Does market competition facilitate resident-centred care among nursing homes? A comparative analysis

This study examines the impact of market competition on resident-centred care in nursing homes, through a comparative analysis of non-profit and for-profit settings. The study was carried out in South Korea, where the nursing care market has recently expanded dramatically. Data was collected through a self-administered questionnaire, mailed to 1000 random participants nationwide. The findings are drawn from 239 nursing homes that completed the survey and indicate that perceived competition is positively associated with resident-centred care in non-profit settings, but not in for-profit settings. The study presents implications for practice and future research.     

Socioeconomic status,perceived inequality of opportunity,and attitudes toward redistribution

Previous research suggests that an individual’s socioeconomic status (SES) is negatively associated with attitudes toward redistributive policies. The objective of this study is to examine whether the relationship between an individual’s subjective SES and his or her attitudes toward redistribution is contingent upon perceptions of inequality of opportunity. A series of multilevel analyses was performed using data from 28 countries from the 2009 International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Results revealed that the relationship between individual SES and attitudes toward redistribution was weaker among individuals who more strongly believed that success lies beyond the control of individuals. Shared perceptions of inequality of opportunity at the country level were also significant. The relationship between SES and attitudes toward redistribution was weaker in countries with higher levels of public perceptions of inequality of opportunity. In conclusion, people commensurately support redistribution policies (even contrary to their own self-interest) as they recognize the significance of inequality of opportunity. The greater the support among people for redistribution against their self-interest, the weaker the social cleavage in attitudes toward redistribution across different SES strata, and the higher the overall level of support for redistribution in society.     

Life after loss: Comparing student service member/veteran and civilian mental health characteristics among individuals exposed to death by suicide

Objective: This study evaluated the mental health characteristics and beliefs of student service members/veterans (SSM/Vs) who have been exposed to another’s death by suicide.

Participants: A total of 39 SSM/Vs exposed to suicide and 32 SSM/Vs not exposed to suicide were sampled from a larger, epidemiological survey. An age- and gender-matched group of 39 civilian (C) students was drawn from a larger sample of individuals exposed to suicide.

Methods: Data were collected as part of an Internet-based, campus needs survey that occurred in Fall 2014. Participants were asked to complete measures about suicide-related behaviors, suicide prevention, help-seeking, and demographics.

Results: SSM/Vs exposed to suicide had more positive mental health/suicide prevention beliefs than SSM/Vs not exposed to suicide. Cs exposed to suicide were not significantly different from either group. Unique help-seeking patterns were also identified.

Conclusions: The current study identifies unique characteristics of SSM/Vs exposed to suicide that may inform prevention programming.     

Letting Her Go: Western Adoptive Families’ Search and Reunion With Chinese Birth Parents

This is the first study to investigate the trend of adopted individuals from China who search for and reunite with their birth parents. The authors suggest that the closed nature of China's international adoption program and growing ethical concerns about children's true origins impact the desire to search. Due to the generally younger ages of Chinese adoptees, adoptive parents have taken an unprecedentedly proactive role in this process. This article relies on in-depth interviews with adopted children and adoptive parents from seven Western families who reunited with Chinese birth parents. Interviews focused on the decision to search and methods used; the initial reunion; the development of bonds between adoptive and birth families; and post-reunion views of searching.     

Robust first-order rotatable lifetime improvement experimental designs

Experimental designs are widely used in predicting the optimal operating conditions of the process parameters in lifetime improvement experiments. The most commonly observed lifetime distributions are log-normal, exponential, gamma and Weibull. In the present article, invariant robust first-order rotatable designs are derived for autocorrelated lifetime responses having log-normal, exponential, gamma and Weibull distributions. In the process, robust first-order D-optimal and rotatable conditions have been derived under these situations. For these lifetime distributions with correlated errors, it is shown that robust first-order D-optimal designs are always robust rotatable but the converse is not true. Moreover, it is observed that robust first-order D-optimal and rotatable designs depend on the respective error variance–covariance structure but are independent from these considered lifetime response distributions.     

Language performance and cognitive function in persons with nondominant-hemispheric stroke

This study investigated the relationship between language performance and cognitive function in stroke patients after nondominant hemisphere damage. The results of a battery of formal language tests, K-WAB, of seventy-eight patients were analyzed. The correlation between their K-WAB and K-MMSE scores was analyzed. Multivariate analysis of covariance adjusting for educational years in each of K-WAB and K-MMSE was conducted in accordance with the brain lesion location. Only 35.9 % of patients were classified as normal and the remaining 64.1 % were categorized as subnormal by K-WAB. There was a positive correlation between their language and cognitive functions. Outcomes differed according to lesion location, as the SAH group exhibited a significantly lower performance in both language and cognitive evaluations than the other groups. Cognitive-communicative disorders in stroke patients with nondominant-hemispheric lesions present in different ways. In-depth language evaluation of all brain-damaged patients should be conducted so that language defects of patients are not ignored.     

Inside the movie roadshow: a critical approach to media events in China

Although face-to-face events starring film professionals have become increasingly popular, they have rarely been studied, especially from the perspective of production. Focusing on the phenomenon of Chinese movie roadshows, this study explores the motivations and techniques used to produce popular media events in the Chinese film industry. Based on expert interviews with 15 media practitioners, the results showed that roadshows are staged as ritualized events that are centered on the performance of a symbolic boundary between “inside” and “outside” the media. Film industry professionals embrace face-to-face communication with audiences and use such events to display sincerity, producing them as a seemingly “unmediated” peek behind the veil of an otherwise hidden world. Moreover, communication on social media is another form of ritualized practice. We conclude that, by thus mediating the “unmediated,” movie roadshows offer an insightful perspective on the machinery of media power in China.