA and standard multiple regression are used for the analyses. All three hypotheses are supported and variance accounted for is substantial. The FESS is a highly reliable and valid instrument that will be of value to researchers examining perceived economic strain in single-parent and two-parent families.     

Community Attachment in a Rural Setting: A Refinement and Empirical Test of the Systemic Model1

Abstract As they examine the complex issues currently facing rural America, rural sociologists draw increasingly on studies of community attachment. Because this research tradition has established the superiority of the systemic model, recent studies in rural and urban settings have focused on the conceptualization and operationalization of its components. We introduce four operational refinements to this model, and we test our refined model with data from one geographic area in south-west Louisiana. We find that, although our operational refinements improve our understanding of community attachment, additional refinements are necessary. We conclude by exploring the implications of community attachment studies for attempts to revitalize community in rural settings.     

Who Spanks Infants and Toddlers? Evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (FFCW), a birth cohort study of children in 18 medium to large U.S. cities, to examine the prevalence and determinants of spanking among infants and toddlers (at mean age 14 months). Taking advantage of the large and diverse sample in FFCW, we conduct separate analyses for children of African American (N = 1710), Hispanic (N = 853), and white non-Hispanic (N = 812) mothers. Overall, about 15% of children are spanked at 12 months, with this share rising to 40% by 18 months and nearly 50% for children age 20 months or older. We find that there are marked differences in the use of spanking across the three racial/ethnic groups, with children of African American mothers more likely to be spanked and at a younger age. Moreover, while some predictors of spanking are seen across all three groups, others vary. Mothers who are young, who report more parental stress, or report their child has a more difficult temperament are more likely to spank across all three groups. However, being a boy increases the risk of spanking only within African American families. First-born children are at elevated risk of spanking to at least some extent in all groups, but much more so within Hispanic families. In addition, maternal employment is associated with a greater likelihood of spanking in Hispanic families.Although spanking at these young ages is not necessarily indicative of maltreatment, it may be a marker for families who are at elevated risk of maltreatment. As such, our findings, by highlighting some risk factors that are common across groups as well as some that are more important for particular groups, may have implications for child abuse prevention.     

Explaining educational influences on attitudes toward homosexual relations

Despite changing attitudes toward homosexual relations in the United States, college-educated individuals remain less disapproving of homosexual sex than less-educated persons. Using recent General Social Survey data, this study considers three alternative explanations for the established association between schooling and support for same-sex relations. First, education may promote tolerance of homosexual sex by teaching support of nonconformity. Second, schooling may promote greater cognitive sophistication and complex reasoning, thus enabling individuals to better evaluate new ideas. Third, the observed relationship between education and tolerance may be the spurious result of affluence of the parental home. We find that the relation of education and attitudes is not a spurious one. Rather, the liberalizing effect of education on attitudes toward homosexual relations is due, in part, to education’s association with support for civil liberties, and in part, to schooling’s correlation with cognitive sophistication.     

The trend and pattern in attitudes toward abortion in the United States, 1965–1977

Using replicated questions from nationwide surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center in 1965 and yearly in 1972 through 1977, this paper traces the trend in attitudes toward abortion and examines these attitudes in relation to several sociodemographic characteristics known to be related to the attitudes. People have become remarkably more tolerant of abortion since 1965, although there has been relatively little change in overall level of approval in the 1970's. Approval remains strongly related to education, race, and religion and rather weakly related to age, with little evidence of polarization or homogenization in attitudes by people in different sociodemographic aggregates.     

Colonial workers,imperial migrants and surveillance: policing in Le Havre, 1914–40

This article explores how the police and municipal authorities of Le Havre responded to the colonial others who passed through, or resided in, the Seine-Inférieure port between the outbreak of the First World War and the defeat of France in 1940. Interrogating how the police and urban authorities monitored migrants to the port, it reveals how Le Havre’s imperial and transnational space was distinctive in terms of the peoples who established themselves in the port, the ways in which they forged links with other peripheral locations throughout the French empire, and how the local authorities attempted to control migrants and incomers from the French overseas empire. It highlights particularities of Le Havre’s urban space – notably its lack of a university and prestigious lycées, its pre-1914 history of militant strike action, its role as France’s main transatlantic port, and the presence of a small colonial population with a narrow social-economic profile – and shows how these particularities resulted in the enactment and sometimes neglect of national policies and agendas according to specific local priorities.     

Approximate variance formulas and asymptotic joint sampling distributions of standardized risk ratios in the presence of competing risks in cohort studies

The present paper is concerned with some results in cohort studies, in which the individuals in two study population are exposed simultaneously to several risks of death, which compete for their lives.

The morality experience of individuals in the two study populations is compared with respect to the morality experience of individuals in a well-defined and fixed population called the standard population.

Under some reasonable assumptions, not only simple variance formulas are-developed for the standardized risk ratio statistics (S[Rcirc]R_i) but also their joint asymptotic sampling distribution. It is demonstrated that these SRcirc;R_i's have asymptotically a multivariate normal distribtion corresponding to any given number of competing risks of death, These results are utilized to construct Scheffé-type and Sidak-type simultaneous confidence intervals for the SRR_i parameters which hold regardless of any covariance structure among the competing risks of death. The corresponding results for the cause-specific SMR and the externally standardized risk ratio parameters follow as special cases.

The present paper generalizes the available results in the literature in two directions, namely, to obtain simple variance formulas for the S[Rcirc]R_i, statistics and to treat the situation in the presence of competing risks to which individuals in a study are simultaneously exposed.

An empirical evaluation of these results is discussed in the last section utilizing some real cohort data from two recent occupational epidemiologic cohort studies.     

Health literacy in older adults

Health literacy is a critical goal for nurses to address. Consider the patient who stated: They told me I was taking double the medication I was supposed to. I had two bottles, and I was taking one from each bottle, but it turned out they were the same medication. But since I didnt know how to read. I didn't know. (University of Virginia Health Systems, 2003). Many older adults struggle daily to manage their health care problems; compounding these dificulties with low literacy skills can be devastating. They need our help.